Watching injustice from afar is always difficult, but being torn between two worlds and still expected to be grateful for it is even worse. As we face a massive shift of political narratives around the world, including in the U.S., it has become much harder to stay silent or be silenced, when the world around you is literally burning.
Every international student is to some extent torn between two different worlds: their home and their new environment. Each of us tries to find a sense of comfort and belonging in these two worlds. With President Donald Trump in office, re-emerging as a major political force, promising to limit immigration by securing the border or completely shut down the Department of Education, we are constantly reminded of how dangerous it can be to stay silent. We have seen it before.
In November 2023, I had a midterm at Ithaca College, the same day my hometown in Odesa, Ukraine, had no electricity because of a massive missile attack. I walked into the classroom after a quick phone call with my mom, making sure that she and my dad were holding up. I smiled at my professor and told her that I was doing well. While my country was on fire, I was forced to watch it burn from afar. When the political climate in the U.S. gets intense, we can’t do anything — can’t vote, can’t protest. Our right to stay here depends on how useful we are to this country, and through it all, we’re expected to smile and be grateful, as if survival alone is a privilege.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, I have heard the same phrase told to me over and over again: “You’ve got to be grateful for the opportunities you have, that your house wasn’t bombed and for something that many weren’t fortunate to experience, because Russia took away their lives.” Those words always hit hard. International students are forced to follow the narrative of being grateful, having opportunities that others who come from our nation don’t have, or constantly being called “the lucky ones.” It feels like I am shamed by my people for getting out of a small and unstable town, while also being shamed by others who can’t accept me for coming to a new country.
What people don’t see is the survivor’s guilt — the feeling of helplessness and deeply enrooted trauma that comes from being misplaced, torn away from your world, even if it was your choice to some extent. In those moments, gratitude becomes a mask that hides those issues, a protective mechanism that helps us keep going and build new lives. However, today it almost feels weird to admit your struggles to someone who is also international and has been through so much, because it feels like betraying the opportunities you were given.
What is very dangerous about the newly emerging American rhetoric is the anti-international, anti-immigration narratives. Ultimately, those only push the U.S. to further forget how much the rest of the world is dependent on them and how all foreign politics are interconnected. We have seen it happen before with Russia, Hitler’s Germany, or even the USSR: one nation deciding to separate from the rest of the world, creating new policies and rules, and establishing the narrative of a deeply authoritarian government. And we’ve seen where those narratives led us: to war, political imprisonment, authoritarianism and ultimate destruction. I find it very disturbing to see that the nation that has always advocated for freedom of speech, democracy and opportunities for everyone, is choosing to stick to this narrative again.
The part no one talks about is that international students carry both privilege and pain. While we are forced to be strong and grateful despite the political and personal issues occurring around us, we are also quietly grieving the version of ourselves that we left behind. And that is what makes us human.
My good friend from Odesa once told me, “I miss you deeply, but I’m cheering for every opportunity you’ve embraced. I stayed not because I didn’t have the chance to leave, but because I chose to remain. And you left because you had to.” Her words haunt me to this day. They remind me that while some of us became the face of our country abroad, others stayed to become its backbone. Both choices are acts of resistance and prove that we belong in this country too.
