The Department of Immigration and Citizenship's plan to introduce changes to the General Skilled Migration (GSM) visa with the intention of decoupling the link between Australia's international education and permanent residency is good, but caution in the form of a reasonable transitonary period is imporant to prevent fallout as the result of major changes to the current system.

"Significant changes may cause serious repercussions to the hundreds of thousands of international students currently in Australia, as well as the many thousand others on Temporary Residency visas," said AFIS Honourary President Ms Wesa Chau.

"We already know that several students have been led to Australia under the pretense of gaining permanent residency. However, many of these have also been led to great financial burden in that process and this burden may be exacerbated should changes to the GSM visa suddenly leave them dead-ended.

"We urge the government to take a sensible and humanitarian approach to tackling the issue."