Home · World · Sep 18 archive
Australia to Detain Visa Overstayers Amid Immigration Crackdown
Confirmed
In Short: Australia will begin detaining visa overstayers as part of a broader immigration crackdown, announced Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced that Australia will begin detaining visa overstayers as part of a broader immigration crackdown. The Australian Border Force will expand its team by 100 compliance officers to work on detaining or encouraging the departure of roughly 77,000 people currently living in Australia without a valid visa.
Burke said the government would clamp down on “visa hopping,” a system where foreigners move from one type of temporary visa to another to extend their stay. A new “No Further Stay” provision would prevent people arriving on tourist visas from lodging new applications once inside the country.
International students would be required to advance their qualifications when seeking a new study visa, closing off the option of jumping between courses at low-level institutions to extend their stay. The government will also stop family members accompanying students and introduce ballots for working holiday makers.
Burke announced that the government would open 250 beds and add 100 compliance officers to house the visa overstayers in different facilities. He said the reforms were intended to restore the integrity of Australia’s migration system and provide greater control over net overseas migration amid pressure on housing.
Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs Matt Thistlethwaite said tourists would be put in immigration detention to reduce the level of visa overstayers, which has risen to 77,000. He told broadcaster News24 that once the word gets around about the consequences of overstaying, it would deter people from doing so.
However, the Refugee Council of Australia director of policy Rebecca Eckard said the move raised safety and legal concerns. She told AFP that the use of punitive detention is not permitted under Australia’s immigration act.
The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre founder and chief executive Kon Karapanagiotidis condemned the government’s sweeping migration overhaul, describing it as “a dark day for multicultural Australia.” He accused the government of targeting migrants, international students, and people seeking asylum through expanded immigration enforcement, detention, and removals.
The plan is a reversion to pre-2015 settings, according to the minister, before a shake-up largely limited migration detention to criminals, not visa over-stayers. Gillian Triggs, former head of the Australian Human Rights Commission, told AAP that the pre-2015 migration detention regime placed kids in a “horrific pipeline.”
What this adds
The crackdown on visa overstayers and visa hopping is part of a broader effort to reduce migration levels and address housing pressures. The government denies that these tightened visa rules are a response to the growing popularity of the far-right One Nation Party.
The plan to detain tourists who overstay visas has raised concerns about Australia’s image as a welcoming destination. Tourism and refugee advocates have expressed concerns about the impact on Australia’s reputation and the safety and legal concerns of detaining overstayers.
The government’s decision to detain visa overstayers is reminiscent of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)‘s rough and much-publicised raids, detentions, and deportations, but Burke insists that the Australian approach will not resemble the US-style enforcement.
What's confirmed
- Australia will begin detaining visa overstayers as part of a broader immigration crackdown, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced.
- The Australian Border Force will expand its team by 100 compliance officers, who will work to detain or encourage the departure of roughly 77,000 people currently living in Australia without a valid visa, Burke said Thursday.
- “Before 2015, we had a routine process in Australia for overstayers where, when people had overstayed a visa, we would bring people into detention centres … and within a few weeks they would organise their own flight and leave,” Burke announced at the National Press Club.
- Burke also said the government would clamp down on “visa hopping”, a system that Canberra alleges is when foreigners who are already in Australia move from one type of temporary visa to another to extend their stay.
- A new “No Further Stay” provision would prevent people arriving on tourist visas from lodging new applications once inside the country, while international students would be required to advance their qualifications when seeking a new study visa, closing off the option of jumping between courses at low-level institutions to extend their stay.
- More than 77,000 visa overstayers face detention or departure as Australia cracks down on immigration violations.
- Australia’s governing Labor Party has denied that its tightened visa rules are a response to the growing popularity of the far-right One Nation Party, which has emerged as one of the country’s most popular parties in 2026.
- Australia remains one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations, drawing millions of annual visitors with its beaches, wildlife and cities, while also relying heavily on international students and working-holiday visa holders as a major source of migration and economic activity.
- Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced an additional 100 compliance officers and 250 immigration detention beds, while confirming the government was considering repurposing a former COVID-19 quarantine facility in Melbourne.
- Greek Australian refugee advocate Kon Karapanagiotidis has condemned the Federal Government’s sweeping migration overhaul, describing it as “a dark day for multicultural Australia”.
- The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre founder and chief executive accused the government of targeting migrants, international students and people seeking asylum through expanded immigration enforcement, detention and removals.
- The wider reforms include restrictions on international students bringing family members to Australia, ballots limiting how many working holiday-makers can remain for second and third years, and measures targeting visa overstayers and “visa hopping”.
What's still developing
- SYDNEY, Sept 18 — Australia will detain tourists who overstay visas to send a message of deterrence under new rules aimed at reducing levels of migration, a minister said today.
- “Once the word gets around, ‘hey, I overstayed on my tourist visa for a couple of weeks, I got picked up and I spent a couple of weeks in immigration detention, it’s not a nice place, I’m going home’. Once that gets around, then we think that obviously that deterrence will ensure that people abide by the conditions,” he told broadcaster News24.
- People who don’t have the right to remain in Australia will face a “consequence” and be removed, he added.
- Since 2015, Australia’s immigration detention centres have swelled with people with criminal convictions awaiting deportation after a policy change that saw mandatory cancellation of permanent visas for certain criminal offences.
- “There has been a major problem with immigration detention,” she added, pointing to concerns raised by the government ombudsman over insufficient staffing and healthcare access.
- “My parents came to Australia as migrants from Greece and spent their lives working on farms and in factories to give my sister and me the Australian dream,” he said.
- “We are stronger because people from every corner of the world have made Australia home,” he said.
- Filling all that new capacity would almost double Australia’s migrant detention population of 1100, according to figures from the Refugee Council of Australia.
- Those figures drew inevitable comparisons to shocking ICE-driven crackdowns in the United States, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre chief executive Kon Karapanagiotidis said.
- “When people overstay, they come into detention, you give them a bridging visa first, at the end of the bridging visa, they come into detention and then they leave,” he told the ABC’s 7.30 on Thursday.
- A plan to round up and detain migrants who over-stay their visas is not borrowing from US President Donald Trump’s playbook, Labor insists.
- The overstayer population has grown steadily, from about 64,000 in 2016 to more than 77,000 in 2026, even as net overseas migration has fallen.