“Backdoor Entry” to Australia: International Education as a Risk of Illegal Migration

"Backdoor Entry" to Australia: International Education as a Risk of Illegal
Migration

Maria Elena Indelicato


This paper wants to offer a contextualised reading of the metaphors of
"backdoor entry" to Australia and "jumping the queue" to illustrate how the
representation of international students as potential harm to Australia is
strictly connected to the construction of Australia as an open, tolerant,
hence almost vulnerable nation to ill-intentioned migrants. To do so, the
first part of the paper will provide a short history of the metaphor of
"backdoor entry" to show continuities between past and present Australian
territorial anxieties, while the second part will be focused on analysing a
crisis which hit the Australian newborn industry of international education
in 1989 as a example of the representation of international students as a
potential harm to Australia.
The industry of International Education in Australia as we know it
today was at the beginning a humanitarian project: the Colombo Plan, which,
which started in 1951 and allowed thousands of selected South and
Southeast Asian students to come and study in Australia. At that time, the
White Australia Policy was still enforced to prevent non-European migrants
from entering the country. Although the White Australia Policy was
introduced in the very first sitting of the newborn Australian Federal
Parliament in 1901, it was not the first piece of legislation created to
fabricate and maintain racial homogeneity in Australia. As Myra Willard has
documented at length, the White Australia Policy has a history which traces
back to approximately 1855, when the Government of the colony of Victoria
decided to restrict the number of Chinese coming in its territory by
limiting the number of them by means of exceptional restriction and
taxation. Starting from 1855, similar policies followed each other in each
and all of the Australian colonies with the exception of the Northern
Territory, where Chinese migration was instead encouraged to develop
tropical agriculture and settlement by the government of South Australia.
By the late 1880s, in spite of the fact that Chinese migration had
decreased in all of the colonies, with exception of the Northern Territory,
it was decided in concert that it was the time to move from a policy of
restriction to one of virtual exclusion of all Chinese because of the fear
that their Chinese 'was assuming a new and dangerous form' (p.70), which
was the formation of a colony in the Northern Territory (for instance, in
1888, there were between 5,000 and 6,000 Chinese and 700 adult
Europeans)(p. 72). To placate this fear, the government of South Australia
was pressured into closing the 'door' to Chinese migration, which it did by
passing with the other colonies legislations which effectively excluded all
Chinese from entering Australia.
In spite of the White Australian Policy, anxieties of territorial and
racial integrity surfaced again in Australia at the end of the Second World
War when most of Asian countries were characterised discursively as an
indistinct and overpopulated whole, which geographical proximity posed a
concrete threat to the integrity of the Australian territory. Once again,
these anxieties coagulated into the Northern Territory, which bounty of
'unoccupied' land lent itself to renewed fears of settlers' displacement at
the hands of their 'Asian' neighbours. For instance, as the news that the
Northern Territory was found suitable for growing rice spread, popular
anxieties were conveyed as follow by Taylor Douglas, who was the Secretary
of the Rice Association:

"Thoughtful Australians have always been concerned about our great empty
spaces in the north-west … It is certain that the existence of the
tremendous rice-growing areas of the Northern Territory will be headlined
in the newspaper of the East, and especially in the South-west Pacific area
… What can be done to protect the so-called 'back door of Australia'? There
is only one effective method of protecting it: Fast development'".

In light of these renewed anxieties, the implementation of the Colombo
Plan appears somewhat contradictory unless it is explained in relation to
the emergence of a new humanitarian rhetoric in Australia. For instance,
according to Rachel Burke, the acceptance of racially visible Colombo Plan
students was facilitated by their representation in the Australian printed
media as 'surrogate children' of Australian responsible 'parents' in
charge of their needs as determined by both their original conditions of
poverty and their status of foreigner in Australia. In this sense, the
temporary inclusion of Colombo Plan students within the territorial borders
of Australia was premised on a feeling of humanitarian compassion, the
consequences of which will be further explored in the second part of this
paper..In 1985, the Hawke Government phased out the Colombo Plan and
gradually replaced it with a full-fee system. By doing so, the Hawke
Government opened the education sector to the global market and publicly
positioned the new industry as an important asset to reinforce Australia's
economic position in the Asian-Pacific region. Prior to the marketization
of education, most students came from Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong,
which are all former British colonies 'characterised by strong education
links with Britain and English-based secondary teaching'. In contrast to
them, Chinese students were barely represented before 1985. Yet, their
presence increased dramatically: from less than 2000 in 1986 to more than
20,000 in 1990. (only 1,881 in 1986 to 22,547 in 1990)


