Meg Green stranded in Bali after Australian visa changes, Digi Mart USA News: A British expat has been forced to live in Bali indefinitely despite spending three years settling, working and studying in Australia. Meg Green was left stranded overseas after sudden changes to migration policies in Australia left her homeless and unable to remain in the country.
The 28-year-old had been in Australia since 2023 on a working holiday visa before deciding to further her education. The Gold Coast resident had planned to switch to a student visa after enrolling in an Advanced Diploma of IT at Canterbury Technical Institute, but her plans were upended by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s new migration policies.
The updated policy, which took effect on October 2, just two weeks after it was announced, means people seeking to change visa categories can no longer do so within Australia. The change is intended to stop people repeatedly switching visas to stay in the country longer than permitted, but it has the unintended effect of displacing people like Ms Green.
Ms Green is now stranded in Bali and cannot return to Australia until her new student visa has been processed. She hopes to start a diploma in February but has no estimate for when her visa will be finalized.
“I made the difficult decision to leave a job I genuinely loved to focus on further education and developing the technical skills needed to progress in my cybersecurity career,” Ms Green told Yahoo News. “The change meant I had to leave the country to submit my application offshore, rather than applying onshore as I had originally planned.”
The process has left Ms Green facing mounting costs she had not budgeted for, including $900 for flights, $1,500 a month for accommodation in Bali, $1,300 for overseas health cover and $2,500 for the visa application itself. She is meant to begin her diploma course in February but has not yet heard back from immigration authorities about her application.
“So far, I’ve only received the automatic acknowledgment from the Department of Home Affairs,” she said. “There doesn’t seem to be a predictable pattern from these experiences, which makes planning incredibly difficult.”
Ms Green described her sudden departure from Australia as “chaos.” Videos she posted to her social media channels have drawn more than 100,000 views, as people reach out to say they have found themselves in similar situations due to the visa changes.
