Racial attacks are not the only thing international students have to contend with in Australia. They also work like slaves in horrifying conditions to earn in order to pay their tuition and save money to repay loans they have taken back home. For this they pay a very heavy price. In fact, it is coming to light that working for long hours hardly leaves them enough time to pursue their studies – the reason they are in Australia in the first place.
Now there is evidence of a scam targeting international students who are the victims of “the new slave traders” Down Under. An investigation by the Australian newspaper 'The Age' has revealed that students who are lured to Australia by glossy advertisements in newspapers and other media with tall claims of “world class” facilities and faculty and degrees/diplomas that are “internationally recognised” are nothing but a fig leaf to cover a new slave trade.
The Age reported yesterday (July 15) that thousands of overseas students are being made to work for nothing — or even pay to work — by businesses exploiting loopholes in immigration and education laws in what experts describe as a system of economic slavery.
Education is now worth more than $12 billion annually and ranks as Australia’s third largest export, ahead of tourism and just behind coal and iron ore. Nearly 100,000 Indian youth are studying in Australia, second in number only to those from China. In fact, education has become a cornerstone of India-Australia bilateral relationship, with more than 97,000 Indian students currently enrolled in educational institutions Down Under.
This vast pool of unpaid labour was created in 2005 when vocational students were required to do 900 hours work experience. There was no requirement that they be paid. Overseas students remain bound to the system as completion of such courses became a near-guaranteed pathway to permanent residency in Australia.
Since then the number of foreign students enrolled in the sector has leapt from 65,120 to 173,432 last year — about half of all overseas students.
The changes have created a $15 billion education industry, as comparable countries don't offer residency. But experts, teachers and students say many of the private college courses are little more than “visa mills”. Since 2001 the number of private colleges has risen from 664 to 4892.
Citing the findings from a study by academics from Monash and Melbourne universities – both Tier 1 institutions that attract thousands of students – Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) reported that almost 60 per cent of the international students in the state of Victoria could be receiving below minimum wage rates.
The study, based on interviews with 200 international students enrolled in nine universities across the state, found as many as 58.1 per cent students surveyed were paid below $15 an hour, with 33.9 per cent receiving less than $10 an hour. The study also confirmed what has been long known, that many of these full-fee paying international students are often pressured to take jobs not wanted by local workers.
Besides driving cabs, overseas students largely work in accommodation and food services, retail trade, health care and social assistance, administrative and support services.
One university-educated overseas student to spent $22,000 and two years doing a hairdressing course she would never use, just to secure her residency. She did her 900 hours' work experience in a salon closely linked to the college, where students are required to pay a $1000 non-refundable bond to use the equipment.
Other colleges charge their students thousands of dollars in “placement fees” only to then advertise their supply of free labour to local business. And a black market has sprung up in fraudulent letters of completion.
A 23-year-old Pakistani student Faisal Durrani's case has become a cause celebre among international students. After working in slave galley conditions, Durrani stood up for his rights and exposed the mistreatment of workers from the subcontinent even as Australia reaps rich dividends with full fee-paying international students.
Durrani, who is suing several companies for being treated as a “slave”, was paid only $1.26 an hour for more than 150 hours of work as a security guard at the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne.
“To me it was an act of slavery, we have been treated like slaves,” he told the media. Durrani said he was paid $200 for the 158 hours of work at last year's Australian Open in a statement of claim lodged at the Melbourne Magistrates Court.
“First, we often see cases where a worker is not paid correctly. It’s not so common to see a worker barely paid at all. Second, our client is a vulnerable worker - a visitor to Australia trying to scrape together an income while he completes his studies,” Durrani’s solicitor, Andrew Weinmann of Maurice Blackburn, said.
Durrani says he was also threatened with violence for pursuing to recover his wages. He is now seeking about $4,000 in wages besides pursuing interest, costs and penalties that could run into the tens of thousands of dollars.
Incidentally, Maurice Blackburn is a leading law firm, which is also acting on behalf of former Indian doctor Mohammed Haneef in the judicial inquiry into his 2007 failed “terrorism” case. Haneef's case was in fact only the trailer of the sordid saga of rampant racism in Australia, which otherwise claims to promote “multiculturalism”.
Another earlier investigation by The Age revealed that an Indian college head who also owns a 7-Eleven shop allegedly had Indian students working there for no pay. Details have also emerged of a black economy in fraudulent $5000 certificates available to international students from rogue Melbourne colleges. The state's education regulator, the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority, is investigating at least one college linked to the 7-Eleven.
“If you wanted to make a corrupt system, this is absolutely how you would do it,” Sydney immigration agent Karl Konrad said. He said the system began to go bad when the requirement for 900 hours' work was introduced.
