This thread is too long for me to sift through, so I'll simply put my take on it.
I tend to agree with the general stereotype of international students. Personally, most international students that I have interacted with have a poor grasp of English and a poor work ethic. However, I am not saying this is the only disposition of overseas students as there are some really dedicated and hard-working students. Basically, the dislike stems from bad experiences and perceptions.
While generalisations don't hold true across the board, I've had a few relatively infuriating experiences. For starters, I had an assessment with three other overseas students and that ended with me covering 90% of the workload. While tasks were delegated and deadlines set, I ended up doing the primary first hand research, the report and the majority of the speech - quite simply because they ignored deadlines and resorted to last minute copy and paste extracts of wiki. Currently, I have a case study assessment and while the overseas student is somewhat reliable, he informed me at our group meeting a few days ago that he is going on holidays. That is all fine and dandy since it is mid-sem break except for the fact that he will be gone from Saturday till Monday night - given that the assessment is due on Tuesday, I wasn't exactly impressed with the timing.
I suppose to qualify my statement, I do have relatives from overseas who are studying in Australia and I would hope they aren't horrendous. One of them is over here on a scholarship, so not all international students embody the stereotype of being life sucking leeches >.>
Wow browsing through this thread, I kind of noticed how nasty it was.
Contrary to all the bashing going around, international students have a right to study over here like everyone else - it is their choice to fork out money. I certainly don't agree with all the derogatory crap being posted, but it would be nice if those students actually carried their weight.