“Migrant workers place considerable trust and confidence in migration advisers,relying heavily on their advice due to a range of barriers that make it difficult to find reliable information about visa options.
‘We are totally unprotected. Politicians are blaming us for the housing crisis but we are not the cause - we are also the victims.’
International student Valentina Olivares
“Alarmingly,this power imbalance is exploited by some advisers for financial gain,often through false or overstated assurances about acquiring more secure visa options.”
The report made several recommendations including that the government establish an education agent register and review commission-based services provided by advisers.
Olivares studied English when she arrived in Australia and struggled to find work,despite assurances from agents that employment was plentiful. She was eventually hired as a waitress and paid cash in hand.
“I didn’t have any type of sick leave or holidays but I didn’t realise I was entitled to rights as a migrant,” she said.
“I thought they were doing me a favour.”
She found the advice from migration agents was often unclear and slow and the real costs of her English course significantly higher than what she had been told.
Affordable accommodation was difficult to find so she shared rooms with housemates to keeps costs down in apartments full of cockroaches. In one of her sharehouses,the landlord even converted the apartment balcony into an extra bedroom,which meant there was no natural light in living areas.
Olivares,who went on to study a master’s degree and is now on a post-study visa,said the landlord had abusive rules and behaviours,“fining” her because she moved a desk from her room to the living room.
“We are totally unprotected,” she said. “Politicians are blaming us for the housing crisis but we are not the cause – we are also the victims.
“No one can afford the cost of living.”
Melanie MacFarlane,chair of the International Students Education Agents Association,said there were unscrupulous operators who took advantage of a very vulnerable cohort.
“But I would say those are the ones who generally go hand in hand with unscrupulous education providers and ghost colleges,” she said.
MacFarlane said the association wanted greater self-regulation,including a requirement that education agents were required to be accredited through global company ICEF.
She opposed the suggestion that education agents be regulated in a similar way to migration agents,which are registered and monitored through the Department of Home Affairs.
A recent report by the Australian National Audit Office into the Migration Agents Registration Authority (Omara),overseen by Home Affairs,found agents were not effectively regulated and the authority did not take appropriate action to sanction migration agents.
“If you’ve got the regulatory body who can’t properly handle those complaints and follow them up properly then you’ve got real problems,” MacFarlane said.