“You've got the agents and the proprietors realising that there is a flood of free labour, but, of course, the demand for placements outstrips the supply, so even if they wanted to take all that free labour they can't use it all,” said Konrad, the former Victorian police officer famed for his whistle-blowing exposure of corruption among fellow officers. “It's all about supply and demand.”
He said a trade in fraudulent documents had evolved with employers and agents selling students verification they had completed their 900 hours. One agent said charged $15-20,000 for such paperwork. “They are slaves,” he said. “They work for free from 11 o'clock to 11 o'clock, no breaks, no nothing. They have to pay the owner for the paperwork. They want to stay here. They will do anything.”
He described the entire industry as a racket. “They work with no workers' compensation, no insurance. If they are injured at work, bad luck.” Konrad said the colleges and employers had a dangerous amount of power over their students, who face deportation if their enrolments are cancelled. Even the pretence of education has been abandoned at many colleges, say students and teachers.
One cooking trainer said if he did not keep passing students, migration agents would stop sending them to the college where he worked and his job would disappear. “As for this 900 hours' work experience, at least 60 per cent of my students were paying for it. It made a lot of Indian restaurant owners very rich,” he said. “Two years ago a student would shudder if you asked them if they were here for PR (permanent residency). Now it's blatant.”
Konrad said many students had taken out loans or mortgages back home to pay the exorbitant fees. “If you have taken a loan in Indian dollars of $20,000 to study here, that is going to take you nearly 20 years to pay off in India. “At least if they make it into Australia, they can pay that off within a reasonable time frame.”
So, as more and more skeletons tumble out of the Australian education system's cupboard, it has become absolutely clear that Down Under students are not human beings, just “consumers” and the degrees/diplomas they are offered in return for fat tuition fees are mere “products”.
After the racial attacks on international students in May and June stirred up a hornets' nest, Trade Minister Simon Crean declared: “It’s not just the quality of the product, it’s the safe environment in which we bring people” that was Australia's USP.
Just last week Colin Walters, a senior Australian government official who is currently leading a high-level delegation to India to reassure Indian people about safety in Australia in the wake of a series of attacks on Indian students, told the Times of India (TOI), "Australia is basically a safe country. We are doing our best to control the crimes. Indian people are extremely welcome into our country." Seeking to dispel the notion that Australia is unsafe for overseas students, Walters said the Kangaroo country is much safer than several other countries in the world
But truth be told, the Australian political establishment has nothing but contempt for the well-being of ordinary students, whether they are from India, Australia, or anywhere else. The attacks have been going on for months, with nothing of substance being done or said until now.
The real concern is to ensure that the highly lucrative flow of education tuition payments into the country continues. International students are ruthlessly exploited, having to pay tens of thousands of dollars in tuition fees while being denied basic rights afforded to Australian students, such as concession fares on public transport.
Roger And Out
Showing posts with label Indian Students. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Indian Students. Show all posts
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Monday, July 13, 2009
Racism In Australia: Indian Students Boycott 'Walk for Harmony'
Indian students boycotted Sunday's 'Walk for Harmony' in central Melbourne after the Victorian Labor government of Premier John Brumby refused to allow them to address the rally.
This outrageous act of censorship laid bare the real agenda of what had been billed as an official show of support for diversity and equality: to help secure the lucrative inflow of international students’ tuition fees by organising a public relations exercise advertising Victoria as a safe and attractive place to study.
Indian students held protests in Melbourne and Sydney in late May and early June following a series of racist and violent attacks. Amid ongoing coverage of the issue in the Indian media, the federal and state Labor governments became increasingly concerned over the potential impact on the $15 billion education market.
Brumby responded by announcing the Walk for Harmony. The event was timed to coincide with a tour of several Indian cities by a high-level delegation—including federal and state government officials, university representatives, and police—aimed at countering negative reports about the situation confronting international students in Australia.
The exclusion of representatives of the Indian students from the Walk for Harmony platform reflected the fact that every aspect of the stage-managed affair was designed to prevent discussion of the issues raised by the racist assaults. Such a discussion would immediately pose the question as to how the Labor Party could posture as a champion of equality, inclusion, and fairness, while at the same presiding over the most ruthless exploitation of international students.
Facing systematic and institutionalised discrimination, students from overseas pay exorbitant tuition fees—several times higher than those paid by most Australian students—are unable to access Medicare and other social welfare programs, and are even refused permission to access public transport at student concession rates.
The Brumby government’s cynical calculations suffered a serious blow when the media reported early Sunday that the Federation of Indian Students of Australia (FISA) was staging a boycott.
FISA spokesman Gautam Gupta told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC): “We think the government is now basically using it as a political media stunt,” he declared. “Nothing more than that. Unfortunately they are trying to dilute the main issue, and we don’t want to be part of any dilution. We want the debate to be basically focused on the victims, the unsafe streets, and the rising crime rate and the failure of the justice system.”
