Come July and the option of visas with multiple entry points to Australia will be available. This means that the visa, will allow you to enter Australia multiple times for three years, with the only rider being that each visit must be for a maximum of three months only.
All this and more was announced by the Australian High Commissioner to India Harinder Sidhu here on Thursday. She was on the last leg of her three-day visit to the city, in which Bengaluru’s role as a hub for innovation, science and technology was the main theme of the visit. “This is to benefit two types of travellers, one is the business traveller and the other is the frequent tourists, mostly parents of those who live in Australia who visit their children more often and usually stay for a longer period,” said Ms. Sidhu, adding that as per their latest estimates there were around 450,000 Australians of Indian descent and that this figure had been tripled in the last decade.
More students had also begun going to Australia. “On an average, campuses in the U.S. have about 4 per cent of international students but in Australia, this figure is around 15 per cent. This is because of high quality but lower costs and our visa rules that allow a student to work for about 35 hours a week while studying and after graduation, is also allowed to work for two years,” she said, adding that the Australia- Indian relations at this particular moment was very strong.
In 2014, the number of students going to Australia were 46,000 and in 2016 before the start of the new term, they had received 70,000 enrolments . She also discussed how the attack against Indian students in 2008 had temporarily slowed down the number of Indian students going to Australia but thereafter had drastically escalated again. Students being briefed in advance about what could be potentially dangerous had also added to the renewed confidence of Australia being a safe country.
