Chasing Dreams, Facing Realities – Transcript

By Tiana McGee

Voices (in order of appearance)

Tiana McGee(Host)

Saira Mueller, Interviewee, freelance Journalist, former international student

Niti Majetya, interviewee, current international student at Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism

Katie K Koo, interviewee, Professor at the University of Georgia

Dr. Christina Yao, Interviewee, Associate professor of higher education at the University of South Carolina

[Park sounds start, birds chirping, people talking, and cars going by]

[00:00:00] Narration(Tiana): It’s Tuesday afternoon. I’m sitting in Bryant Park with Saira Mueller, an Australian ex LEGO store co worker, now a freelance journalist. Taylor Swift playing all around us. We are joined by her dog, Asteria, with bright blue eyes and shiny fur.

Quick scene

–

[00:00:23] Tiana: Oh my gosh, hi!

Saira: How’s it going?

Tiana: You brought your dog? I’m in love. Hi beautiful! Can I, can I?

Saira: Yeah, of course.

Tiana: Oh my god.

—

[Park sounds continue: birds chirping, people talking, and cars going by]

[00:00:27] Narration(Tiana): As Saira and I chat, she recounts her journey from international student to working girl and the heavy road it took to get there. Starting from the moment she got into Columbia J School, a moment shared with her boyfriend that should have been a happy one.

[00:00:47] Saira: I was like checking my emails on my phone, and I like saw this email from Columbia that said, like, you got accepted, but I was like half asleep. I was like, what? What is this? And I got really excited and like ran out of bed, like ran out into the backyard to tell him about it. He’s like, that’s amazing. How much did you get in scholarship money?

[00:01:10] Saira: I was like, Oh, that’s a good point. Like, I should check that. And when I saw it was 3,000 dollars out of the like almost 90,000 total that I would have to take out. I was like, I don’t know if I’m even going to be able to afford this.

[park sounds continue: birds chirping, people talking, and cars going by]

[00:01:17] Narration(Tiana): And Saira is not alone. On average, international students pay more for tuition than domestic students. And this often comes with a lack of financial aid from the school. And high tuition was just the first hurdle for Saira.

[00:01:31] Saira: I went through this weird like catch-22 where the university was asking me to prove that I had all of the funds to be able to like cover the entire year. Um, and because it’s a two-year master’s program condensed into 11 months, they don’t let you work during that time either.

[00:01:49] Saira: Um, So yeah, I basically had to show them like I have 80,000 dollars just ready to go, which I did not. Like I had to get a loan for it, but to get the loan, I had to get proof that I was fully enrolled, which they wouldn’t do until I gave them the money or like showed that I had the money. I was like, guys, can you not see how ridiculous this is?

[Park sounds continue, birds chirping, people talking, and cars going by]

[00:02:13] Narration(Tiana): Saira’s mom ended up having to remortgage their house for three days just to work around the back and forth. But this isn’t a feasible option for everyone.

[00:02:22] Saira: Like, a lot of people can’t just do that. So yeah, I know there were a lot of people who, one of my potential housemates like couldn’t. afforded in the end, even after she’d been accepted, and so she had to drop out.

[00:02:35] Saira: Um, but that was not uncommon, it sounds like. Um, so that part was all very frustrating.

[Park sounds continue, birds chirping, people talking, and cars going by]

Narration (Tiana): And once she got to the U S, Saira didn’t get the support that she’d expected.

And then I would say, like, even during the school year, there wasn’t that much support for international students in terms of, like, Most of us had flown in from overseas to do this, like, we were living in the U.S. for the first time. Um, so we kind of ended up just supporting each other versus, you know, the university doing anything for us.

[Park sounds continue, birds chirping, people talking, and cars going by]

[00:03:08] Narration(Tiana): But it isn’t just the universities that fail international students. It starts at the top. The United States is the number one host of international students in the world,

[Park sounds stop]

with over 800,000 students in the 2022/23 school year, and many of those studying at the graduate student level.

[ambi music starts soft, steady swelling and little piano]

[00:03:27] Narration(Tiana): The situation for many is either how do I navigate the field while I’m here, or how do I make it so I can stay? However, the US, while seemingly welcome to international students, does little to help once they arrive. Less so for those that wish to stay. Only about 23 percent of graduate international students end up staying in the U.S. This is due to a system created to take all that it can and give workarounds and hoops to jump through in return. Hoops that current and former international students have to jump through before, after, and during their time staying in the U. S. One such hoop is healthcare.