The government’s absurd pretext for silencing the Indian students was that “harmony walk” speakers were to be restricted to “umbrella groups that aren’t ethnic or religion-based”.
Brumby declared that a selected member of the Federation of International Students would be allowed to participate—but in the end even this was restricted to allowing a young woman to speak before the walk, when most people were still assembling and unaware that they were being addressed. The official platform erected in central Melbourne’s Federation Square was restricted to Labor and Liberal politicians and the police.
A small number of leading FISA members attended the rally, but stressed that they did not do so as participants. Gautam Gupta said: “I attended as an observer, and I covered my mouth in protest at not being able to speak. FISA had four or five people there—we were hoping till the end that we would be invited to speak. The march was a political stunt.”
Later, at the end of the “harmony walk, FISA president Amit Menghani explained, “Instead of addressing the facts, instead of having debates, instead of coming up with solutions to these particular problems, what the government has tried to do is divert the whole situation. They have tried to eliminate the debates that were going on in terms of students’ safety concerns.
“We support multiculturalism but we will not support any politician’s PR exercise towards this particular rally.... They have clearly said they are not letting any of the student bodies speak. They are eliminating the student factor in this thing. Now if you look at the rally how many students are here?
“Nobody is here to listen to us. They don’t want to discuss anything on the real issues. They are just diverting themselves, contradicting themselves after each new statement. At the end of the day, we all know that the education system is one of the biggest sources of revenue for Australia after iron and coal—it’s the third biggest industry.
“Now they’re just having some task force ready, holding some committee meetings—it’s basically going round the table, passing the ball from one person to another, until at some point they say, ‘OK, let’s have a harmony walk’. So what’s the point of it? There was no use in having this sort of harmony walk.”
As Menghani indicated, very few university students attended the event. About 5,000 to 10,000 people participated, many as part of officially invited national, ethnic, and religious groups. Among the largest delegations were the Chinese religious sect Falun Gong, exiled Vietnamese flying old South Vietnam flags, and members of the Ethiopian Oromo group.
The entire event had a contrived and artificial atmosphere. Large numbers of Walk for Harmony marshals distributed official balloons, T-shirts, stickers, and small Australian flags. No handmade banners or placards were visible. No doubt in response to the Indian students’ boycott, there was a definite attempt to shift the emphasis of the event away from the issues surrounding the international students and towards a more general support for “multiculturalism”.
Labor Party state parliamentarians and their staffers, together with local mayors and councillors, made themselves prominent. Also attending were many uniformed police officers with their partners and children.
Melbourne Police Assault Indian Students (Video)
This attempt to present cops as being “part of the community” was all the more grotesque given the actions of dozens of police on June 1, when they viciously broke up a sit-down protest staged by Indian students and their supporters at a busy intersection outside Flinders Street train station, just metres from where the official Walk for Harmony speeches were made. Unsurprisingly, the event’s organisers made no mention of the police assault.
Police Commissioner Simon Overland addressed the crowd. He appeared alongside two young immigrant children who had been dressed up in police uniform as part of the shameless photo opportunity.
Without directly raising the assaults on Indian students and the widespread reporting of police indifference to these crimes, Overland mentioned “recent challenges”, and declared that the police “understand our responsibility to deal with those issues and we take those responsibilities seriously”.
The other speakers were Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, state opposition leader Ted Baillieu, and Premier Brumby.
Brumby declared the walk “a great event for our state” that sent “a very loud, clear message out to the rest of Australia, and around the rest of the world” about Victoria’s support for diversity. The premier made no direct reference to the Indian students, but declared that “we condemn racism in whatever form that it takes” and said that, “in relation to our international students”, the government would create a new “one-stop shop” to assist with “counselling, accommodation, and welfare support”.
This measure will do nothing to address the real problems confronting international students and, like the harmony walk itself, is only intended to bolster the state’s international image.
This outrageous act of censorship laid bare the real agenda of what had been billed as an official show of support for diversity and equality: to help secure the lucrative inflow of international students’ tuition fees by organising a public relations exercise advertising Victoria as a safe and attractive place to study.
Indian students held protests in Melbourne and Sydney in late May and early June following a series of racist and violent attacks. Amid ongoing coverage of the issue in the Indian media, the federal and state Labor governments became increasingly concerned over the potential impact on the $15 billion education market.
Brumby responded by announcing the Walk for Harmony. The event was timed to coincide with a tour of several Indian cities by a high-level delegation—including federal and state government officials, university representatives, and police—aimed at countering negative reports about the situation confronting international students in Australia.
