America has always been more than a country to me. It is a symbol of freedom and opportunity, a magnet drawing people from every walk of life, a dream I clung to from a young age. Perhaps it was because I had seen others fulfill this dream before me, including my own family. I listened to the stories of my father’s achievements — from a hockey scholarship to working across the country and overseas — and to the perils of his grandparents, escaping the Irish famine and religious persecution in Germany. To me, the American Dream was never abstract; it was lived, tested, and worth fighting for. That was why I came here: Where better to pursue that dream than in the land that has always claimed to embody it?
My dream became a reality with the opportunity to study at Harvard. Education is to pursue one’s passions, to broaden horizons, and to open doors many can only dream of. No one is more grateful for that possibility than those who have left everything behind to seize it. International students are constantly reminded of the stark contrasts between cultures, from societal values to standards of living, and carry the weight of the expectation to make the most of a privilege we have fought so hard to secure.
I soon discovered how fragile that privilege can be.
International students — people like me, who have crossed oceans and taken a leap of faith – were suddenly recast not as individuals striving for knowledge but as faceless pawns. In moments of political pressure, we became pieces in a larger chess game, serving “as a warning” to academic institutions and all those who don’t fall in line with the administration’s agenda. Yet, this fragility is not new — the pandemic reminded us of who is the most exposed. With borders closing, students were stranded away from their families. Upon leaving the country, there was no guarantee of a return to normalcy; it was the first time I had not seen my father in over a year. Even as classrooms shifted online, questions of visas and deportation loomed larger than questions of learning. It was a sobering reminder that during a crisis, those who cross borders are the first to be exposed.
Medical needs came before personal plight, and the policies to fight the pandemic were harsh, but reasonable. The same cannot be said about the current approach. In an effort to protect national security and prioritize American students, the administration has actively made it harder for foreign students to study in the U.S. However, the instinct of building walls and prioritizing short-term security over cooperation is misleading — history shows this pattern clearly. After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles punished and isolated Germany, breeding resentment that destabilized Europe and set the stage for another conflict. After World War II, the United States chose a different path: Through the Marshall Plan, it extended an open hand rather than a closed fist, laying the foundation for decades of mutual prosperity. Growing up in Austria, I was taught a sense of responsibility to learn from our history, both the good and bad, to secure a brighter future and prevent past mistakes. History reminds us that in moments of fear and fracture, openness is most needed, and bridges — not walls — are what hold societies together.
Openness has always been inseparable from freedom in my mind. It appeared to me as the driving factor which allowed for Europe to unite and prosper, and a lack of it as a cause for separation and conflict. I experience it traveling across Europe, crossing borders without a second thought — a once unthinkable feat made possible through the Schengen Agreement. This achievement rests on the Europeans and help from the United States who, after 1945, chose cooperation over revenge. But freedom is never self-sustaining, it must be earned.
My father served in Vietnam; his father before him in the Pacific Theater. They were among the many who left the comfort of home to put their lives on the line for others, rallying under a banner that proclaimed freedom and security. Their sacrifices remind me that liberty — be it the freedom of speech or the right to an education — is built on collective efforts and must be defended, renewed, and extended. And so it pains me to see the same flag they fought under turned against those who now wish to live that dream: people who come not to undermine America, but to carry forward the very freedoms previous generations shed blood for.
My own education is proof of what diversity makes possible. Within Harvard’s liberal arts program, my array of classes — philosophy, performing arts, behavioral economics, data analysis, and Middle Eastern politics — may seem unrelated, yet each expands my perspective in unexpected ways. The true value lies not in the subjects alone, but in the connections between them, the realizations that make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Among these discoveries, studying Arabic from scratch was the most humbling. Each encounter with a fellow student, professor, or native speaker with a story of their own was a reminder of how much more there was to learn. But it is precisely this humility that openness teaches: Resilience comes not from believing we have all the answers, but from embracing how much remains unknown.
Yet that openness is fragile. A friend of mine decided to spend his summer on campus, advancing promising cancer research. However, he was forced to abandon his project when visa complications cut off his funding. His loss was not simply personal; it rippled outward into his lab, his field, and the patients who may have benefitted from his discoveries.
It’s easy to focus on the changes around us — friends afraid to return home, professors being removed from positions, losing core programs to funding cuts — but stories like his are multiplied across the country, and their collective weight is staggering. International students inject nearly $44 billion into the U.S. economy annually and support over 378,000 jobs. They also fuel innovation: 44% of U.S. “unicorn” startup founders are immigrants, and since 2000, roughly 40% of Nobel Prizes in U.S. sciences have been awarded to immigrants. These are not coincidences, they are the dividends of a nation-wide openness.
Harvard’s global leadership, too, rests on its ability to convene brilliant minds from every corner of the world. Restricting that access does not just harm individuals, it hollows out the institutions and innovations that give the United States its creative and resilient reputation.
We may be only small cogs in a much larger machine, but international students embody the very act of bridging divides. By necessity, we learn adaptability and tenacity — navigating new languages, cultures, and systems. In doing so, we become living proof that difference does not have to cause fractures; instead, it can connect.
That truth is most visible not in statistics but in daily life. Belonging is built in late-night conversations that cross cultures, in classrooms where perspectives sharpen through debate, and in friendships that remind us that diversity is not empty decoration but the substance of learning. These ties cannot be reduced to visa categories or tuition dollars. They are the quiet and resilient networks that institutions like Harvard cultivate, and that nations like the United States have long drawn strength from.
History and experience point in the same direction: The free movement of people and ideas builds not only prosperity but also resilience. It made my own journey possible, and it is the same principle that, time and again, has proven difficult yet indispensable. Lowering barriers does more than strengthen economies; it sustains the freedoms for which earlier generations fought for.
Guardrails and protections will always be necessary, but they must target specific individuals and real risks, instead of casting suspicion on entire groups. When safety measures harden into sweeping generalizations, they erode trust, alienate communities, and hollow out the very values they claim to defend.
America now stands at a crossroads. It can retreat behind walls — reducing international students to pawns and closing the very doors that once fueled its strength — or it can choose openness, allowing difference, discovery, and belonging to flourish. Welcoming talented young internationals is not charity — it is precisely what this country is built on, and it remains the driving force of the American Dream.
