Feature | The Loneliness of Immigrant Theatermakers
Being in the news is not the same as being seen
I. Me, afraid again
If you are fortunate enough to not be an immigrant in the United States, you probably can’t relate to the insanity that it is getting a new visa approved while living here. Applying for it is a costly, anxiety-inducing process, but if you stay here, you’re fine. If you leave, though, you must go to a U.S. consulate and get that visa stamped in your passport—a separate costly, anxiety-inducing process I’ve written about at length. My many cycles in that merry-go-round were traumatic enough that, after my fourth visa (they expire quite frequently), I said “never again—green card or bust.” So, in 2023, I got one (which, granted, is still not as a “safe” as citizenship) and declared the struggle over: I was to never again feel fear living, working, or traveling as a resident of this country.
And yet… this past December, I went to Brazil to spend a month with my family, and as the date of my return approached, I felt myself dreading it. During my vacation, someone shared, in a group chat I am part of, news of the pause on immigrant visa processing for 75 countries:
President Trump has made clear that immigrants must be financially self-sufficient and not be a financial burden to Americans. The Department of State is undergoing a full review of all screening and vetting policies to ensure that immigrants from high-risk countries do not unlawfully utilize welfare in the United States or become a public charge.
The list of “high-risk countries” included the one I was in. Would that impact my re-entry? My lawyer said no: I already have a green card and I’m not a Brazilian citizen (I was born in Argentina). The internet, on the other hand, said yes: tales of green card holders being detained abound. I am very public about my pro-immigration advocacy, so I felt particularly vulnerable. I put together a safety plan, letting two friends and my lawyer know where I was supposed to be at any given moment, and what to do if they didn’t hear from me. Most people—in both countries—kept telling me “nothing’s gonna happen.” I felt like I was being dramatic. I also felt like other people were not being dramatic enough.
My re-entry into the U.S. ended up being very smooth, though, and it now dawns on me that I had been worrying about the wrong thing: what I should have prepared for instead, perhaps, was how lonely I was going to feel upon my return.
II. Dalida, the unwilling exile
Back in Brazil, when I was freaking out at that group chat text, another country that caught my eye on the list of immigrant visa pauses was Egypt. One of my closest friends, Dalida, is Egyptian (Dalida is not her real name; like that of everyone else in this article, it has been changed for her safety) and has yet to secure her green card. This ordinance, as I understood it, meant she now couldn’t get one. I texted her: “How are you holding up?” Her answer came quickly: “I feel frozen and stuck.” I called her, and we ended up talking for a long time.
Dalida moved to the United States in 2013, fired up by the Egyptian Revolution: “We were seeing change in our country, and censorship was (slightly) not around, so I asked myself, ‘How can art play a role in that [change]?’ I was very adamant that I was gonna go study the craft of theater properly and then come back to contribute to the cultural and artistic revolution that was taking place.” She was accepted into multiple dramaturgy MFA programs in the U.S.; there was, in fact, a bidding war between two schools to see who could secure her. What for an American would be nothing but a source of pride, for her it turned into an anxiety spiral: up to the last minute, she did not know which school to choose, and her passport ended up with the stamp of the one that lost. She was afraid she was not going to be let in due to the mismatch and that she had ruined a very good thing. It ended up working out (the agent at the border was thankfully understanding)... but that was only the beginning of her visa woes.
After school, in 2017, she used her Optional Practical Training (the year of work authorization that international students get as part of their visa to complete their education) to work in one of the biggest theatrical organizations in the U.S., one that provides services to theaters all around the country. Early on, she received assurances from leadership that, once her student visa expired, they would sponsor her; she took them at their word, especially because the company was big on DEI (which at the time put them ahead of the curve) and had a whole department dedicated to international artists. For nine months, it was a great job.
Then, three months before her visa expired, Dalida got pulled into a room to speak with HR:
They’re like, “We’re not gonna be able to sponsor you. We retained a lawyer for two hundred dollars, and he told us this would be a liability—that if we ever need to terminate you within the next three years, we’re gonna have to fly you home.” And I say, “I don’t care, I can pay for [my own] ticket,” but they’re not having it. “No, sorry, this is just a business decision.” It gets heated, so I get pulled into the executive director‘s office—he took it really personally that I was unhappy. He’s said, “I don’t owe you anything,” and I try to explain, “You strung me along for nine months. I didn’t even get a chance to work on a portfolio for dramaturgy to be able to apply for a visa on my own.” And the HR lady pipes in, “I don’t know what the issue is. I thought you could just renew your visa.” I’m like, “Woman, we’ve been talking about this for nine months! What do you mean? Renew WHAT visa?” And they keep going back to how much they paid the lawyer for this opinion.
