The visa class at the heart of Labor’s migration woes

A booming number of people applying for student and family visas from within Australia has led to an explosion of bridging visas in the last three years, deepening Labor’s challenges in managing the migration system.

More than 412,000 people were on bridging visas at the end of last month – a temporary visa that is usually issued to people whose main visa expires while they are awaiting a decision on their next application, as well as unlawful non-citizens and asylum seekers.

This was more than double the figure from three years ago, when about 176,000 people were on the bridging visa backlog in June 2023. People on bridging visas now represent 14 per cent of temporary visa holders in Australia.

Immigration expert Abul Rizvi said the ballooning bridging visa backlog was the clearest sign that the migration system was clogged. “A bridging visa is effectively an admission that the department couldn’t cope, and couldn’t process the visa application fast enough,” he said.

“To keep [onshore visa applicants] legal, you put them on a bridging visa. The more people you put on bridging visas, the more you admit you can’t process visas quickly enough. It means people end up staying longer, with work rights. People who just want to delay departure are happy to be on a bridging visa for years and years.”

This backlog is also defeating the government’s efforts to bring down the net overseas migration intake – a growing issue of political contention – because it slows the rate of departure from Australia.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke is working on a plan to better control migrant numbers, but the announcement was pushed back from earlier this month amid cabinet concerns that it was not watertight.

The bridging visa boom has followed the uptick in temporary visas issued since borders reopened.

People on bridging visas are now the third-biggest group of the 2.9 million temporary visa holders in the country, after New Zealanders (736,500) and students (589,900). The fourth-biggest group was people on visitor or tourist visas (326,000).

Of those with a bridging visa, one in four had applied for a student visa.

The number of bridging visas held by aspiring students soared from 15,065 in December 2022 to 107,449 in December 2025, which is the most recent quarter for which the Department of Home Affairs has published data about the visa category that bridging visa holders applied for.

Rizvi said the huge increase had come after the government started refusing more student visa applications based on subjective criteria. It meant more visa refusals were being appealed in the Administrative Review Tribunal.

There were 54,250 rejected study visas being appealed at the end of July – and cases were taking an average of 70 weeks to finalise.

“The ART has such a large backlog that it takes ages to get to them,” said Rizvi. “The better approach would be to stop them lodging a legally valid appeal.”