*Editor’s Note: Names have been changed to protect students’ identity.
When I was 10, my parents sat me down and told me my father had received a promotion that would take him across the Pacific Ocean. My mother told me that my father would be moving over next month, and that we would follow him six months later.
A gamut of emotions hit me. On one hand, I was heartbroken to leave behind my friends, family, and the life I had built in Singapore. But on the other hand… a part of me was ecstatic. I was going to live in the real-life version of the sun-drenched, cotton candy-skied Los Angeles I had seen in Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” music video on YouTube!
Katy set me up.
For the first couple of months at Valentine Elementary School in San Marino, CA, I spent my 40-minute lunch periods alone in the corner of the noisy cafeteria and hunched over my journal, scratching my Ticonderoga pencil furiously across its pages. In the fifth-grade classroom, when my seatmate turned to me and asked if I’d ever seen a computer, I laughed it off and explained that my home country, Singapore, is among the most technologically advanced in the world. After my first spelling test, I tried to explain to my teacher that I had written “favourite” with a U because I had just moved to the United States and was still adjusting to the differences. She glanced at the big red circle on the page, then back at me with a cold expression.
“Well, you’re in America now,” she said. “You should be using our language.” I had learned English as my first language in Singapore; yet, one letter made me feel like an alien who’d just landed on Earth. I once believed the United States was the land of the free, where languages, voices, nationalities and cultures coexisted in harmony. Had I been misled?
I’ve now lived in this country for a decade — the same amount of time I spent in Singapore. I feel fortunate; it’s truly a privilege to call two beautiful places home. I hope to stay here for life — but does America really want me here? As President Donald Trump continues to berate immigrants and calls us animals who are “poisoning the blood of our country,” I wonder if I will ever truly feel at home in this nation.
The tension surrounding America’s so-called “immigration problem” feels especially tangible on college campuses. Last November, Zac Segal, Boston University third-year and president of BU College Republicans, posted a now-deleted tweet celebrating his successful tip to ICE to arrest nine undocumented workers at a local carwash. College campuses across the country are alive with debates, protests and political activism surrounding the nation’s latest immigration policies. Meanwhile, many immigrant students move through campus quietly and cautiously, trying to draw as little attention as possible.
Many of my friends at Northwestern are first- or second-generation immigrants, or here on student visas. As ICE activity reports inch closer to our campus, panicked messages urging us to stay inside, lock our doors and avoid answering for anyone we don’t know ripple through group chats and Instagram stories.
Weinberg third-year Jasmine Guo, 20, immigrated from Beijing and received her green card at age 11. Recently naturalized as a U.S. citizen, she was startled by reports of ICE agents appearing at Evanston’s Trader Joe’s. Guo felt as if she’d stepped into a dystopia, reading news stories describing raids even targeting green-card holders. “I always assumed that permanent residency is, like… permanent,” she said.
Jones*, a Northwestern student with a green card, has been pursuing U.S. citizenship for the past two and a half years. She first applied at age 18, seeking to be naturalized through her father, a U.S. citizen, but was rejected after her parents’ recent divorce left her no longer under his legal guardianship. She has since reapplied, but there seems to be no end in sight.
“They keep pushing back my interview. It’s been literally five months now, and I’ve gotten no notice from USCIS,” she said. “It feels further and further away.”
Alongside Guo, Jones* also hopes to remain in the U.S. for the rest of her life. What struck me was how similar their reasoning was: for both, returning to their countries of birth no longer feels like a viable option. They have built their lives here and grown distant from their native cultures to the point that they fear they could no longer comfortably readapt to their former lifestyles.
Whenever I return to Singapore, I’m struck by how much has changed. New buildings seem to appear overnight, and new ways of speaking and living have taken root. My relatives have grown visibly older; they buy me the snacks I used to love decades ago, because that’s all they know of me now. Ordering food at the local hawker stalls reminds me just how much my Mandarin has regressed since I left.
In three months, I’ll earn a degree that prepares me for a career in American journalism, particularly in covering Asian American stories. It feels almost impossible now to imagine a life anywhere but in the United States.
More than anything, America has become home. The thought of uprooting myself once again from the people and places I love is heartbreaking, yet the current immigration landscape forces me to confront the possibility of leaving home behind.
I love America. But I simply don’t know if she loves me back.