For what it’s worth: No, Dalida could not “just renew” her visa, as it was attached to her school program, from which she had graduated. The fact that they had felt comfortable operating on an unproven assumption about her status baffled her, considering the company’s stated values. In fact, Dalida’s reliance on said values proved to be the cruelest part of it all: despite her protests to the contrary, she was forced to attend a DEI retreat the week after she was told the news—and was forbidden from discussing her situation with colleagues. Immigration getting lost in DEI conversations is a complaint I’ve heard from multiple members of the community; it does not seem to register as an issue to Americans who would otherwise think of themselves as open-minded and compassionate.
As she left the company, Dalida wrote a letter to the whole staff explaining what had happened; while she can’t remember the exact wording, she does recall including a line that said something to the effect of: “I’ve learned from my colleagues that DEI should be woven into our day-to-day practice, and that there’s no such thing as a pure business decision that is not also a values decision—these things go hand in hand.” This earned her another visit to HR, where the manager, a “middle-aged white lady,” cried: “She said, ‘I feel that this line is an attack on me,’ and I said ‘Yeah, it is.’ She said she was hurt. And I’m like, ‘You fucked up my life, and you’re hurt? From a line in a letter?’”
Upon leaving the company, she met a producer who put her on a J1 visa as a “visiting artist” if she would work for him. The job was not good—“I was working 9am to 12am every day, often weekends, for $700 a month, putting up with tantrums by this old German man”—but it did give her a year to do what she had not been able to do before: putting together a portfolio of work to apply to the O1-B visa, also known as “Alien of Extraordinary Abilities in the Arts.” She got it approved in 2018, and this gave her freedom—not just from angry German men, but from visa sponsors altogether. She could now work for whomever she wanted (as long as it was in the theatrical field), without anyone holding her status over her head.
Her only fear was traveling home. She had not left the U.S. under this new visa yet, and there was always the risk that agents at the consulate would not stamp it on her passport. Lest that seem a far-fetched concern, I witnessed it personally when I worked at an Off-Broadway company: our PR rep, a lovely Irish woman, went to visit her family for the holidays and never came back, as the agents at the consulate deemed that her job was not aligned with what her visa said she did (being a writer) and refused to stamp it. A critic from the New York Times even wrote a letter intervening on her behalf, and it still did not change their mind—she lost her life in New York in the blink of an eye. I remember that scaring the shit out of me: what if someone objected to my day job the next time I went to get my visa stamped? Dalida’s concern was thankfully unwarranted; she took a chance and went to Cairo for a friend’s wedding in 2019, and it all turned out fine: “The lady at the consulate was so confused—she was like ‘you live there, you work there, what do you need from me?’ Even she thought the stamp process was crazy.”
In 2021, she renewed it; her career as a dramaturg continued to take off, as she created a festival for immigrant work, worked at a theater specializing in Middle Eastern theater, and started teaching at a big university. Then, in the summer of 2023, she came across a posting for the job of her dreams: Literary Manager at one of the U.S.’s most prestigious theaters. “I’m usually a person who looks at their cover letter no less than five times before applying,” she told me, “but for this one I didn’t, because I knew I wasn’t gonna get it—everyone told me I wasn’t gonna get it.” Then she got an interview. She was very open with the institution about her visa situation, as she did not want it to become an issue later, but they had no problem with it. During the interview process, however, her brother got married in Egypt. She wanted to attend the wedding, but she did not have her latest visa stamped. She tried to book an appointment at the U.S. consulate in Cairo, but the system kept crashing. She was afraid of going and then not being able to come back, because even if she got an appointment, there was no guarantee the agents would approve her visa—and now the dream job was at stake…
She ended up getting the job, but at the cost of attending the wedding online. This weighed heavily on her. It had by then been five years since she had been back to Egypt, which she still calls “home”—and I can tell she means it, because she uses the word without thinking, whereas I have to do a bunch of math before I pronounce it. Going back, for Dalida, meant endangering her life here; not only because of the visa hassles, but also because she started working on a big project about an Egyptian dissident. What if the Egyptian government decided to punish her? Having a green card felt like the only safe way to visit—a strong tie to America that would allow her to come back safely if things back home proved unfriendly. She found a lawyer, who considered her case to be very strong, and they submitted an application for the EB-1 (an “Alien of Extraordinary Abilities” green card, basically) in July 2024, very confident that her incredible trajectory in the field would earn her an approval.