In 1989, half of these students were concentrated in English Language
Intensive Courses (ELICOS) and represented the principal source of income
for this industry. This increased presence soon became cause of concern for
the department of immigration department because of the perception that
they were using their visa for non-educational purposes, namely work and
permanent migration. Chinese students were also found to be the largest
group of visitors overstaying their visa. To counter the risk of them using
their visa as 'de facto' migration to Australia, several discriminating
measures were employed immediately to reduce their number. These measures
inadvertently led to the financial collapse of part of the ELICOS industry
and a diplomatic crisis on the occasion of the Tiananmen Square uprising in
June 1989. To recover from this crisis, the Industry Commission was charged
in 1990 with the task of assessing the 'benefits and costs' of the export
industry of international education against the problem of overstaying and
other forms or visa non-compliance. Because of this mandate, an entire
chapter of their report is dedicated to overstaying Chinese international
students, which highlights right from the beginning the expectation of them
respecting the integrity of the Australian Migration Program:


"Concerns about upholding the integrity of Australia's immigration policy
underpin many of the policy changes affecting the export of education
services in recent years. Foremost among these concerns is the problem of
applicants who are not genuine about wishing to study and who may intend to
overstay their visas or fail to adhere to other visa conditions".

As this passage illustrates, the Migration Program can be understood as a
metonymic extension of the territorial borders of Australia. By securing
its integrity, the nation itself can be considered secured too from the
threat of being overwhelmed by undesirable and uninvited migrants. In this
sense, the case of overstaying Chinese students in the late 1980s'
resonates with Sara Ahmed's analysis of the politics of love in
contemporary discourses about migration and multiculturalism in the UK. In
this analysis, Ahmed suggests that the opening of the UK to non-white
migrants has been discursively elaborated in public discourses as an
extension of the love of the nation to them. Because represented as
motivated by love, or compassion like in the case of Colombo Plan students
in the past and asylum seekers in the present, this opening is
simultaneously represented as an act of generosity and proneness to the
injury of being taken in by migrants while taking them into the nation.


To counter this risk, as Ahmed notes, a nation requires its
prospective migrants, whether temporary or permanent, to return the love
extended to them by making the host nation become the object of their love,
thus meeting the 'conditions' established to guarantee its security:


"… the nation and the national subject can only love incoming others –
'embrace them' – if the conditions that enable security are already met. To
love the other requires that the nation is already secured as an object of
love, a security that demands that incoming others meet 'our' conditions.
Such conditions require that others 'contribute' to the UK through labour,
or by showing they are not bogus asylum seekers. When such conditions have
been met they will 'receive the welcome they deserve'".

For migrants like international students thus, taking a nation as object of
their love amounts to proving they do not pose a threat to its security. It
is then relevant to investigate why and how overstaying Chinese students
were represented as posing a threat to the security of the nation. To do
so, the remainder of this paper will analyse the metaphors of 'jump the
queue' and 'backdoor entry' as they circulated in governmental discourses
regarding the regulation of international students' entry in Australia.

In the Industry Commission's report the metaphor of 'jump the queue'
first appears when explaining the rationale behind governmental concerns
about people overstaying their visa in general:

"People who overstay may have deliberately misrepresented their purpose for
entry, and effectively jump the queue for de facto residence in Australia
ahead of legitimate applicants for immigration … Perceptions abroad that
temporary immigration provides an easy avenue for extended stay can be
quickly formed and only slowly eroded. There is a significant danger when
overstay rates rise in the short term that this will generate a rapid
decline in the integrity of the immigration system, as potential entrants
with dubious motives learn of the situation".

