In the seventh hellish month of 2020, the American government ruled that ICE has the right to force international students whose universities will not conduct in-person classes this fall – a decision that, no matter how disappointing, we must heed for the entire country’s safety – out of the country. These students will lose their visas to stay for study. These students are being deported at no cause of their own.
What you lose when you lose your visa to stay in your chosen country comes is more than plans for the next semester. It is a loss that strips you of sense of self, sense of purpose, sense of community and belonging, and sense of fiscal and professional security. It is a loss that will need to be grieved. It is a loss that few government officials will fully understand, even if they sympathize.
I know… “how would you know? You’re an American citizen.”
I lost my visa to stay in Australia. In October 2019, my company made a round of more than 200 redundancies and my role was one of the many lost. In the panic-filled, anxiety-riddled months to follow, I interviewed for position after position in an attempt to find another job to sponsor me. I considered all options for staying and most immigration lawyers I spoke to recommended marriage because it was the easiest way to stay. My last option was to apply for a student visa, but with cost-prohibitive tuition and a cap on the number of hours I could work on the visa, I was financially forced out of my last resort.
For those who aren’t immigrants, moving to a new country for dream fulfillment or for the opportunity to study, for a job, or for love, requires an amount of sacrifice you might never understand. We immigrants who choose to live in a new country leave behind the comfort of familiar customs, language, food, music, and so much more. We leave behind the embrace of our loved ones. We leave behind everything that our previous education and work experience prepared us for when it comes to systems, practices, and institutions that are unique to our home countries. We adjust to living in new time zones, a state of being where we cannot reach out to our thickest networks for support and we miss the highest highs of celebration and the lowest lows of mourning. We pay for the visas that allow us into our chosen country, miss the opportunity to make as much money as we would in our home countries because of visa limitations, forfeit money when/if we move back home, and unless you’re a permanent resident or dual citizen, pay taxes in two countries. Not to mention, we don’t share our new countrymen’s right to vote or get access to universal healthcare (if the country is wise enough to provide it), and we face blatant hiring discrimination.
This is the tip of the iceberg of an immigrant’s experience. And, needless to say, this doesn’t even dip a toe into the waters of experience shared by asylum-seekers or immigrants who move for other reasons.
Take my experience and just add being an undergrad aged 18-22 or graduate student leaving your home country at a younger age than I did. Imagine feeling like you fit into a campus community when you get smacked by sudden alienation after being told you’re not wanted there. Or imagine the consequences of having to return home and not being able to matriculate elsewhere on time, forcing you to get off track and fall behind your peers. Or imagine, after already spending year or two of studying in the US, all of a sudden having to enter the workforce at a time when the job market is in a slump globally. Or imagine the feeling of complete and utter devastation to find out that all of your hard work and preparation of learning English and getting your affairs in order financially to be able to slip into university culture that it was all for naught. Or imagine any of these scenarios with the added stress of traveling overseas during COVID-19, breaking a lease and facing penalty fees for cutting off US accounts of all sorts, and returning to a country where you no longer have a room of one’s own.
If you can’t put yourself in these shoes, how about trying on this pair: imagine how much tuition is lost from withdrawn international students. Imagine the hefty loss of on-campus, pre-professional networking and global opportunity-building. Then imagine the pathetic back-stepping it’ll take our government to encourage international admissions in the years to follow.
So… how can I help?
Call, tweet, email, @ your alma mater’s president. Contact your local alumni chapter to see if anyone has arranged a digital letter-writing campaign or has coordinated with state financial aid or a similar organization; if you’re so inclined, start one yourself by encouraging your old classmates to band together and write to your university’s state senators and reps. To take immediate action, sign this petition from whitehouse.gov.
Turn every eye-opening moment, where you see things for what they are, into a mouth-opening moment. When there are too many rights to fight for, it can be exhausting to add this one to your list of battles. But if you feel like you can muster the energy, use the mighty power of your voice as an American citizen to fight on behalf of our international friends, peers, and coworkers who deserve to study and realize their dreams safely and without threat.
Moving And Shaking 