Organised Crime Targets Universities :

IF ORGANISED CRIME HAS INFILTRATED THE OVERSEAS STUDENT INDUSTRY, THEN AUSTRALIA FIRST WONDERS ABOUT CONTRACT LABOUR IN THE RIVERINA ?

Organised Crime is believed to have infiltrated foreign student education.
.Fraud involving student visas
.People smuggling operations
.Bogus students being placed

Australia's $16 billion foreign education sector has been infiltrated by organised crime.

A confidential Immigration Department report reveals nearly 40 per cent of detected fraud involving student visas last year was aimed at universities.

Previously the problem was thought to be confined mainly to the private colleges and language schools being the prefered target of people smuggling operations.

But the report to Immigration by consultants Ernst & Young, obtained under the Freedom Of Information laws by The Australian, shows universities and vocational colleges are increasingly being exploited to place bogus students.

The Ernst & Young report showed that in June 10 months to April last year, higher education accounted for 39 per cent of student visas refused where fraud was involved. But it was higher in the 12 months to June, where higher education accounted for more than half, 53 per cent of such cases.

"The majority of fraud risks stem from higher education and vocational education and training," the report found.

It is said Australian Immigration and Education officers in diplomatic posts were having to work with foreign Governments` law enforcement agencies regarding "increased levels of organised fraud".

This amounts to an admission that organised crime is targeting the student visa to shoehorn illegal migrants into the country as fee- paying students.

The revelations will concern university leaders, who have blamed most student migration fraud on less rigoursly regulated private colleges and institutes.

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship declined to say whether it knew organised crime was using education and migration agents for migration fraud.

"The Department is concerned with any type of visa fraud, whether it involves overseas organised crime elements or not," a DIAC spokesman said.

Taken from The Australian Newspaper Jan 2010.