Study visa applications rise - and more being turned down

Immigration New Zealand says it is now turning down more than half the study visa applications it receives from India while the refusal rate for Bangladesh remains about 70 percent.

Immigration New Zealand director visa, Celia Coombes, told RNZ fake work experience and bogus qualifications were contributing to the high decline rates.

RNZ reported last week that refusals for prospective full-fee students from Bangladesh had spiked to 70 percent in the past three months and to 39 percent for applicants from India, New Zealand's second-biggest source of students after China.

Coombes said more people were trying to study in this country because of its migration and study visa settings and because other countries were limiting their intakes.

"As other countries around the world have tightened their immigration settings, New Zealand is seeing an increase in applications from both genuine students who are approved, as well as non-genuine students or students that don't meet our requirements," she said.

Coombes said the number of applications from Bangladesh had grown very quickly.

"This time last year, Bangladesh was not even in the top 10 countries for New Zealand, but by May, April in 2026, within the space of four or five months, it was the third highest volume coming into the immigration system," she said.

Coombes said some of the applications included fake documents or information.

"One of the ones that has risen to prominence recently is the use of recycled bank documents. So one person would have genuine funds with genuine documents and then an agent reuses that information for multiple other students," she said.

"At one point we had around 85 applications ring-fenced where the same documentation was visible in those applications."

Coombes said similar problems were detected in applications from other countries including India, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan.

"Some of the other fraud that we've seen through the Bangladesh and subcontinent market rests on work experience. So they're often used to pad the application and fill gaps in, or make the study plan seem more credible," she said.

"We also looked at some diploma mills that the team found operating in Bangladesh. Those are non-genuine qualifications that are being produced to students for their visa application.

"Sometimes we see false source of income, rental receipts, people that have created some documents in order to try and explain where their money has come from because they can't prove the genuine source."

However, Coombes said not all declined applications were fraudulent and it was important students knew what information they had to provide.

She said Immigration NZ alerted education providers when it encountered fraudulent applications so the providers could deal with the agents involved.

Coome said Immigration NZ was preparing for a jump in applications from students wanting to enter this country for the start of the 2027 academic year and had asked tertiary institutes to take more care before offering places to foreign students.

"Our job is to facilitate the good students and get them here quickly so we have put that back to the education sector to say, improve the recruitment practices, interview the students via video, actually make sure that the student is right for you and that you are right for the student and manage those agents accordingly," she said.

"If they can do that and be a little bit more discerning on some of the students that are getting an offer of place, the entire system is going to improve and be more efficient."