A spike in fraudulent study visa applications has prompted a dramatic increase in visa refusals.
By John Gerritsen of RNZ
In the past three months, Immigration New Zealand declined 70% of applications from Bangladesh and 39% from India – nearly double the normal rates.
That contributed to 6273 refusals for full-fee student applications from all countries in July, August, and September – close to the 7503 refusals recorded for the entire 12-month period of the 2025-26 financial year.
It also took the refusal rate for full-fee study visa applications from all sources to 34%, up from 13% in 2025-26.
Immigration New Zealand said a focus on applications to study master's degrees contributed to the increase.
But immigration agents told RNZ the problem was driven by education agents in India and Bangladesh using sub-agents to process large numbers of applications.
They said some sub-agents submitted fraudulent or inaccurate financial information, and the resulting crackdown by Immigration New Zealand was catching genuine students.
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They also said agents who were not familiar with New Zealand's requirements were suddenly trying to send students to New Zealand because countries including Canada and Australia had tightened their rules.
Decline rates have spiked before for India. Most recently in 2024 and also around 2016 when the use of sub-agents and fraudulent documents was a big problem.
Arunima Dhingra from Aims Global said she was in India last week, where Immigration NZ staff told her there had been a spike in agents using fake documents to show students had enough money to support themselves.
"What immigration has been saying is with Bangladesh especially they've seen a spike in hundreds of fraudulent documents that have come through certain agents," she said.
"The documents have been recirculated so agents have used the same documents and changed them for different students. So the funds essentially haven't existed and there's been a whole scam with the financial providers as well."
Dhingra said that had prompted a crackdown, but it was heavy-handed.
"When the volumes increase and when the risk increases all the officers are told to be really careful because there's a risk in this market and then they naturally get a lot tighter and there's going to be some really genuine students that are also going to be collateral damage," she said.
Dhingra said high refusal rates for students in Bangladesh or India were not good for New Zealand's reputation.
"That doesn't really send the right message to the genuine students that are looking at studying here, and that does really damage our New Zealand Inc brand.
Himanshu Rai from Immigration Advisers New Zealand Limited said fraudulent applications were happening because some agents were using sub-agents to do the paperwork on visa applications.
He said the sub-agents sometimes used the same documents repeatedly because it was easier, even if the student did in fact have enough money to support themselves.
They could also make a cut by presenting their company's funds as the students' and demanding a fee from the student.
"It is a money-making machine in the sense that he would charge for the funds to be arranged for that student without even checking whether the student has genuine funds or not," Rai said.
"The student might be having genuine funds, but his [the sub-agent's] interest is to make sure that the agency's funds are used so that he can charge them money to show those funds."
Rai said the commission for a student paying $45,000 for a master's degree at a polytechnic was about $10,000, which would be split between the principal and sub-agent.
"The sub-agent would take say 80% to 85% of it, whereas 10% to 15% comes into the primary agent's account," Rai said.
He said the arrangement made financial sense for the principal agent if large numbers were involved.
"That master agent, if he's issuing say 1000 offer letters, out of that even if 100 offers actually see lodgement and out of that even 50 get approvals, he will make some money."
Universities affected by refusals
Meanwhile, tertiary institutions were seeing the impact.
Victoria University international director Amy Rutherford said its approval rate for Bangladeshi students dropped from 90-100% at the start of the year to just 24% last month.
Rutherford said the decline rate for Indian students also jumped, from about 20% to about 44%.
Rutherford said it was not clear why approval rates had changed so much and the university had not noticed any problems with the students once they arrived.
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"A lot of students from India and Bangladesh are driven by employability. So they're coming to New Zealand to do predominantly master's level qualifications, which are aimed at getting them jobs at the end of their studies, which makes sense. But I wouldn't say that we're seeing issues," she said.
Rutherford said Bangladesh had very quickly become a large source of students.
"We did not have large numbers of Bangladeshi students last year, but it's very quickly become one of the largest source countries for international students at the university," she said.
"It's in the top five of source countries this year for international students at the university and I would say that would be common across all New Zealand universities.
"They're good students, so it's a surprise to me that the decline rate has risen so much because the approval rate was so high at the beginning of the year."
Indopacific Education Services director Neeraj Luthra told RNZ the high number of declines since August 1 created a perception of bias against Indian applicants.
"There is a perception that an 'intent to decline' approach is currently being applied to a significant number of Indian applications, rather than genuine applicants being given a meaningful opportunity to demonstrate their circumstances," he said.
Luthra said he wanted a review of recent refusals.
INZ denies bias
Immigration New Zealand denied any bias.
"There has been no change to the immigration requirements used to assess student visa applications, and all applications continue to be assessed against the same requirements regardless of nationality," it said.
"Targeted assurance activity has been undertaken in relation to some master's-level student visa applications, which has contributed to an increase in declined applications in recent months.
After being asked about fraudulent applications in Bangladesh, Immigration New Zealand provided further comment.
"INZ is seeing increasingly sophisticated fraud in student visa applications, including genuine documents being altered, reused or repurposed across multiple applications to make those applications appear legitimate," it said.
"Fraud can involve groups of applications rather than just individual applicants and can be facilitated by agents. We regularly identify financial evidence being reused across multiple applications.
"These issues are not unique to Bangladesh or India. Recent declined applications from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Nigeria and China have included concerns about fraud or false or misleading information."
Immigration NZ said education providers needed to manage the risk of using or allowing sub-agents.
"Providers are expected to monitor the agents working on their behalf and take appropriate action where they do not meet expected standards," it said.
"We also work directly with education providers when we identify concerns about agents connected to their students."
Immigration NZ said study visa applications increased 24% in the first nine months of this year compared to the same period in 2025.
"Having not previously featured in New Zealand's top source markets, Bangladesh is now the third highest volume of offshore international student visa submissions. In the 2026 calendar year to date, offshore student visa applications from India have made up 22% of offshore volume received (9103), China 21% (8751), Bangladesh 9% (3858) and Nepal 7% (2924)," it said.
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