It’s hard to appreciate the experience of being a F1 student in this country unless you’ve been one. And no matter how far you’ve come in life, you cannot forget the anxiety, the years separated from family and everything familiar, not being present at weddings, deaths, births...
Because you cannot afford to travel or because you fear cannot come back in. The desperate need to fit in, yet maintain your connections. The friends you make, often immigrants like yourself, telling your family you are ok many times when you are not
The joys of every hard-won success. The humiliation by an immigration officer at the airport, the constant looking over your shoulder that you cannot even get a traffic ticket for fear of being deported.
An a F1 student, I thought if I worked really really hard, I’d make my dreams come true. And I did. It is sad that we’re at a time when that is not a given. When students who are vulnerable are being picked on for no apparent reason than pure malice and cruelty.
