The Bottom Line
It is old news that in April, twelve international students at UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) had their F-1 visas cancelled by the United States Department of Justice, following President Trump’s aim to revoke more than 1500 international student visas across the United States. However, this story remains as pertinent as ever. After this news spread throughout UCSB, and as the Office of International Student and Scholars (OISS) distributed an email chain recommending against traveling outside the country, panic enveloped the international student population.
A few weeks after the occurrence of these unfortunate events, all but one visa was suddenly reinstated, allegedly due to pressures from the U.S. Courts. According to KSBY News, ten out of the affected students are currently studying at UCSB, seven of whom are undergraduates, and one of them is a recent alumnus. The status of the twelfth student remains unconfirmed to this day.
One such undergraduate student, whose visa was revoked and then reinstated two weeks later, told his story in an interview with The Bottom Line (TBL). Siwei Liu, a first-year undergraduate from China studying physics, had, for lack of a better word, an unpleasant encounter with a patrol agent as he was crossing the U.S. border. On his way back to UCSB from his spring break in China, Liu had all the proper and necessary documents to enter the country legally: his passport, his I-20, and his F-1 visa.
Nevertheless, he was stopped by an agent, who proceeded to inform him that Liu could not enter the United States to return to his studies, because his visa had been terminated. Liu, having received no prior communication regarding this from the OISS or any other university official before being interrogated at the border, was, to say the least, confused.
According to Liu, the agents took him to a small holding room with one bed, a table, and a chair, and left him there to wait for nine hours. After this long while, the agents came to tell him that his visa was terminated because he had been expelled from UCSB. This was not only a shock to Liu, since he had never received any emails or confirmation about this, but also turned out to be false.
When asked about his academic and social track records at UCSB, Liu assured TBL that he was attending all his classes, maintaining an impressive 3.4 GPA within his area of study, and avoiding any protests or political activism on campus. Liu’s parents had met all the deadlines to pay for his studies, and Liu had never faced any academic or conduct probation. In short, there was no reason why Liu would have been expelled, much less without any official communication from the university.
When Liu told the agents just that, they got angry and accused him of lying. To anyone who is unfamiliar with professional border patrol etiquette, this is not part of the standard procedure; moreover, in legal terms, it (dangerously) resembles intimidation. Afraid that he was misunderstanding the agents, Liu asked them if they could provide him with a translator to facilitate more productive communication, since English is not his native language, to which the officers dismissively responded, “What kind of UCSB student doesn’t speak English?”
After much deliberation, Border Patrol finally decided to let Liu enter the United States on Form I-515A, a document that is issued when an international student has a legal issue with their visa and permits them entry to the United States for a thirty-day grace period. With that temporary admission, international students must reapply for a new I-20 within a month; otherwise, their non-compliance could lead to serious consequences, including potential deportation.
In Liu’s case, he was lucky enough to get his visa reinstated about two weeks after he entered the United States in early April. In the present day, he is continuing his academic journey at UCSB, enjoying the opportunity to remain with the friends and community he has found here. When asked if he wants to stay at UCSB for all four years of his undergraduate studies, he said, “Of course. I don’t want to leave. Though I am now [hesitant] to remain at UCSB because of this negative experience.” He also expressed his dissatisfaction with UCSB’s communication on this matter, since he was kept in the dark about his visa revocation until after it was too late.
It is easy to understand and share Liu’s concerns. Other international students all across the United States are now cancelling their tickets to their home countries for summer vacations, retracting their membership from political clubs and organizations at their respective universities, and keeping their real names off newspaper articles.
When an individual’s right to speak freely is jeopardized, especially in a country that prides itself on its liberty of expression, one is bound to reflect on the current state of politics. They must ask themselves what the current administration’s goal is: to uphold the democratic principles that the United States was built on or to take things a little too far to the right? Most of all, it is worth thinking about just how much more “right” this nation can shift before reaching a point of no return?