Home · World · Sep 18 archive
Australia to Detain Visa Overstayers in Immigration Crackdown
Confirmed
In Short: Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced plans to detain visa overstayers and expand border enforcement teams.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced plans to detain visa overstayers and expand border enforcement teams as part of a broader immigration crackdown. The Australian Border Force will add 100 compliance officers and create 250 new immigration detention beds to address the roughly 77,000 people currently living in Australia without a valid visa.
Burke said the government would revert to pre-2015 practices where overstayers were detained and encouraged to leave the country. He also highlighted plans to prevent “visa hopping,” a practice where foreigners move between temporary visas to extend their stay.
The new “No Further Stay” provision will stop tourists from lodging new applications once they are in the country, while international students will need to advance their qualifications when seeking a new study visa. These measures aim to reduce levels of migration and address housing pressures.
Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs Matt Thistlethwaite emphasized that tourists who overstay their visas will be detained to deter others from doing the same. However, critics argue that such punitive measures could harm Australia’s image and raise safety and legal concerns.
Greek Australian refugee advocate Kon Karapanagiotidis condemned the reforms, calling them a “dark day for multicultural Australia.” Humanitarian groups have expressed concern over the potential impact on migrants, international students, and asylum seekers.
Burke defended the reforms, stating they were intended to restore the integrity of Australia’s migration system and provide greater control over net overseas migration. He noted that his parents were migrants from Greece who contributed to Australia’s multicultural fabric.
Background
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It has a land area of 7,688,287 km2 (2,968,464 sq mi), making it the sixth-largest country in the world, and is the world's flattest and driest inhabited continent.
What's confirmed
- 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.
What's still developing
- 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.
- Under reforms announced yesterday, Australia will stop family members accompanying students, introduce ballots for working holiday makers and crack down on overstayers.
- “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.
- Australian Tourism Industry Council chief executive Erin McLeod said talk of detaining tourists was not good for Australia’s image.
- “It is being framed as punitive to change behaviour. The use of punitive detention is not permitted under Australia’s immigration act,” she told AFP.
- 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.