It didn’t: the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services agency (USCIS) responded with a Request for Further Evidence, basically questioning Dalida’s professional credits and asking for more “proof” of her Extraordinary Abilities. She was not alone: since the Biden administration, USCIS has been overwhelmed with cases, and I started hearing from lawyers that cases submitted via Premium Processing (like Dalida’s) were getting reflexive RFEs; some suspected it was to buy them time to respond. That in itself would be incredibly unfair, since Premium Processing—which guarantees a response in 15 days (as opposed to the regular decision, which does not have a deadline and can stretch out for months or even years)—costs around $3K. But, to add insult to injury, Dalida’s lawyer noted that the response was nonsensical in multiple points, and he suspected it had been generated by Artificial Intelligence (USCIS does disclose that it uses AI in case reviews, but the extent of that use is unclear). I’ve also heard this complaint from more than one member of our community; the firm Reddy Neumann Brown PC even posted about both phenomena, noting: “It has become increasingly apparent that USCIS is relying more heavily on automated systems and artificial intelligence tools in adjudication… premium processing has increasingly become a fast track not to approval, but to 1) An immediate, poorly reasoned RFE, followed by 2) A swift denial that appears to ignore the RFE response entirely.”
This scenario was exactly what happened to Dalida—despite submitting a detailed response to the RFE, USCIS denied her case on the same grounds it had previously questioned it. Her lawyer did get her a third O-1 visa so she could stay in the country, but she was devastated. And then the immigration visa pause came. She panicked. Her lawyer eventually explained to her that while, yes, Egyptians are barred from seeking green cards for the moment, that would not apply to her, as she is in the U.S. already. But what chances does she have of getting the green card approved if she reapplies under the current administration? And what chances does she have of getting her current O-1 visa stamped at the consulate if she does travel home? Both things are technically possible, but now that Egypt is in the crosshairs of the U.S. government, the chances feel even lower.
She says she does not feel like the ordinance disrupted her life, but rather that her life “has been put on pause, and that pause is not ending.” The only way to end it would be to make a definitive choice between her life here and her life in Egypt—one that, now that she’s been away for almost seven years—may be happening purely due to inertia:
Every time I talk to my friends and family back home, I feel they’re in a world I don’t know, because I’m not in it. I always thought I’d have a wedding in Egypt, if I ever got married—but if I did that now, who would show up? I lost my grandmother while I wasn’t there, I lost my uncle, I don’t know who else I’m gonna lose… people are getting older. I have nephews I’ve never met, and they’re like six years old now. So if I chose home, I’d be choosing a place that’s practically unrecognizable to me now.
She feels like an exile, and not of her own volition. “Being an exile because of my political beliefs back home could have been a choice,” she says—but this is different. This feels like it happened to her. “I didn’t know that the last time I went home was going to be the last time.”
III. Sofía, from bridge to liability
After my talk with Dalida, I wondered if this issue—the impact of the government’s actions on immigrant artists—was getting any attention in the news… which, in retrospect, was not a query I should have pursued if I wanted to keep my spirits up. To my dismay, the national conversation about immigration still found a way to center Americans: anti-ICE protesters, celebrities, and politicians—all born here and holders of a U.S. passport—stood as acceptable proxies for us because of the stances they took about us. When non-Americans were mentioned, it was in the context of how international artists would not be able to perform here—a bad situation that mostly affects… Americans, it seems (the article I linked to literally ends with the quote “Why isolate the American people from this [cultural exchange]?”) I felt low-key crazy. Was I imagining a problem where there was none?
I emailed the members of the initiative I co-founded a couple of years ago, asking if anyone had stories to share, and that’s how I met Sofía. Sofía is a fellow South American, from Chile—though she grew up in the U.S. and was, for a time, a child actor at one of this country’s biggest regional theaters. But when she was twelve, her family returned to Chile, and she eventually lost her green card (which, in general, does not allow holders to spend more than a year outside of the country).
As an adult, she became a visual artist, focusing on recycling; she says her practice allowed her to travel through Latin America, doing exhibitions and building a “giant portfolio.” She eventually applied to an MFA in Set Design at a big school in New York, and got offered a full tuition fellowship, which she attributes to the fact that she “was older and had a big body of work.” So she came, on a student visa, in 2018—and graduated during the pandemic shutdown. She used her OPT time to volunteer, sewing hospital gowns, while investigating the possibility of staying on an O-1 visa. She figured it would be a challenge, since her work is multidisciplinary, and her history does not neatly fit together: she had a background in visual arts, a master’s in set design, and a year of volunteer work for hospital workers. Is there a visa for that?
