Amid travel restrictions, Indians enrolled in Australian universities are left in the lurch

Last year, when the coronavirus reared its ugly head, Anagha Ganore, an Indian student studying at Griffith University, literally boarded the last flight out of Australia’s Gold Coast to Nasik, her hometown in western India. It was March 21 and on March 20, Australia had announced the closure of its borders to all non-citizens and non-residents.

Ganore, a student of Master’s in Business majoring in Human Resource Management, said she left on the general advice by the Australian government that it would be better for international students to go back home. “We did not have an option and I thought it was better to go back,” she said over the phone from India.

By April, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, after meeting with the National Cabinet, made it public that those who were in Australia under various visa arrangements and who cannot support themselves had the “alternative to return to their home countries”.

For Jyotsnaa Ramasubramaniam, a student at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, the decision to fly back to India in December 2020, just nine months after arrival, was prompted by few unfortunate deaths in the family. But once she was ready to fly back, Australia had introduced a travel exemption…

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