[Muisc fades and ends]

[00:04:10] Narration(Tiana): Niti Majetya, a grad student at the Craig Newmark Graduate School. Born and raised in Mumbai has had contrasting experience with the U. S. healthcare system and universities.

As someone who has attended both undergraduate and graduate school in the U.S., Niti discovered that there is no real uniformity and just how difficult that makes navigating things.

[00:04:27] Niti: It’s very hard, I will say, and healthcare here is so expensive.

[00:04:32] Niti: Uh, in Austin I had this insurance that just came with the university for international students. Here, like CUNY, like Craig Newmark doesn’t have any of that, so I had to find a specific insurance. I still haven’t used it, I haven’t really needed to be hospitalized or anything, touch wood.

[00:04:49] Narration(Tiana): While not every university has its own health insurance system, For international students, having healthcare is mandatory.

[Park sounds start, birds chirping, people talking, and cars going by]

[00:04:57] Narration(Tiana): However, university health insurance doesn’t cover everything, as Saira discovered.

[00:05:04] Saira: Like, it was kind of like, oh, if there’s an emergency, you’ll be covered. But, um, during that year, I got super depressed. And I, like, had really bad anxiety. And I didn’t realize any of that because I’d never really had it before.

[00:05:18] Saira: So I remember, at some point, That was also like one of the worst winters on record. So I went straight from Australian summer to like blizzard winter here and like didn’t realize I had seasonal depression. Um, so I started going to one of the therapists on campus, and I think I only ended up doing two sessions cause it was like, Oh, you get like two or three free sessions, and then you have to stop paying for it.

[00:05:43] Saira: And I was like, Well, I’m not able to, like, work right now, and I’ve literally got a loan to cover my expenses. Like I don’t really have extra money to just be like paying for therapy.

[Park sounds end, music starts, soft, steady swelling and little piano]

[00:05:55] Narration(Tiana): Being in the U. S., while a dream come true for Niti, still can be an adjustment. And being miles from home doesn’t come without a price.

[00:06:06] Niti: I think one thing that I sort of struggle with is if there’s issues or problems going on back home, I’m really

[music fades out]

Niti: Disconnected from that, obviously, and there’s a lot of times when my parents don’t, won’t tell me on the phone. Because they don’t want to scare me. Then, when I find out, I just feel really guilty.

[00:06:29] Niti: So I was like, I wasn’t there. You know? I’m, sometimes it’s kind of the struggle of like, maybe I’m being selfish by not being there. Because it’s just so far, you know? It’s not as like, it’s not the same as being in a different state.

[00:06:43] Narration(Tiana): Still. The emotional toll, higher tuition, health insurance pitfalls, and lack of university support aren’t the only hoops international students have to overcome just to attend school in the U.S. There are a mountain of policy and laws to navigate.

[Park sounds start, birds chirping, people talking, and cars going by]

The year was 2020. Saira, who was living alone in Seattle after being let go from one job and just landing another, was about to enter Visa 2020.

[00:07:10] Saira: Upfront told them, like, hey, like, I’ve got a visa, it’s valid for, like, another year, I don’t know what the process is, but can we just switch it over?

[00:07:18] Saira: Because I physically, like, can’t leave the country to go back to Australia, like, everything’s shut down right now. So they started the process of getting the visa transferred over, and I had to wait two months, literally not working, not able to do anything, just waiting for them to basically get this visa transfer sorted.

[Park sounds continue, birds chirping, people talking, and cars going by]

[00:07:37] Narration(Tiana): And Saira did everything right. She followed up with people, asked, double-checked over and over, and kept hearing that everything was a-okay. And just when it seemed like everything had been resolved, Saira decided to do one last check-in.

[00:07:53] Saira: And within a week, they called me, and they were like, Yeah, actually, no, we didn’t do this.

