The Albanese government is considering sending more immigration compliance officers into Australian workplaces to track down visa overstayers, adding enforcement and deportations to a migration overhaul that is already producing one of the sharpest political fights over immigration in years.
The proposal, reported by The Age, would increase resources for investigations into people who have exhausted their legal right to remain in Australia but have not left, including former international students and temporary workers now working without lawful status.
Officials could increasingly act on intelligence about undocumented workers at farms, construction sites, restaurants, hotels and other workplaces if the proposal proceeds.
It comes as Labor tries to bring net overseas migration down towards the levels forecast in the federal budget while resisting pressure from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and the Coalition for much deeper cuts.
The numbers explain why Canberra is looking beyond simply reducing new visa grants.
Australia had an estimated 77,700 unlawful non-citizens at June 30 last year, according to Home Affairs data released this year. That means people who had overstayed a visa or had it cancelled and whose immigration status had not subsequently been resolved.
Australia had an estimated 77,700 unlawful non-citizens at June 30 last year, according to Home Affairs data released this year
But the figure is more complicated than a headline number suggests.
About 20,000 had been unlawful for no more than a year. At the other end of the spectrum, 25,800, or one-third of the total, had been overstayers for more than 10 years. Home Affairs itself cautions that estimating the population is difficult because people can enter and leave on different travel documents and under different names, while the group is constantly changing as people depart voluntarily or resolve their status.
The Australian Border Force currently says its operational attention is concentrated on unlawful non-citizens who pose a greater risk to the community, including those linked to organised exploitation of the visa system or migrant workers. A major expansion of compliance officers would potentially take enforcement further into the much larger population of ordinary overstayers.
That distinction will matter politically.
The Australian Border Force currently says its operational attention is concentrated on unlawful non-citizens who pose a greater risk to the community, including those linked to organised exploitation of the visa system or migrant workers
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has sought to distance any stronger enforcement action from the aggressive immigration raids associated with the United States under Donald Trump.
“My government will not do anything that breaches harmony,” Albanese said on Friday.
“What we want is for Australia to be more united. We continue to implement our migration policy, and I note that we’ve done that without vilifying people, without trying to divide the community, but bringing people together in the national interest.”
Labor’s difficulty is that immigration enforcement is becoming intertwined with a much larger argument about migration, race and national identity.
That was visible across Australia on Thursday when high school and university students walked out of classes to protest against Hanson and One Nation.
Hundreds gathered outside Melbourne’s State Library, with similar demonstrations in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and regional centres. The National Union of Students organised the national action, with demonstrators carrying anti-One Nation and anti-racism signs. ABC reporting found hundreds attended individual rallies, while demonstrations were held across several states.
In Sydney, students filled the area outside Town Hall, while about 200 people gathered at Brisbane’s King George Square. Organisers said students from more than 100 schools participated in the Perth action.
The protests were directed at One Nation rather than Labor’s proposed immigration enforcement measures, but their timing illustrates the political territory Albanese and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke are trying to navigate.
Hundreds gathered outside Melbourne’s State Library, with similar demonstrations in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and regional centres
Hanson has made lower migration a central part of One Nation’s appeal. Labor wants to demonstrate that the migration system is being controlled without allowing enforcement against people who have no legal right to remain to become synonymous with hostility towards migrants more generally.
The distinction is important.
Removing someone who has exhausted every lawful avenue to stay is fundamentally different from reducing skilled migration, restricting international students or preventing Australian citizens from bringing family members into the country.
One is an immigration compliance question. The others are decisions about how many lawful migrants Australia wants and which migrants should be prioritised.
The political debate has increasingly blurred those categories.
Labor’s budget forecasts net overseas migration of 295,000 in 2025-26, falling to 245,000 this financial year and then 225,000 in 2027-28. The government therefore needs a reduction of about 70,000 from the current forecast level over two years.
At first glance, the estimated 77,700 unlawful non-citizens might appear to offer an almost convenient answer.
It does not.
Net overseas migration is a flow measure, not a count of visas or people without lawful status. The Australian Bureau of Statistics counts a person as an overseas migrant according to whether they live in or outside Australia for at least 12 months during a 16-month period. Someone being deported does not therefore translate automatically into a one-for-one reduction in the annual migration figure.
There is another distinction that matters.
More than 100,000 people have been reported as remaining in Australia after protection claims were refused, but that group should not be treated as 100,000 illegal migrants. Some are pursuing tribunal or judicial reviews or hold bridging visas and remain lawfully in Australia while those processes continue. The official estimate of people actually without a valid visa remains 77,700.
Enforcement also costs money.
Former immigration official and migration analyst Abul Rizvi has warned that locating, detaining and removing large numbers of unlawful non-citizens would require investigations, legal processes, negotiations with foreign governments and flights home.
“Add up all the costs, and you’re quickly running into the many billions,” he told The Age.
That helps explain why the government’s migration package has taken longer than anticipated.
Burke postponed a National Press Club speech last week after cabinet ministers sought more work on a collection of proposals that reportedly included changes to family migration, working holidaymakers, asylum seeker rights and the skilled program.
The government has already spent money trying to rebuild immigration compliance.
A review led by former Victoria Police chief Christine Nixon found serious weaknesses in Australia’s visa system and what the government described as a near 50 per cent decline in immigration compliance officers over the nine years to 2022-23. Labor subsequently committed $50 million to establish a new immigration compliance division within Home Affairs.
The renewed focus on overstayers therefore predates One Nation’s latest rise, although the political circumstances surrounding it have changed markedly.
Hanson responded to Thursday’s student protests by telling young people that One Nation was “fighting for you”. Students interviewed at the rallies said they saw their participation as opposition to racism and division, while One Nation representatives argued young people should instead be focused on housing affordability, debt and the cost of living.
Those are increasingly two sides of Australia’s migration argument.
One Nation has successfully connected high migration with housing and infrastructure pressure. Its opponents fear migrants themselves are being turned into the explanation for problems that also involve housing supply, planning, construction capacity, productivity and government spending.
Labor is now trying to occupy the space between them.
There is a credible case for enforcing visa expiry dates. A migration system loses public confidence if people who have no remaining legal right to stay can simply disappear into the labour market indefinitely. It also creates conditions in which undocumented workers can be exploited because they are less likely to complain about wages or working conditions.
But enforcement against overstayers will not by itself deliver Australia’s migration target, solve the housing shortage or settle the argument about how many people the country should accept.
That is why Burke’s delayed package remains so politically difficult.
The government has to reduce arrivals, increase departures, deal with people already here unlawfully, maintain workers needed by the economy and convince voters that the system is under control.
At the same time, thousands of young Australians are taking to the streets because they fear the migration debate is becoming something else entirely.
Australia is moving towards tougher immigration enforcement.
The test for Labor will be whether it can do that without allowing enforcement of the rules to become a wider argument about who belongs in the country.
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