400,000+ bridging visa holders highlight a system in deep trouble

Dr Abul Rizvi reveals a record increase in bridging visas, years of negligence, weak policy design and migration.

For the first time in our history, the number bridge visa Owners exceed 400,000.

This is an amazing number of temporary participants in Australia, a surprising number of temporary participants who sit in a process of processing and require a bridge visa while waiting for a decision.

Inadequate visa processing sources reflect a combination of the results of a major explosion in net migration directed by students and employee holidaymakers.

Graph 1 emphasizes that the problem is around 2015-16 when he became a former Minister of Interior. Peter Dutton And secretary, Mike Pimzullo, challenge Managing a complex visa system. They thought that the migration policy was only about boat arrival. Reducing the resources of visa processing and immigration harmony, poor visa design problems and a major workmanship of smuggling deception, as well as lack of illegal restrictions of common visa locations.

(Data Source: Data.gov.au)

The size of the problem grew faster with policy changes, designed to protect the temporary participants in Australia, both during and after Covid, with the closure of international boundaries, and to protect the temporary participants in Australia to charging students in Turbo.

In 2023, the new workers’ government responded by putting more resources to cleanse the major savings of the land student and other visa applications sitting on the bridge visa. The Briding Visa work list in 2023 fell to about 191,000. However, it was never a long -term solution to approve these applications.

In addition to uninterrupted student, the Bridge visa accumulation grew rapidly in 2024 and in the first half of 2025, with other temporary and lasting practices, including the illegal limit of the Labor Government, including its own illegal limit on common visas.

There was another increase in August 2025:

Student applications on land (a new August registration has been determined for higher education applications on land); And
Temporary graduate applications (in August 2025, August 2021 broke the previous August record and broke a new record of 23,639).

Probably there has been a major increase in land applications for talented temporary visa, but the data is not yet public. In addition, we know that there is a accumulated job in the administrative examination court (non -noble) in addition to the accumulated jobs on the large land for business partner and permanent employer -backed visas (ART) In the accumulation subsidiary of more than 60,000, plus more than 40,000 arts, they would also keep bridge visas.

The government has brought legislation to enable art to make more applications without requiring a hearing. However, this is just a partial solution. The government needs a holistic long -term plan to manage the results of the explosion in net migration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfrwe-f7s-8

DR ABUL Rizvi An independent Australian columnist And a former deputy secretary of the Ministry of Immigration. You can follow Abul on Twitter @Rizviabul.

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