The Albanese government's plan to cap international students is an inefficient approach to reducing net migration, former Immigration Department deputy secretary Abul Rizvi says.
"It's just not a sustainable strategy," Dr Rizvi said in an interview ahead of his appearance at the National Press Club on Wednesday.
"It's just immensely resource-intensive, immensely uncertain and difficult for everybody."
Instead, he said, the government ought to force international students to meet academic benchmarks for enrolment, in a similar way to Australian students.
Dr Rizvi said there was "something fundamentally wrong" with the Australian university sector's approach that requires domestic students to "score an adequate ATAR" to get into their preferred degree, while allowing international students - who may not be able to get into university in their home country - to buy a place.
It comes as immigration shapes up as a key political battleground ahead of the federal election due by next May, with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton promising to cut net migration more dramatically than the Albanese government's plan.
The government sees cutting net overseas migration as crucial to easing demand pressures behind the housing crisis and says it is on track to halve net overseas migration from 528,000 to 260,000 between 2022-23 and 2024-25.
Mr Dutton's plan is to reduce the permanent migration intake from 185,000 to 140,000, while also lowering net overseas migration from 260,000 down to 160,000, during his first term if elected.
The Albanese government plans to limit the influx of international students by capping the number of new students enrolling at each university or college.
Legislation that is before the Parliament will, if passed, give Education Minister Jason Clare wide-ranging powers to limit international student enrolments individually for each of the approximately 1400 universities and colleges that are licensed to enrol students from overseas.
Dr Rizvi said this was like "buying a huge fight every year" with education institutions to push hard for international student numbers to be as high as possible.
"I just don't think in a market economy that works," he said.
"It would certainly be incredibly resource-ntensive for everybody to negotiate those caps. And of course, everyone will disagree with the allocation they get."
Australia's tertiary education export sector is worth $48 billion, but Dr Rizvi said a focus on this figure did not take in the whole picture.
While supportive of international students studying in the nation's universities, he said a rethink was needed.
"How do we design it in such a way that it delivers for the national interest?" Dr Rizvi said.
"The important dimension of [is] those students who go on to become Australian citizens and work for 40 years in Australia, paying huge amounts of taxes, money that far exceeds the $48 billion."
Dr Rizvi, who was a senior official in the Department of Immigration from the early 1990s to 2007 when he left as deputy secretary, has a PhD on Australia's immigration policies.
He also told The Canberra Times that immigration was being unfairly blamed for the housing crisis and that voters needed to be aware of the potential trade-offs to lower migration, such as the shortage of tradespeople.
"This housing crisis was coming - it's been brewing for decades and I wouldn't blame immigration."
He said international students tended to move into accommodation near major cities where their campuses were located and were not taking up houses in the suburbs.
