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Like for many of my fellow international students, today's ICE guidelines ending the Coronavirus-related exceptions allowing us to study online and work remotely serve as a stark reminder of the extraordinary&permanent precarity we find ourselves in every single day.
It completely threw me off. Recollection of the materials in the lab session for the network analysis class I was attending when I got the news? Zero. No big deal -- I'll catch up.
Time allocated for working on my prospectus? Spent trying to understand guidelines & briefing my partner on how this may impact my status/ability to be with her, trying to reassure her that everything will be fine when I cannot reasonably have any confidence in this statement.
We were supposed to get married in March & file my GC application. My ability to live with her is conditional on me being able to generate income without having to be on campus. Then the country went into lockdown a week before we were sheduled to pick up our marriage license.
International students are not visitors who can just leave. Many of us have built an existence and started a family here. Some others may not immediately have a place to go back to.
Today is definitely not the first time I am having this thought, but today’s news make me want to spell it out here: I deeply regret coming to the US 5 years ago for my MA & the only thing keeping me here right now is my amazing partner.
As if the existential anxiety from living on a stipend that barely covers living expenses and the permanent pressure to perform at the highest level were not already enough, one has to contend with the very real possibility of removal at what feels like a moment's notice.
