A PALESTINIAN student has won refugee status despite admitting he applied only after new rules made it harder for him to stay as a skilled migrant.

The young man came to Australia on a student visa after high school in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.

He said he feared persecution at the hands of Lebanese security as they pursed the jihad group Fatah al-Islam.

"Asked why he had not immediately looked for a way of remaining permanently in Australia if he were genuinely fearful of returning to Lebanon, he said that an agent in Lebanon had told him that if he arrived here as a student he would be able to obtain permanent residence in two years," Philippa McIntosh, a member of the Refugee Review Tribunal, said in her decision.

The Palestinian said he applied for refugee status in February, eight months after his arrival, because migration rule changes last year had made things harder. He was studying English at a college.

Since 2007, the federal government has introduced a series of reforms making it more difficult for foreign students to parlay Australian qualifications into permanent residence.

Ms McIntosh said the Palestinian's delay in seeking a protection visa showed he did not believe he faced "any imminent serious harm" on return to Lebanon.

But she said the tribunal had to look to the future and take into account the cumulative effect of the full range of discrimination and deprivation suffered by a young Palestinian in a refugee camp in Lebanon. These amounted to persecution.