Monthly international arrivals in Australia 2019-2021 by visa group
Australian visa types
The Australian immigration program manages a range of both permanent and temporary visa applications. The most common single visa type is the higher education sector visa, used by international students to study at Australian universities, this is followed by the two most common tourist visa types, visitor and working holiday visas. Of the permanent visa types, the skilled visa category is by far the most popular, with more and a million permanent migrants living in Australia on this visa category at the last Australian census in 2016.
The impact of Coronavirus on travel
With the rate of infection in China climbing steadily in early February 2020, the Australian government began to implement travel restrictions to slow the spread of the coronavirus. These measures began with the closing of borders to foreign nationals arriving from China and by April 2020 these restrictions had been extended to all foreign international travelers. Domestic travel also saw a drastic fall in traffic, even before the Australian states and territories began restricting interstate travel. The number of domestic travelers in April 2020 had dropped to just a fraction compared to the previous year.