Sofía found a lawyer who assured her the O-1 was the right fit for her… and then “scammed” her, submitting a case “full of screenshots of things that had nothing to do with me,” which got denied. She found another lawyer, an immigrant, who helped her out of the situation and got her case approved—but by then, she had lost a year. To her dismay, the people who had offered her work were upset at her over what happened:
When we first spoke, it was the middle of the pandemic, so all these Americans were saying, “Of course, it’s so difficult for immigrants right now, we have this project, we’ll include you.” But when I reached out to those same people to let them know my lawyer scammed me, they either didn’t respond or got mad at me, like “You should have this figured out by now.” It made me feel like shit. So when I went out to try and rebuild my network, I started from this inferior place—it was a big psychological toll, it really impacted my self-esteem.
It took two years, but by the end of 2024, she felt like she had finally gotten over that experience: she was working steadily, and one of the plays she worked on, in Philadelphia, was a big hit. She began to consider how, in her own words, she could “act as a bridge” between her two countries; she saw American productions touring Chile but not leaving behind any know-how, and she wanted its theater industry to become more professional (“set design,” she points out, “does not exist as a career in Chile.”) As her O-1 neared expiration, she talked to her lawyer about moving on to a green card—but, due to the result of the latest presidential election, her attorney recommended she choose the safest path and just renew the work visa, so that the riskier green card case would not be the thing that determined whether she could stay in the U.S.
She went to Chile for the holidays in December 2024, then stayed on to work on a project through early 2025. In March, she got news from her lawyer that her O-1 renewal was approved. Sofía, unlike Dalida or me, did not have to appear for an interview at the consulate to get her passport stamped with the new visa: U.S. visa applicants in Chile could often do what was called a “drop box,” mailing in their passports to get them back with the stamp. According to Sofía, the U.S. consulate’s website said she was eligible for it, so she sent everything in April; it arrived at the consulate on a Friday… and a rejection was issued next Monday. The consulate was refusing to stamp her passport because they wanted her to do an in-person interview (a new process that has since then become standard).
It was a very uncertain, confusing time in Chile, Sofía told me: the news was full of Chileans whose visas were revoked just as they were about to board flights to the U.S. She figured something similar was up with her case, so she trained for the interview with her lawyer and took all the documents she was asked to—but it didn’t end up mattering:
I come in, and there’s this bald, big white man, and he’s like, “So who do you think you are? Some kind of important artist?” He’s trying to intimidate me, get me confused. He brought up that I lived in the U.S. as a kid, asking, “Why did you lose your green card?” That had nothing to do with my visa petition! Then he goes, “So, what kind of achievements do you think you have?”, and I start listing them, but he stops me: “I don’t really care.” He asks me who I live with, and I say my boyfriend in New York, so he asks, “Where would you call home?” And I’m trying to explain, “Well, I have an apartment in New York and my family’s in Chile, and I have a property in Chile…” He ends the interview. I ask how long it would take to get an answer, but he just says, “Don’t count on ever coming back to the U.S.”
In spite of that answer, the consulate still retained her passport for 30 days—and then returned it without a stamp. The official response was that her application had been refused because of “immigrant intent,” which the government defines as failure to demonstrate “that you have strong ties to your home country that will compel you to leave the United States at the end of your temporary stay.” O-1 visas, however, are part of what’s known as “dual intent” visas—the duo being whatever the purpose of the visa is (tourism, work, study, etcetera) and to live here. While an applicant for an O-1 does have to show they intend to leave the U.S. at the end of their visa term, they shouldn’t be penalized for changing their minds… key word being “shouldn’t,” because like so many other parts of this system, it’s open to consular discretion.
Sofia and her lawyer immediately set about fighting it. It was a really hard time for her; she tears up talking about it: “I had a nervous breakdown. Between the weight of what happened with the [lawyer who scammed her], then this… I went blank for five months. I was like ‘I’m nothing.’ The whole thing was so violent.” It’s a particular feature of achievement-based visas that they can cut to the core like that; I myself remember, when a lawyer told me I wasn’t ready for the green card, feeling like she was basically saying, “All you’ve done is not enough.” Bureaucracy and legality can turn into personal indictments of one’s career. Sofía moved to her family’s house and focused on her physical and mental health—not just for survival, but because there was nothing else she could do: “By then, I’d lost all the projects I had scheduled in the U.S. for that year.”
