Ethan Lam

Two things have been on my mind recently as an international student.

The first is the recent detention of the Tufts PhD student Rümeysa Öztürk. The sheer horror of the video needs no more revisiting, but it was a line from the writer Kaveh Akbar’s recent essay in The Nation that really scarred me: “Öztürk, Douroudi, and Khalil were targeted not because they asserted their opposition. [They] were targeted because they were on student visas; they were targeted because they could be targeted.”

I will not—and cannot—go into the precarity of the current situation, but a sense of estrangement from this country cannot be more palpably felt. Öztürk is only invited until she’s not, as are international students everywhere in this nation. If belonging at Bowdoin is a matter of mindset, what does it take to feel belonging in America?

The second thing, as a senior in my second semester, rests on future employment. As one can imagine, the job search for international students is akin to surviving a game of Minesweeper. You know it will go wrong eventually, but you just never know which foot will step in the pile.

For me, the reality check came from the recent realization that, unironically, despite my forthcoming Bowdoin diploma, I could not legally work in the U.S. as a museum security guard. My rudimentary understanding is that every international student is entitled to one year of temporary employment under a scheme called Optional Practical Training (OPT). STEM students, given the often-lucrative nature of their employers—big tech, pharma or finance, for example—get two more years of OPT. On the other hand, the work visa requires employer sponsorship, a lottery (yes, a literal lottery) and a handsome amount of attorney fees that most small companies, let alone a recent college graduate, cannot afford.

On paper, OPT is a great way for students to get some valuable work experience without going through the labyrinthine visa process, except for a crucial catch—the job must relate to a student’s major area of study. So, there it goes, being an English major precluded me from working as a security guard, a financial analyst or even as the Bowdoin President. These constraints, therefore, mean that for international students, choosing the “right” major is not only the source of our future livelihood but also the promise of our legal existence.

My epiphany, as I’m writing this article, is this: We are only invited when we are creating wealth and contributing to the American ideal of the “melting pot.” Any individual pursuits are subordinate to immediate and quantifiable economic outcomes. If you are like me, who knew the consequences and still decided to make this reckless gamble based on personal interest, then you will understand the quiet, grinding cost of choosing selfhood in a system that prioritizes profits and productivity.

During my convocation in 2021, Eduardo Pazos, then-director of the Rachel Lord Center for Religious and Spiritual Life, had a poignant wish in his speech that I remember to this day: “May you be blessed with the gift of being here; being fully here. Of being, not doing, not producing, not yearning, just being.”

And it has just occurred to me that this simple state of “being” is a privilege that international and undocumented students, whose existence is purely conditional in this nation, are never privy to. It’s hard, if not impossible, to stop producing because you are no longer valued in this system if you do; the yearning for peace of mind is no less difficult when one’s status is constantly in flux.

I am not suggesting that, as international students, we should be entitled to the same rights as U.S. citizens. The country, after all, owes us self-invited guests nothing. (If you could, for a brief second, let go of the illusion of the “American Dream” that comes with the package and the economic prosperity built on generations of immigrants.)

I admit that it’s not an easy time for anyone. After the mental exhaustion from Covid-19, a racial reckoning, two major wars and another Trump presidency, we have stretched our empathy so thin that we could barely attend to ourselves, much less extend our care for others.

But considering the turmoil among international students, I hope that you, as an American passport holder, could at least learn more about our experience. In the face of federal regulations, Bowdoin can only do so much; immigration attorneys, whom the Office of the Dean of Students invited to campus last week, can only do so much. What I am weary of is the general ignorance of—and sometimes apathy to—our plight.

Instead of virtuous Instagram stories, what I found helpful, as a starting point to bridge this disconnect, is for you to actually get to know about the immigration process, its byzantine bureaucracy, its unironic absurdity and its relentless cruelty in the face of rampaging isolationism and xenophobia.

Inarguably, we international students make this country richer. In return, all we need is the homeowner, not only Homeland Security and the federal government, but every American, to understand the asymmetrical, complicated rental agreement that we begrudgingly signed.

Chris Zhang is a member of the Class of 2025.