Australian History is built on thousands of migration stories, and Ilaria De Fusco's own story is like an epic novel that echoes the experience of many other migrants.
It's a saga that lasted 18 years, from the time of her arrival in Australia to her citizenship ceremony, across five different Visas and along an uneven pathway.
Like any story, De Fusco’s adventure had its twists and turns with antagonists and allies and, luckily, a happy ending.
She left Italy in 2000. After graduating from high school, she had decided to take a gap year and study English Down Under. As she told , "Like all those who arrive, I fell in love with Australia and tried to stay."
She enrolled in university and, after successfully finishing her degree, she was granted a graduate visa. She was allowed to stay and work in Australia for one year.
In the meantime De Fusco applied for permanent residency in 2009, thanks to the points garnered through her level of English proficiency, professional skills and education.
But it was at that point that the biggest obstacle emerged in Ilaria’s immigration pathway. For the following six years until 2015 she remained on a Bridging Visa, and says she was not told why by the department nor her immigration agent.
The Bridging Visa's temporary nature makes it a restrictive one, with impacts on a person's everyday life. For example, each time De Fusco wanted to leave Australia, she had to request, pay for and have another temporary Visa granted by the Department of Immigration.
"When my grandma [in Italy] turned 100, an event to be celebrated, until the last minute I did not know if I could make it," she tells SBS Italian. "I have been asked for more documents, I had to demonstrate that she was really my grandmother — it was unbelievable!"
This precarious situation affected Ilaria’s daily routine. Not only she was unable to make medium to long term life plans, she could not access, for instance, a loan to buy anything or have a contract for a smartphone.
"Despite the fact that you work, you pay taxes and you are in fact an integral part of the Australian community, you are discriminated against," she says. "At the end of the day, you are not part of the social fabric of the country where you live... I thought there might be others in the same situation - 'Is there anyone who is doing something about it?' - It seemed impossible".
De Fusco jumped online to read blogs and join social media groups, while starting her own Facebook group ‘’.
"At the end of the day, you are not part of the social fabric of the country where you live."
Soon the group gathered over 1,000 followers, all of them relating to Ilaria's experience. It pushed her to do more, and she wrote to the then Minister of Immigration, Peter Dutton, and to Christine Milne, the former leader of the Greens.
Thanks to her mobilization, Ilaria and many other people involved in the group gained the status of 'Priority File'. Among these, after a few months, almost all visas were granted to those who had applied from Australia.
GSM Priority Group 5 – Forgotten visa Facebook Page Source: SBS Italian
During her campaign, Ilaria approached newspapers and TV broadcasters, until journalist Peter Mares replied to her appeal. Ilaria’s case, together with some of the others involved in the 'Priority File' group, were then collected by the journalist in a book, published in 2016 under the title .
The cases illustrated by Mares were those of international students or student graduates on post-study work visas, or temporary skilled workers on the old 457 visas, or again people on bridging visas like Ilaria, awaiting the outcome of a permanent visa application.
Since Ilaria finally obtained her citizenship in 2015, many things have changed in terms of immigration legislation. SBS Italian spoke to Peter Mares to take stock of the situation today and reflect on what has changed and how.
"The abolition of the 457 visa and its replacement with a two-tiered temporary skills shortage visa has narrowed the pathway to permanent residence, especially when combined with other factors such as the increase in English language requirements for certain temporary and permanent visa categories," said Mares, "the overall cut in the permanent migration intake has also reduced the number of places available."
Mr Mares said it is difficult to predict the consequences of the new legislation.
"Exactly how this will affect the number of people coming to Australia on temporary visas is hard to predict and it is difficult to separate out changes to the visa regime from other factors like exchange rate fluctuations, job vacancies, the relative attractiveness of other destinations for temporary study or work and economic conditions in Australia and in source countries.
"My expectation, though, is that over time these changes will dampen demand for student visas, which have been growing very strongly in recent years".
"Representative democracy is based on all members of society having a say in the political affairs of the nation. The question is when you become a full member of the political community"
In his book, Mares argues that thousands of migrants on temporary visas, with no right to political representation at a state and federal level, poses a serious question to the level of democracy in Australia.
"Representative democracy is based on all members of society having a say in the political affairs of the nation. The question is when you become a full member of the political community," he explained.
"There is another problem here," says Mares. "You could create a guest worker system under which workers come to Australia and stay for a maximum of four years as is the case under one stream of the new Temporary Skills Shortage visa.
"If migrant workers only stay four years, then arguably they should not acquire political rights. But this creates another difficulty because we could end up with an entire class of people - effectively guest workers - who perform essential work and contribute taxes etc, but do not receive services and lack any kind of political voice or representation. That serves to disenfranchise an entire cohort of people, even if the individual members of that cohort change over time."
Mares' suggestion to deal with this particular issue, would be to have a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship over time and to prevent the kind of situations where migrants are permanently temporary and 'not-quite-Australian'.
"The debate is not just ideological," he says. "Migration policy settings have profound real-world effects. For example, if we curtail migration sharply then Australia will age more quickly [as migrants are typically younger than the resident population]. If we change settings in a way that deters international students then we will damage Australia’s third largest export industry, international education. If firms cannot get the skilled migrants that they need, then they cannot expand and employ more staff and so on. Equally, a rapid increase in migration can have impacts on such things as infrastructure, house prices, demand for services and so on."
Returning to De Fusco’s story, today she is happy to be able to call herself Australian and to be able plan her life. Despite the uncertainty, she didn’t give up, not even when her family in Italy would warned her she could be deported.
SBS Italian sought to find out from the Immigration Department how many people in Australia today are on a temporary visa, but the department could not provide a figure.
Sydney-based migration agent Emanuela Canini has an estimate: "For a conference last year, I calculated that 8.4 million people were granted temporary visas between 2016 and 2017. I had then calculated that 2.7 million were 'long-term' type visas (students, WHV, 457, NZ)."
As Emanuela explained, these are not the actual numbers of those who are physically present, because someone may have gone away, but when we look at the upcoming federal election and the number of votes that could actually shift the result, the issue of political representation for migrants fires up again.
