The “American dream” becomes a surreal bureaucratic procedure
Ah, Washington. The land of opportunity… until one day, without warning, your student visa disappears like money from your bank account after paying tuition. What began as a trickle of legal queries has turned into a tsunami of despair, with hundreds of international students discovering that their legal status has been revoked faster than you can say “really?”
From “isolated cases” to express deportation
Matthew Maiona, an immigration attorney, thought he would receive a couple of calls a day. Now he sees six a day from international students who, in tears and panic, ask: “What did I do wrong?” Spoiler: probably nothing. But when the federal government decides to play “I spy” with visas, even an unpaid parking ticket seems to become organized crime.
Universities, those institutions that usually move at the speed of an academic semester, have had to react faster than a student running to an 8 AM class. From Harvard to the latest community college, everyone is scratching their heads wondering, “Why now? Why like this?” Meanwhile, 790 students at 120 institutions have already been affected, although the actual numbers could be as high as the average student debt in the US.
“We don’t know, and that’s the scary part,” says Ramis Wadood of the ACLU, perfectly summing up the situation. Because nothing inspires confidence more than a government that cancels visas with the same randomness as a professor grading exams on Friday night.
The new national sport: hunting students
Here’s the joke: many of those affected are from India and China, countries that provide more than half of the international students. But be careful, this is not discrimination, it is just a statistical coincidence! Like when you get fined for speeding just when the municipality needs to raise funds.
Some brave people are suing the government, because what better way to spend your last semester than fighting the immigration system? Xiaotian Liu, a Dartmouth student, has already secured a temporary restraining order. Although, let’s be honest, “temporary” in government bureaucracy can mean anything between “tomorrow” and “when the Arctic melts.”
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security plays hide and seek with explanations. Protests against Israel? Traffic fines? Or just bad luck in the visa lottery? Who knows. As NAFSA’s Fanta Aw said: “You don’t need more than a small number to create fear.” And boy have they achieved it.
Students now walk around with their passports as if they were the last ticket out of a dystopia. A Chinese student at UNC Chapel Hill confessed: “You don’t know if you’re going to be the next person.” Welcome to the new reality show: “Will you survive the semester?”.
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