Australia has long positioned itself as a welcoming destination for international students and academics seeking world-class education and career opportunities. However, beneath this welcoming façade lies a deeply discriminatory system that forces many international students and staff with disabilities to hide their conditions for fear of visa rejection or deportation.
At the heart of this is a contradiction within Australian Federal Law. While Australia’s Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA) aims to protect people with disabilities from discrimination, the Migration Act 1958 is specifically exempt from these protections. This means that Australia’s migration laws can — and do — openly discriminate against people with disabilities or health conditions.
All visa applicants must meet the Migration Health Requirement, which rejects applicants deemed likely to result in a “significant cost” to Australia’s healthcare or community services. Currently, this threshold is set at just $51,000 over ten years for permanent visas — a figure significantly below both Australia’s average per capita healthcare expenditure and comparable thresholds in countries like Canada and New Zealand.
For international students and academics with disabilities, this creates an impossible situation:
“It’s like we’re here for you [Australia] when you need us, but when the roles are reversed and we need you, it’s like, nope, sorry, you cost too much money, you go back to your own country,” explains Laura Currie in a BBC article, whose family faced deportation after their son was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.
Dr. Jan Gothard, an immigration law expert, notes that these policies create a culture of fear where international students and staff with disabilities feel forced to hide their conditions: “People are afraid to disclose, afraid to seek help, afraid to access services they need to succeed academically or professionally.”
This creates a double bind for international students and academics with disabilities. Disclosing their disability might allow them to access University support services and reasonable accommodations. However, despite clear confidentiality policies and promises from the University, casual breaches of medical data privacy are all too common. There remains the fear that this same disclosure could potentially flag them for immigration authorities, risking their visa status or future visa applications.
For many, the fear of deportation outweighs the need for support. Students with conditions like ADHD, autism, depression, or physical disabilities often struggle through their studies without accessing disability support services that Australian citizens take for granted. Academic staff may hide their conditions from colleagues and administrators, working without accommodations they’re entitled to under Australian workplace law and the USyd Disability and Inclusion Access Plan.
The situation becomes even more problematic when we examine how Australia’s migration policy treats children with disabilities. Unlike ‘regular’ education or English as a Second Language programs, which are considered community investments, ‘special education’ is categorised as a community cost in visa assessments.
This means an international academic whose child needs learning support is almost guaranteed to fail the health requirement, regardless of their skills or contributions to Australia. Since approximately half of all visa types have no waiver provisions for the health requirement, families are often simply rejected outright.
The human cost of these policies is immense. International students struggle through courses without needed accommodations, affecting their academic performance, mental health, and future prospects. Academic staff face career barriers and stress from hiding their conditions. Families are separated or forced to leave Australia altogether based on a family member’s disability.
The policy also prevents universities from benefiting from the diverse perspectives and talents of disabled staff and students who could contribute significantly to research, teaching, and campus life.
Civil society organisations like Welcoming Disability, led by Australian Lawyers for Human Rights and Down Syndrome Australia, are campaigning for urgent reform. They call for removing the Migration Act’s exemption from the Disability Discrimination Act, raising the cost threshold to reflect actual healthcare spending, and ending the practice of counting special education as a “community cost.”
The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability has specifically recommended reviewing the exemption in the DDA as it applies to the Migration Act.
For Australian universities seeking to be truly global institutions, addressing this issue is essential. The current system explicitly or implicitly forces international students and staff to choose between receiving support for their disabilities and maintaining their legal status in Australia — an impossible choice that no one should have to make.
As Australia competes globally for international talent, creating a more welcoming environment for people with disabilities would not only fulfill human rights obligations, but also enrich campus communities and attract diverse perspectives currently lost to discriminatory policies.
Until these reforms occur, international students and staff will continue to mask their disabilities, forgo needed support, and live in fear of a system that views them not as valuable contributors to Australian society, but merely as potential costs to be avoided.
Dedicated to the incredible activism of Nguyen Khanh Tran in this area, and their fearlessness in publicly identifying as a disabled international student.
References and Resources
USyd Inclusion and Disability Services: https://www.sydney.edu.au/students/health-wellbeing/inclusion-and-disability.html
USyd Disability Inclusion Action Plan: https://www.sydney.edu.au/about-us/vision-and-values/diversity/disability-action-plan.html
Free legal services for students through the SRC and SUPRA
Welcoming Disability: https://www.welcomingdisability.com/
Disabled People’s Organisations Australia Fact Sheet: https://dpoa.org.au/factsheet-migration/
Women with Disabilities Australia Fact Sheet: https://wwda.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Factsheet_No_7_Migration.pdf
Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability: https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/
Redfern Legal Centre: https://rlc.org.au/