[00:07:57] Saira: You have to leave the country within a week. I was like, uh, it’s like March 2021. Like everything’s still shut down. Like Australia is shut down. Like, where do you expect me to go? Um, I ended up having to go to Iceland for five weeks. So it was like the options that my immigration lawyer told me were basically Iceland or Mexico and Mexico had really high case numbers of COVID at the time.

[00:08:21] Saira: So I was like, all right, you know what? I’ve been to Iceland before. I’ll just go there and hopefully, I can get an appointment at the embassy.

[Park sounds continue, birds chirping, people talking, and cars going by]

[00:08:28] Narration(Tiana): And Saira ended up being gone for two months. Going back and forth between countries in Europe that wouldn’t allow her to stay, yet unable to get an appointment with an embassy. Until, finally…

[Park sounds continue, birds chirping, people talking, and cars going by]

[00:08:41] Saira: I’m also, thankfully, a German citizen, so I was able to get an appointment in Germany for, like, two weeks after that. So I like, up and like, left for Germany straight away, had to spend another like, three weeks in Germany, finally got the visa sorted. I was like worried that they wouldn’t give it to me because technically, I’d been in the country legally. They were like, look, like you didn’t know, like it was fine, thankfully.

[Park sounds end, music starts, soft, steady piano]

[00:09:03] Narration(Tiana): And this can be a struggle across the board since for international students, getting a visa isn’t really about merit. Katie Koo, a professor at the University of Georgia and academic who advocates for international students based on her research about mental health, emphasizes how she learned it is beyond their control.

[music stops]

[00:09:23] Katie Koo: I also heard about How my international student days struggle to secure a job in the U. S., not just because they were not competent enough or they’re not qualified, they were pretty qualified in terms of their skills and, you know, their degree and their academic success, but they were not able to secure a job in the U.S.

[00:09:45] Katie Koo: just because of the visa. Although you are fully qualified with the U. S. visa. The degree or the skill requirement or maybe a certificate, it doesn’t guarantee that you will get the H-1 visa.

[00:09:58] Narration(Tiana): Dr. Christina Yao, an associate professor of higher education at the University of South Carolina, a dedicated researcher on international students and their sense of belonging in the U. S., highlights that there is still a long way to go.

[00:10:12] Christina Yao: I think colleges and universities, and even just more nationally in general, have often looked at international students as, um, for lack of a better word, like as cash cows, right? That like, we want, we want international students to come to this university because they are, they pay full tuition and full fees.

[00:10:29] Christina Yao: But we also have a responsibility as colleges, universities, as, I mean, honestly, also as a nation that we’re still making sure that this is the best possible experience for, for these students. Right, and to be able to support them and to be able to help, again, make sure that they’re able to be here to be healthy, happy, and thrive and be able to meet the goals that they want to meet and stuff.

[00:10:51] Narration(Tiana): So, why would anyone put themselves through this?

[Park sounds start, birds chirping, people talking, and cars going by]

For Saira, the journey has been too much to give up now.

[00:10:58] Saira: I put so much into it that I was like, I can’t give up now. Like, what would the point of like going through all of that be if I just gave up now?

[00:11:09] Narration(Tiana): And with that light at the end of the tunnel, Saira has a new perspective.

[00:11:13] Narration(Tiana): One that many international students in the gray area of choosing to stay after graduation lack. She has security.

[00:11:21] Saira: I got picked for the green card lottery in Australia. Thankfully, I ended up getting it, and even that was not an easy process. But, um, now that I have that, I think a lot of the pressure is removed.

[00:11:35] Saira: Cause I can live here. Anywhere I want in the U.S. I can work anywhere I want in the U. S. I don’t have to worry about constantly leaving and doing visas and having to worry about all of that.

[Park sounds stop]

[00:11:45] Narration(Tiana): For those like Niti, it’s bigger than her. It’s about her parents.

[00:11:49] Niti: Everything that I do, um, is to make them proud.

[00:11:54] Niti: and happy. Everything is like an oath to them and their upbringing they’ve given me, the values they’ve given me, and the resources that they’ve been able to provide for me, which is a huge deal to me. Um, you know, it’s not like just generational wealth passing on. They’ve like created their own wealth,

[music starts, piano, light and soft]

Niti:which is such a big deal to me.

[00:12:14] Niti: And I just hope that I can always honor that and always make them proud and always try to do the right thing.

[music swells then fades out]