I had scarcely closed the door of the Uber that saved me from getting drenched in the sleety Melbourne rain when the driver asked, “Are you a professor?”

“Well, yes,” I replied. But the question took me by surprise, most drivers barely notice their passengers. It wasn’t a bad guess; I was outside a university. “Are you a student?” I asked the young driver.

He had been. Now like many international graduates he was driving, trying make ends meet while searching for a job in the specialised field of engineering he had successfully studied at vast expense.

“While I was studying, I had a well-paying job in aged care – now this,” he told me. “I’d have to do a master’s to get to that level and even then, I don’t know if I’d get a job here. I really like Australia but might just go back to India.”

His heartache was palpable. This is what the transactional nature of Australia’s complicated visa system can feel like.

I had spent the day in a room with a politically diverse group of scholars, policy analysts, former politicians and activists discussing why immigration had become such a toxic issue and what might be done to restore trust.

Now this young man put flesh on the bones of the analysis. The gap between the dispassionate policy talk and the lived reality was huge. He wanted to belong but, like many visa holders, felt his presence was conditional –........

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