The exclusion of representatives of the Indian students from the Walk for Harmony platform reflected the fact that every aspect of the stage-managed affair was designed to prevent discussion of the issues raised by the racist assaults. Such a discussion would immediately pose the question as to how the Labor Party could posture as a champion of equality, inclusion, and fairness, while at the same presiding over the most ruthless exploitation of international students.
Facing systematic and institutionalised discrimination, students from overseas pay exorbitant tuition fees—several times higher than those paid by most Australian students—are unable to access Medicare and other social welfare programs, and are even refused permission to access public transport at student concession rates.
The Brumby government’s cynical calculations suffered a serious blow when the media reported early Sunday that the Federation of Indian Students of Australia (FISA) was staging a boycott.
FISA spokesman Gautam Gupta told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC): “We think the government is now basically using it as a political media stunt,” he declared. “Nothing more than that. Unfortunately they are trying to dilute the main issue, and we don’t want to be part of any dilution. We want the debate to be basically focused on the victims, the unsafe streets, and the rising crime rate and the failure of the justice system.”
The government’s absurd pretext for silencing the Indian students was that “harmony walk” speakers were to be restricted to “umbrella groups that aren’t ethnic or religion-based”.
Brumby declared that a selected member of the Federation of International Students would be allowed to participate—but in the end even this was restricted to allowing a young woman to speak before the walk, when most people were still assembling and unaware that they were being addressed. The official platform erected in central Melbourne’s Federation Square was restricted to Labor and Liberal politicians and the police.
A small number of leading FISA members attended the rally, but stressed that they did not do so as participants. Gautam Gupta said: “I attended as an observer, and I covered my mouth in protest at not being able to speak. FISA had four or five people there—we were hoping till the end that we would be invited to speak. The march was a political stunt.”
Later, at the end of the “harmony walk, FISA president Amit Menghani explained, “Instead of addressing the facts, instead of having debates, instead of coming up with solutions to these particular problems, what the government has tried to do is divert the whole situation. They have tried to eliminate the debates that were going on in terms of students’ safety concerns.
“We support multiculturalism but we will not support any politician’s PR exercise towards this particular rally.... They have clearly said they are not letting any of the student bodies speak. They are eliminating the student factor in this thing. Now if you look at the rally how many students are here?
“Nobody is here to listen to us. They don’t want to discuss anything on the real issues. They are just diverting themselves, contradicting themselves after each new statement. At the end of the day, we all know that the education system is one of the biggest sources of revenue for Australia after iron and coal—it’s the third biggest industry.
“Now they’re just having some task force ready, holding some committee meetings—it’s basically going round the table, passing the ball from one person to another, until at some point they say, ‘OK, let’s have a harmony walk’. So what’s the point of it? There was no use in having this sort of harmony walk.”
As Menghani indicated, very few university students attended the event. About 5,000 to 10,000 people participated, many as part of officially invited national, ethnic, and religious groups. Among the largest delegations were the Chinese religious sect Falun Gong, exiled Vietnamese flying old South Vietnam flags, and members of the Ethiopian Oromo group.
The entire event had a contrived and artificial atmosphere. Large numbers of Walk for Harmony marshals distributed official balloons, T-shirts, stickers, and small Australian flags. No handmade banners or placards were visible. No doubt in response to the Indian students’ boycott, there was a definite attempt to shift the emphasis of the event away from the issues surrounding the international students and towards a more general support for “multiculturalism”.
Labor Party state parliamentarians and their staffers, together with local mayors and councillors, made themselves prominent. Also attending were many uniformed police officers with their partners and children.
Melbourne Police Assault Indian Students (Video)
This attempt to present cops as being “part of the community” was all the more grotesque given the actions of dozens of police on June 1, when they viciously broke up a sit-down protest staged by Indian students and their supporters at a busy intersection outside Flinders Street train station, just metres from where the official Walk for Harmony speeches were made. Unsurprisingly, the event’s organisers made no mention of the police assault.
Police Commissioner Simon Overland addressed the crowd. He appeared alongside two young immigrant children who had been dressed up in police uniform as part of the shameless photo opportunity.
Without directly raising the assaults on Indian students and the widespread reporting of police indifference to these crimes, Overland mentioned “recent challenges”, and declared that the police “understand our responsibility to deal with those issues and we take those responsibilities seriously”.
The other speakers were Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, state opposition leader Ted Baillieu, and Premier Brumby.
Brumby declared the walk “a great event for our state” that sent “a very loud, clear message out to the rest of Australia, and around the rest of the world” about Victoria’s support for diversity. The premier made no direct reference to the Indian students, but declared that “we condemn racism in whatever form that it takes” and said that, “in relation to our international students”, the government would create a new “one-stop shop” to assist with “counselling, accommodation, and welfare support”.
This measure will do nothing to address the real problems confronting international students and, like the harmony walk itself, is only intended to bolster the state’s international image.
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