IMMIGRATION officers appear to have stepped up a practice of cancelling the visas of returning international students in a way that deprives them of appeal rights, according to an immigration expert.
If a visa is cancelled before the student clears immigration at the airport, there is no right to independent review by tribunal, immigration lawyer Michael Jones said.
A student visa can be cancelled if the student is no longer enrolled, skips too many classes or has a poor academic record.
But Mr Jones said appeals against visa cancellations had a high success rate because private colleges often did the wrong thing or had unreliable records. "How is the student supposed to prove that [kind of objection to a cancellation] in the 10 minutes the student is given at the airport?" he said.
He asaid a student-client returning from India last November was taken aside at Sydney airport by an immigration officer and told: "Immigration has started to interview people on arrival now, OK. The people that are in your situation."
Another immigration lawyer, who did not want to be named, had a client who reported a large number of students being intercepted at Sydney airport on February 12.
A spokesman for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship declined to comment on whether officers had stepped up airport interceptions.