State governments have poured resources into promoting international education in Melbourne and Sydney,helping to increase the number of overseas students in Australia to more than 500,000 last year.
WhileNSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has called for a halving of migrant arrivals to her state,her own government has asked for at least 6000 skilled worker visas in previous negotiations with the federal government.
NSW has also spent taxpayer funds on a StudyNSW initiative to attract overseas students,a big proportion of the net overseas migration to the state.
A former deputy secretary of the immigration department,Abul Rizvi,told Fairfax Media that the population figures over the past five years showed there was scope to achieve ambitions such as a 50 per cent reduction in the intake.
“On my preliminary calculations,net overseas migration to NSW is likely to decline to between 50,000 to 80,000 per annum by 2018-19,” Mr Rizvi said.
“The figure may be closer to 50,000 with continuation of current employer sponsored migration policy that forces most overseas students to move out of NSW to obtain state government sponsorship for provisional and subsequently permanent migration.
“To ensure the figure is close to 50,000 per annum,or even less,the NSW government could simply stop sponsoring business and skilled migrants to NSW as it has been in recent years,around 6000 per annum.