> Singapore and Australia (and maybe others I don't know about) allow international students to apply for permanent residency if they meet certain very reasonab

> Singapore and Australia (and maybe others I don't know about) allow international students to apply for permanent residency if they meet certain very reasonable qualifications and it works out very much in their favor for retaining talent. I don't know about Singapore but this definitely isn't true for Australia these days -- visa programs in Australia are far more strict than they used to be (in fact, my parents and I probably couldn't have migrated here under the current visa system -- we came to Australia in 1999). The Temporary Graduate visa (485) is -- as the name suggests -- temporary, and only lasts between 2-4 years if you graduated from an Australian university. If you want to go for permanent residency you (generally speaking) need to be endorsed by your employer through the Employer Nomination Scheme visa (186) which requires 3 years work experience in your field -- the practical upshot is that you would need to have been granted a visa that lasts longer than 3 years (no guarantee of this), get a job in your field immediately after you graduate (seriously no guarantee of this since many employers in fields like engineering illegally discriminate against people who hold temporary working visas), and find an employer (within the last few months of your visa) who is willing to nominate you for permanent residency and has an existing labour agreement with the government. It's not impossible to do, but it's hardly a simple procedure and it's definitely not true that graduates have a guaranteed roadmap to apply for permanent residency. There are some visa programs which in theory would allow you to apply for permanent residency earlier, but they are invitation-only and usually have pretty high requirements which most people wouldn't fulfil.