International students face a lot of overt discrimination in the United States, and this discrimination is often normalised and ignored. We ourselves tend to accept many exploitative conditions of our time in the US as "necessary sacrifices" of our right to just treatment for the benefit of getting access to American higher education. But, over the last few months, I have begun to question some of these practices that oppress international students in intricate ways, and now refuse to accept them as reasonable policies.
The most obvious way in which the US discriminates against international students is through financial policies. If you have ever talked to an international student in the US – really, sincerely listened to them talk about their experience studying in America – this has undoubtedly come up. So, here are three ways, condensed into a quick run-down, in which United States immigration policies exploit international students.
Financial Aid Is Limited And Unfair
College is a daunting expense in the United States, for any student. Most students depend on financial aid in the form of grants, scholarships, fellowships and loans to be able to afford the costs that come with obtaining a bachelor’s degree. While federal financial aid processes can be intimidating and often even ostracise marginalised groups, financial aid for international students is very unashamedly discriminatory.
Most public (and many private) colleges and universities in the US blatantly refuse to offer international students any significant financial aid at all, while often charging us more fees than domestic students. This unfair practice gets normalised by providing the excuse that federal money can only be invested in domestic students, while ignoring the fact that many universities that refuse significant financial aid for international students continue to receive grants from both public and private sources. Private colleges, too, often limit full-tuition or full-ride scholarships to domestic students, even though their money isn’t coming from a federal source.
Meanwhile, international students also get charged more than domestic students do. The cavalier manner in which many university leaders talk about a "gold mine" in the form of international students allowing domestic students to get full-ride scholarships is frankly disturbing. The idea of using a fraction of taxpayer dollars to provide some of the most determined and diligent minds of the world to study at US higher education institutions is appalling, but the idea of using the obscene amounts of money international students are made to pay to fund education for domestic students is not. This, my friends, is the definition of a double standard, and encourages exploitation of international students.
Universities and colleges in the US have begun to look at international students as easy prey: not only will we pay more than domestic students to be allowed to attend, but we will also quietly accept explicitly discriminatory financial aid differences. I fail to see how this is anything less than extortion.
Work Restrictions Are Claustrophobic And Exploitative
Work authorisations are the stuff of nightmares for international students. United States immigration policies for “non-resident aliens” (under which category most international undergraduate students fall) seem to reflect a constant fear that every international student that comes to the United States will elope from their university, become an undocumented immigrant, “steal” an American’s job, and start making money (and cause the whole American economy to collapse, apparently). If that wasn’t the case, then why would work authorisations for international students be so claustrophobic and explicitly discriminatory?
On an F-1 visa, students are allowed to work only up to 20 hours a week, and only on campus. By contrast, domestic students are free to take jobs even up to 40 hours a week or more, and work wherever they like, so that they can even hold jobs during the school year that actually are relevant to their future career and add to their resume, and not just jobs helping their university fill administrative positions through desperate international students who will work for minimum wage because the law allows us no other options.
It’s almost as if policymakers are afraid that if international students get a taste of working in the US, we will do anything to stay, including become an undocumented immigrant. Well, guess what, friends – we aren’t that desperate, and none of us think that living under constant fear of deportation and discrimination is worth being able to work in the US. Many of us do not want to stay in the US after we graduate, and even for those who do, we become some of your best assets in science, engineering, politics and many other fields. The US celebrates and benefits from our achievements later on, so I’m confused about why it has to make the journey there so difficult, and with so little chance to earn some money and experience along the way.
It’s not only about allowing international students the opportunity to earn some spending money and reduce the financial burden we place on our families when we come to study in the US (although that is a big part of why the current work authorisation policies irk me). It’s also about taking away the opportunities to gain relevant, full-time work experience from international students and thus intentionally putting us at another disadvantage to domestic students. More than anything, it’s about an exploitative policy that wants to take as much money as it can from international students (so much so that international students are “keeping US colleges afloat” ) and combat the country’s STEM crisis by recruiting more international students who pursue studies in STEM fields, while giving back to us as little as possible, and doing very little to make our life in the US comfortable or even fair.
Credit Histories and Personal Loans Present Terrifying Catch-22s
Another subtle way in which US laws and immigration regulations put international students at a financial disadvantage is by preventing us from gaining financial credit histories through a perfect paradox.
This is a general flaw in the financial system, especially in the US: You need a credit history to get credit cards and loans, and you need credit cards and loans to build a credit history. New college students generally have neither. However, domestic students generally have a way to bypass this catch-22 by using their parents’ credit histories as leverage. International students aren’t allowed to do that, and so find themselves in a frustrating dilemma that leaves them with a significant financial hurdle.
At larger universities, especially, it becomes essential for a student to own a car or be able to rent an apartment – neither of which you can do easily if you have no credit history. International students are, thus, forced to pay up front, or pay higher than fair prices, as a last resort, because how do you survive travelling across a campus spread through a large city every day without a car?
There is no policy in place to help international students to transition into the American financial system and bypass these infuriating impossibilities. International students are expected to pay state and federal taxes and buy stuff that we need to live (and thus put money into the US economy), and there is no system available to assist us, in any way at all; No system to support us in obtaining some of the financial services that are essential to a young adult. If that isn’t blatant exploitation, I do not know what is.
International students are fuelling the US financial system. In the 2014-15 year, we funnelled $30 billion into the US economy. We are a more valuable asset to the US than policymakers care to admit. And yet, we face some of the most explicitly discriminatory and exploitative policies of them all, and are expected to accept them without question. Well, I am done being complicit in my own oppression, so here’s my question: why does the US want to benefit from international students’ achievements and finances without providing us the least bit of assistance, and how is that a fair system?
