{"id":1030,"date":"2017-05-03T17:03:02","date_gmt":"2017-05-03T21:03:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/?p=1030"},"modified":"2017-05-03T17:07:10","modified_gmt":"2017-05-03T21:07:10","slug":"my-personal-experience-as-a-legal-alien-in-the-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/uncategorized\/my-personal-experience-as-a-legal-alien-in-the-u-s\/","title":{"rendered":"My Personal Experience as a “Legal Alien” in the U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

This particular page really resonated with me. For those of you who do not know (or haven’t been able to tell from my accent), I am not American. I was born and raised in Tanzania and the first time I came to the U.S. was in 2013 to start my freshman year here at Hamilton. In order to be able to legally stay in the U.S., I had to get an F-1 student visa. To do this, I had to go for\u00a0an interview with the American Embassy in Tanzania. My experience was actually exactly like this man’s. I went through all the emotions the man is going through, and weirdly enough, in pretty much the same order. Below is a shortened transcript of my interview in association with the images above:<\/span><\/p>\n

Image 1-2:\u00a0<\/span>
\nLady: Your name and documents?<\/span>
\nMe: (A little confused by the lack \u00a0of a greeting and unable to initially understand her strong American accent.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Image\u00a03-6:\u00a0<\/span>
\nLady: (Already visibly annoyed by me) Your name and documents and why you want a visa?<\/span>
\nMe: Umm, Neema Lema. I got accepted into a college in the U.S. so\u00a0I’d like a student visa.<\/span><\/p>\n

Image 7-8:\u00a0<\/span>
\nLady: What proof do you have of not using this visa to permanently stay in the U.S. instead of you eventually returning to Tanzania as you should?<\/span>
\nMe:\u00a0Well, I have no family in the U.S. My entire family is here in Tanzania. They will be my reason for returning to Tanzania when I’m done studying.<\/span><\/p>\n

Image 9:\u00a0<\/span>
\nLady: What will you study in college?\u00a0And what exactly do you plan to do with your degree post graduate?<\/span>
\nMe:\u00a0I have always been interested in Economics, particularly Development Economics.\u00a0Uhh, well, I am not sure now what I’ll do with my degree. I am hoping to use my years in college to figure that out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Image 10-11:\u00a0<\/span>
\nLady:\u00a0So what you do not know what you want to do with your life.<\/span>
\nMe: (After being extremely shocked and offended by her response, I get incredibly worried and the worst thoughts all flood into my mind: Had I just messed up my chance of getting a visa because I didn’t have a solid life plan to lay out for her? She had denied almost 10 people in a row a visa just before me\u00a0so why should she break her streak now? How do I tell my family I won’t be able to attend college after the high hopes and their huge financial investment in me? I have no back up plan if college doesn’t work out, oh Lord what now?!)<\/span><\/p>\n

Image 12:\u00a0<\/span>
\nLady:\u00a0(Silent, hasn’t said a single word to me in almost 3 minutes as she busily types things on her computer.)<\/span>
\nMe: (Still drowning in my fears and worries for what seems like the longest wait of my life.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Seeing as I am here at Hamilton, you can tell that this negative experience had a positive ending.<\/span><\/p>\n

This interview was the first time in my life that I felt I was different. I had always lived in a place where everyone else was pretty similar to me. But after this interview, I felt the weight of a thousand negative labels on me- just like how they are weighing down the man in the images. I wore those labels when I started Hamilton and they made me insecure about my accent not being understood, offended by the African stereotypes people associated me with, and hurt when people\u00a0did not believe that I was smart enough to belong at Hamilton simply because of where I am from. I am proud to say that I felt like I have shed all those negative labels and that helped me thrive at Hamilton. The only labels I will be wearing, and proudly so, in a few weeks will be “Hamilton graduate class of 2017,” “Economics major,” “Art minor,” “recipient of 12 academic\u00a0honors.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Shaun Tan’s lack of words helped me to easily draw on my own experience while reading this book, which elicited a greater emotional response from me than I would have had had Tan explicitly described this man’s personal experience. Tan’s powerful way of telling a story through images alone\u00a0made this my favorite book of the semester.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This particular page really resonated with me. For those of you who do not know (or haven’t been able to tell from my accent), I am not American. I was born and raised in Tanzania and the first time I came to the U.S. was in 2013 to start my freshman year here at Hamilton. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “My Personal Experience as a “Legal Alien” in the U.S.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1030"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1047,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions\/1047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamiltoncs.org\/lit220\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}