While vacations often signal relaxation, for Chinese teacher Zoey Liu, it was quite the opposite this past year. Liu was planning an international trip to Britain when she ran into a problem: because she was a Chinese citizen, she had to apply for a tourist visa, which required mountains of paperwork and an interview that impacted her work schedule. Unfortunately, the process took too long, and with her departure date coming up, Liu had no choice but to pay extra money to expedite her application.
As a result of this experience and her plans to go on future international trips, Liu decided to apply for American citizenship, and in January 2024, she became an American citizen. While having an easier travel experience was a huge factor behind Liu’s decision to get citizenship, Liu was also inconvenienced by her work visa’s expiration and renewal dates and hoped to gain greater residential stability by becoming a citizen.
The first benchmark an individual must meet when transitioning from a foreign citizenship to a U.S. citizenship is obtaining an immigrant visa. This can be done through family sponsorships, asylum applications or employment-based applications. Immigrants who are not eligible to apply through those methods will have to apply through the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program (also known as the Green Card Lottery) which randomly awards up to 50,000 immigrant visas per year. The odds of winning this lottery are only 0.25%, which Liu admits can be a challenge for many teachers.
“I know teachers who applied for the lottery and did not get it,” Liu said. “In the end, they just decide to get a student visa or they go back to China or their own country. That’s very inconvenient and can be scary, especially when you’re young or in your 20s. That’s something that’s always hanging over your head.”
Immigration visas lead to obtaining a green card, a visa which represents permanent residency has beengranted for the person to live and work in the U.S. Getting a green card can take one to five years depending on the individual’s visa, country of origin, family relations and other information. After gaining permanent residency, the individual must live in the U.S. for five years, or three years if they’re married to a U.S. citizen.
According to senior H-4 visa Resident Hursh Shah, living on a visa is stressful (an H-4 visa is a special visa given to children or spouses of work visa holders). At 5 years old, Shah and his family came to America in search of opportunities and a better quality of life, which he defines as the perpetuated “American Dream.” Since migrating to the U.S., Shah’s family has been discussing getting American citizenship to replace the work visas the family currently resides on.
“The fact that we’re still on a visa definitely hurts a little because, for Indian citizens there’s a huge backlog, and that’s not exactly what the American Dream is supposed to be,” Shah said. “Honestly,I would consider myself more American than Indian. I speak English and I associate more with American culture. I don’t know much about India, to call myself an Indian.”
Being on an H-4 visa, which is dependent on his mother’s work visa, Shah is unable to attain a job, which he believes limits his extracurricular opportunities compared to students with American citizenship. Along with his own occupational worry, Shah recognizes the pressures his mother experiences due to being the holder of the family’s primary visa.
“Because my mom has to support our family with the visa, it’s stressful because she has to keep her job,” Shah said. “I don’t think it would ever happen, but if she ever gets fired, then we’d have to go back. So it hurts her job prospects in some ways because she can’t really move jobs as much because you have to refile for the visa and not a lot of companies want to do that.”
Shah believes that the process of obtaining American citizenship is a stressful one. In fact, he is already looking for the quickest way he can acquire it for the future. He finds that his main options are studying to get a Ph.D. or getting married — he would prefer the former.
“I need to get the citizenship when I grow up, because otherwise my parents are gonna have to go back, and they don’t want to go back,” Shah said. “Even if my mom works for 20 more years, she won’t get her citizenship because the line is way too long, so I’m going to have to sponsor her. That means I need to get citizenship before then. It’s kind of a waiting game and that’s just frustrating.”
As a senior currently applying to colleges, a significant issue Shah has encountered is that because he is on a visa, he has to mark himself as an international student, which introduces increased school tuition, less opportunities for scholarships and other issues. Freshman Emma Ma recognized this as an issue, which led to her renouncing her Chinese citizenship in exchange for American citizenship.
“I was a little sad to let go of my Chinese citizenship,” Ma said. “Being Chinese was always important to me, and initially I was feeling a little down and a little disappointed for renouncing it. Now I’m OK with it because it’s just a passport — it doesn’t say anything about my identity and it doesn’t define me.”
Similar to Ma, Liu continues to hold her Chinese identity close to her. However, Liu recognizes the potential outside pressures she may receive as a result of renouncing her Chinese citizenship. Specifically, she cites how her parents have warned her about the judgment Chinese Americans receive from airport workers and Chinese citizens.
“I’m jealous of people who have dual citizenship because I feel like they have the perfect situation,” Liu said. “It’s almost like I have to say ‘I’m American, I’m not Chinese anymore.’ But I still introduce myself to people saying that I’m Chinese because that’s the identity I associate with and nobody can take that away from me.”
