MELBOURNE: Indian students  may  have to push harder  to get a  australian visa as  the authorities concerned there have moved India up on the “immigration risk” scale to check their numbers.

 According to the latest official data, there were 65,000 Indian students in Australia, mostly in vocational education. Although they constitute a smaller number as compared to Chinese students, but their growth rate was much higher - up to about 55 per cent as compared to China’s 19 per cent.

While India was not alone in moving up the risk scale, visa applicants from Colombia, Egypt, Ghana, Jordan, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Romania and Zimbabwe will also have to do extra work to show that they were bona fide students.

“The status of these nine countries had been changed ‘to combat increased levels of immigration risk’,” a spokesperson from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship said.

The spokesperson, however, said, “genuine applicants had nothing to fear from the changes”.

“All universities were likely to ask students to lodge their visa applications and get these processed before the September 1 change in immigration risk levels, which affects a host of overseas markets,” the pro-vice- chancellor (international) of New South Wales University, Jennie Lang said.