Student visa refusals surge in New Zealand

A surge in dubious applications for New Zealand student visas has led to a flood of rejections, stoking fears that crackdowns in other anglophone countries might have elevated the Polynesian archipelago to fraudsters’ destination of choice.

Refusals of student visa applications averaged more than 2,500 a month in July, August and September, up from about 800 over the equivalent period last year. The increase coincided with reports of “increasingly sophisticated fraud” in student visa applications.

Celia Coombes, visa director with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, said doctored bank statements and income tax returns were being used across “multiple” visa applications, sometimes in scams involving “hidden” agents.

Fraud was particularly evident in applications for visas to study at master’s level and those submitted from South Asia – especially Bangladesh, India and Nepal – along with Nigeria and China.

Coombes said the approval rate for student visa applications lodged offshore had fallen from 82 per cent in the first nine months of 2025 to 74 per cent so far in 2026. This mainly reflected a trend in which Bangladesh morphed from a relatively minor source of students to New Zealand’s third top market.

The number of Bangladeshi visa applications for university study roughly doubled between 2024 and 2025 and has tripled again so far this year. Rejections of such applications have surged from a monthly average of about three in 2019 to eight in 2024, 14 in 2025 and 102 so far this year.

In September, just 24 per cent of Bangladeshi visa applications for university-level study were approved – much like in Australia, which likewise experienced explosive growth from Bangladesh last year.

Would-be university students in India have similarly struggled to obtain New Zealand visas since refusals began spiking in early 2024, with roughly one in four applications rejected. The trend in Nepal has been similar.

Coombes said visa bids were also often declined because applicants had failed to convince officials of their ability to support themselves or their “genuine intentions to study in New Zealand”. Applications involving “hidden agents” – where different advisers had obtained enrolment offers and submitted visa paperwork – were also declined on “false and misleading” grounds unless both agents were listed on the applications. Some fraud had only been discovered after visas had been granted, Coombes said.

She said there was no clear evidence that particular types of courses or institutions had driven the slump in approvals. “There has been no change to the immigration requirements used to assess student visa applications,” she added.

Auckland-based agents told Radio New Zealand that the problem had been driven by education agents in India and Bangladesh using subagents to process large numbers of applications. Some had switched their attention to New Zealand, despite their unfamiliarity with its requirements, after Australia and Canada tightened their rules.

“Agents have used the same documents and changed them for different students,” Aims Global founder Arunima Dhingra told RNZ. “The funds essentially haven’t existed.”

Chanda Grover, adviser at AIC Immigration Consultancy, said visa applicants had been editing their bank statements and faking or altering their educational qualifications. “Some people think that if they can just make their bank balance look better on paper, or change a document to meet the visa requirements, Immigration New Zealand won’t find out,” she noted on LinkedIn. “Please don’t make that mistake.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com