While going through an Immigration New Zealand (INZ) update that was presented by Celia Coombes, Sector Relationship Manager (Education) during ITENZ Conference 2015,I came to know about the rebalance strategy that was underway in the international student markets of China, India, Chile, Malaysia, Germany and South Korea. One could not help but marvel at hard work put in and the noble intentions displayed by all involved.
As I watched the strategy take shape by way of the excellent ground level initiatives launched by INZ and Education New Zealand (ENZ) that were targeted to woo students of some of the South Asian countries into New Zealand, I also came across another bit of data related to INZ Student Visa Approval rate of 2015,which set me thinking.
The data which has been released by INZ gives out the student visa approval rate between January 2015 and December 2015.The Global figures of 42,514 approvals against only 18,103 declines are really impressive. However when I dwelled deeper I was aghast to find that of the 18,103 declines, 13,224 belonged to India alone, which was a staggering 73% of the total visas declined. I then decided to analyse the figures at hand a little bit more and totaled the visa declines of countries that were routing their applications through INZ, Mumbai Branch in addition to India i.e. Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan. My surprise knew no bounds when I saw that the figure of 13,224 jumped to 15,449, which came to a mind numbing 85%. Armed with this data and my psychological background I sat down to think and analyse as to what effect must these student visa declines be having among the student market of these five countries that also are each other neighbours, shouldn’t ENZ be alarmed about the bad publicity it is causing and the years of hard work and money ENZ has put in to bring up New Zealand as a viable study abroad destination going waste.
My analysis of the situation gave rise to more uncomfortable questions, which prompted me to write down these few lines for an open brainstorming session.
More in another session….
Vandana Rai is a Senior Licensed Immigration Adviser and has built a reputation around her rare set of skills, which could be considered ideal for her legal profession.