As this passage shows, the deployment of the metaphor of 'jump the queue'
specifies the risk of overstaying as being double. Firstly, overstaying
temporary migrants are represented as a current threat to the integrity of
the Migration Program in that their practices risk damaging other
prospective migrants who are willing to abide by the conditions of security
and love established by the nation. In contrast to them, overstaying
international students are rendered as being deceiving and thus, non-
deserving of the love of the nation.

Secondly, overstaying international students are construed as posing a
threat to the integrity of the Migration Program in the future in that
their practices might encourage other 'potential entrants with dubious
motives' to avail themselves of the study program for purposes different
from education.

As a result, Australia as a nation is depicted under the threat of a double
injury: losing legitimate migrants while attracting ill-intentioned ones. A
narrative of fear is thus deployed to align overstaying international
students with other migrants who are pre-emptively represented as being
deliberately planning to hurt the nation for their own advantage: asylum
seekers, unskilled migrant, etc….


Over time, Chinese students' practice of overstaying became associated
with another breach of the conditions of their student visa, which is
working illegally for more hours than they were allowed. For instance, the
Bureau of Immigration, Multiculturalism and Population Research, reported:

Though the ELICOS industry seemed lucrative on paper, many PRC ELICOS
students had perceived enrolment as an opportunity for 'backdoor migration'
or 'English for Visa' … Entitled to work 20 hours towards their support,
evidence from ELICOS providers suggests that large numbers of PRC students
in fact sought and filled one or more full-time or part-time jobs,
frequently in the untaxed low paid black labour market. Rather than pay for
Australian courses with Chinese capital, many PRC students remitted
Australian earning home in order to cover debts incurred against the amount
borrowed to cover cost of fares and tuition.

This passage illustrates quite clearly Australia's expectation for Chinese
international students to secure its economy by means of investment in
education and expenditure in other services and goods to be considered as
deserving subject of the love of the nation. Hence, the employment of the
metaphor of 'backdoor' migration or entry, which further emphasises the
vulnerability of the Australia nation as represented metonymically by its
Migration Program. For causing or just revealing such proneness to injury,
Chinese students were moreover represented as hurting the nation by direct
misuse of the privileges granted to them by their student visa, thus became
the object of national resentment.

In The Cultural Politics of Emotions, Ahmed argues that emotions are
shaped by how subjects and objects engage in contact with each other and,
most importantly, by how these contacts are interpreted by individuals and
collectives over time. The emotions so produced further accumulate
affective value by circulation in discourses such as the ones regarding
migration and multiculturalism in Australia.Yet, they are not emotions per
se that circulate. What circulate, instead, are those signs and objects to
which emotions have become attached to through histories of previous
contacts (see the figure of the 'bogus migrant'). In this sense, the
circulation of emotions is not free but determined by past associations
between signs, objects and affective values attached to them consequently.


Bearing Ahmed's model of emotions in mind, we can then understand how
Chinese students' migration practices per se were not the cause of
resentment as much as resentment was not the affective response following
the breaching of the conditions of security established by the Australian
nation by default. Rather it was the reading of them in terms of a
potential injury that made these practices, hence the subjects associated
with them, the object of national resentment. The reading of the breaching
of the visa conditions in terms of a threat/injury is thus determined by
the history of previous contacts between white Australians and 'Asian'
migrants, especially the Chinese, which is, as showed earlier, replete with
negative associations of Chinese migrants with fear of territorial and
racial integrity. It is in this from this perspective that it is possible
to conclude that, with regard to 'Asian' international students, resentment
has operated in multicultural Australia as an affective governmental
technology of racial exclusion while upholding the national ideal of
Australia as a generous, hospital and open to 'differences' nation.