Australia will reopen for foreign visas in a bid to boost the economy by Reuters

By Colin Packham and Renju Jose

CANBERRA / SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia will allow foreign visas to enter the country from early December, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday as a final step in restarting international travel and boosting its economy.

Australia closed the international border in May 2020 and allowed only a limited number of citizens and permanent residents to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

The rules have been relaxed in recent weeks to allow access to foreign relatives of citizens, and Morrison said this will increase from Dec. 1 to allow vaccinated students, business visas and refugees to come.

“Returning qualified staff and students to Australia is an important milestone on our return journey,” Morrison told Canberra journalists. Australia will also accept tourists with South Korean and Japanese vaccines from Dec. 1, he said.

The return of foreign students worth about $ 35 billion ($ 25 billion) a year will be a major boost to the Australian economy for the education sector.

More than 235,000 foreigners, including about 160,000 students, had visas to Australia at the end of October, government data showed.

Many Australian universities are based on foreign students, accounting for about 21% of all enrollments, and the closure of the border led to the dismissal of hundreds of staff at higher education facilities.

Many students who have been left out of Australia have said they would switch to alternative universities if they could not start studying face-to-face in 2022.

Relaxing border rules is also expected to alleviate labor shortages, which threatens to hamper the economic rebound.

“This will be a critical relief for companies struggling to find employees to keep their doors open and need highly specialized skills to unlock large projects,” said Jennifer Westacott, CEO of the business council’s industry body.

Border rules, rapid blockades and harsh rules of social exclusion helped Australia keep the number of coronaviruses much lower than many other comparable countries, with 200,000 cases and 1,948 deaths.

Most new infections are occurring in the state of Victoria, which registered 1,029 cases on Monday. New South Wales, home of Sydney, reported 180 cases. Other states and territories do not have COVIDs or have very few cases.

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