For more than 150 foreign students visa cards, of which more than 50 Chinese students visa cards for more than eight months, Australia said: everything is normal procedures!
But the truth is: only about 30 students have received visas since March 2018, while nearly 100 are still waiting.
In response, 1688 reporters interviewed one of the visa was shelved on the student Xiaofeng (alias).
Xiaofeng, after receiving the admission notice of a Ph. D. graduate student from an Australian university in June last year, immediately handed over his signature and began to prepare for studying abroad with great expectation.
However, he waited until March this year he did not receive a visa. 9 months of long wait, what despair and helplessness has he experienced?
The following text is based on the README of Xiaofeng:
I was supposed to go to school in August last year, but I couldn`t get my visa down until September. I was very anxious and e-mailed, but I got the answer: "wait patiently during the normal trial."
I waited for a month, but there was nothing, so I phoned to ask, and the reply was still, "Please wait patiently."
Such an answer is really hopeless.
So I asked, what is the reason? When exactly can I sign? But staff, who answered the phone, just said, "you`ve sent a lot of emails. You just have to wait patiently now, and for what reason, there`s no comment."
They received the emails I sent, but they didn`t do anything.
And then it was November, every day at home without an end to wait for me, I can not sit down, began to work while waiting.
While I was still trying to contact the visa department, some experienced seniors told me who the name of the visa officer should be asked, and I was told that I did not have a visa officer, that is, my visa processing process has not started!
Every time I called, the operator was very enthusiastic at first, but when I learned that I was Chinese, I immediately froze down, and I kept my mouth shut.
Once I called, and the operator first asked me which country I was from. I said it was Chinese. He smiled bitterly, and then said that he was urging the Chinese students to sign, but they couldn`t help it.
I also heard a story. There was no way to know whether it was true or not. A classmate called and urged the ticket. After answering a lot of "crap," the female operator whistled at him as she was about to hang up. I don`t know if she felt that she was fooling another one. Whistle to relax, or naked mockery.
In February, I had been a temporary worker for months and my case was still under security review. I still didn`t have a visa officer. I asked where my case was, and the operator said it was from a third party.
Who is the third party? Who has more authority to review than immigration? I felt as if I had done something wrong, but I didn`t even have a chance to correct it.
In the painful wait and struggle, I got to know more friends like me, and we set up a support group, one of which was a social app group of 50 students waiting for visas for more than eight months, and sometimes the process was too tormented and painful. Instead, a sense of humor arose in people`s hearts, and then we all became "Buddhists and other signers."
Our research in the fields of "science and engineering" involving students in visa difficulties includes electronic engineering, materials, machinery, human beings, microorganisms, biochemistry, laser, physics, computer (machine learning direction), chemical engineering, Major in thermoelectric refrigeration, metallurgy, immunology, etc.
The older generation who have already signed a visa in the group will introduce the experience to us, and then we conclude that in the description of the research project, "the more intellectual disability the better" is to try to detechnicalize and complicate as much as possible.
In fact, if you don`t want to give us a visa, please let us know, but this unusual treatment is really uncomfortable.
Many of us stayed at home at first, then waited too anxious to go out to work, but worried about suddenly signing a visa, we dared not sign a labor contract.
Although now I have signed, but the heart is really very aggrieved, I delayed this year who will pay me?
(README)
Waiting for a long way to go and signing a contract facing default, the Australian authorities handled this way and attitude, leaving students such as Xiaofeng in a dilemma. Finally, on March 8, in response to the unjustifiable delay in Chinese student visas in Australia, China`s Ministry of Education has spoken.
The NFC warned students who planned to travel to Australia to plan carefully and make decisions to prepare themselves for risks, followed by a more in-depth report by the Global Daily.
As early as January 24, 2018, the National Foundation Commission has written to the Australian Embassy in China.
With the joint efforts and urges of the Ministry of Education, the National Foundation Committee and the Chinese media, students waiting for visas finally began to receive visas in mid-March.
But creepy is the pace and pace of visa issuance, which suddenly came when the Ministry of Education and the media paid attention to it.
The impression is that previous so-called "security censorship", "third-party agencies" or "normal censorship" were just excuses, and the case of these public students was just put on hold.
The speculation was later confirmed by a visa officer at the Australian Immigration Service that many Chinese students` case had indeed been detained.
This explains why so many doctoral students have been delayed by a collective visa, and then concentrated on signing, you can see from the internal data on March 16 suddenly a number of doctoral students centralized signing.
At present, conservatively speaking, there are still 70 to 80 international students visa delays. The most important thing for them is to understand what the visa processing process is, how to avoid minefields when applying, and what are the indicators of "security review".
A completely opaque review process, avoidance, and indifference took up a lot of time and experience for Chinese students, and Australia did not give any convincing response.