She monitored the news throughout 2025. By November, it felt like the situation with the denials had calmed down, so—hoping this spelled good news for her own case—she went back to the consulate. Upon reviewing her case, Sofía says the agent who was interviewing her turned off the mic and turned around; she could hear her saying, “Another one of [the previous agent’s name]’s people.” Sofía assumed this meant the man who had interviewed her last time had built a reputation for treating applicants unfairly. The agent basically confirmed as much, telling Sofía that her petition had been denied for an invalid reason, but that the consulate was not able to reverse it at this moment, since the previous agent had also sent a notice to USCIS to say that Sofía was ineligible and that her O-1 approval should be revoked at their level. The consulate needed to deal with that first before they could re-evaluate Sofía’s case.
She’s yet to hear from them.
Sofía’s living out Dalida’s nightmare: an approved case in the U.S., but no visa stamp after visiting home. She’s lost a year already of the three-year visa she spent thousands of dollars and hours getting, and she feels, in her own words, “ripped off,” because she “sacrificed a lot doing things correctly.” She keeps getting job offers for plays she designed that are having new productions, opportunities that could really help her career, and she can’t take them.
Looking back to when she graduated from her MFA program, Sofía is questioning the narratives she was given: “You get told: this is the path—assist so and so, network, create work, and eventually you’ll make it. But I can’t follow that path; every time I’ve tried, it’s gotten stumped on or cut off. And when I talk to Americans about it, they go, ‘I’m sorry that happened, the U.S. sucks!’ But you don’t fit into their path anymore, so you are looked at as a liability.”
IV. Frank, his dream deferred
The story that took this article from something I was interested in writing to something I knew I had to write was Frank’s. In fact, I received news of his situation while I was still in Brazil, only a few days after that group chat incident: he wrote to tell me that he was not going to be able to come to the U.S. after all.
I first met Frank two years ago, when a colleague attended an international playwrights conference in Harare, Zimbabwe, and fell in love with his play. She sent it to me, wondering if I’d be open to spreading the word about Frank’s work in New York; I asked her to introduce us, and we had our first video call, six time zones apart. Frank is somewhat shy, and his answers to my questions were all short and to the point; I left that call unsure of whether this was someone I could work with. But then, in his follow-up email, he displayed a sensitivity that surprised me—and thus started a beautiful 21st-century pen palship, in which we traded plays and feedback with an intimacy almost unwarranted for two strangers separated by an ocean.
At the time of that first call, in 2024, Frank was still juggling his career as a human rights lawyer with a nascent passion for playwriting; it was his sister who pushed him to submit something to the playwrights conference—which, in his case, also meant writing it, because he had never penned a script before. To his surprise, the festival liked the play, so he spent two weeks—as he called it—“being grilled dramaturgically.” The process of writing that script, then hearing it out loud in front of an audience, was “life-changing” for him: from that point on, he knew that’s what he wanted to do, so he quit his job.
But theater is not an established industry in Harare, so there wasn’t a clear path to follow after taking that step; thus, from our earliest conversations, Frank expressed to me a desire to move to the U.S. I saw a lot of myself in him, which is why I pushed back a bit, making sure he (unlike me, when I was in his shoes) knew what he was getting into. But (also like me when I was in his shoes), he remained firm that this was the place for him. With the help of the festival, he applied to several grad school programs, and in early 2025, he was admitted—with a full scholarship—to the one I myself moved to this country for. His story brought me hope: it was my own, with some details changed, but with the same optimism that fueled so much of my journey—an optimism I sometimes miss after ten years of jaded experiences.
But, as it turns out, he would become jaded much earlier on.
After getting admitted to a U.S. school, international students must secure a visa, which often involves proving that they can pay for all expenses throughout the duration of the program without having to work. Frank not only had the full ride, but the playwright’s conference in Harare generously offered to take care of his living expenses, so he had a strong case; those of us rooting for him were confident he’d have no issues. But we did not foresee that a much simpler problem could arise: the U.S. consulate assigned him an interview date that was after the start of his program. Frank tried to negotiate with both entities, but neither would budge: the consulate rejected his application for an expedited appointment, citing “policy,” and the school would not allow him to start later than the rest of his cohort—they advised him to defer his acceptance to the following year. Eventually, he deferred, planning to go through with the original interview and secure his visa for next year with time to spare.
But in August 2025 (when most of his would-be colleagues were settling in New York to start their MFA journey), a second roadblock appeared: the U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe stopped issuing most visas. The reason is quite vague; according to their website,
The Department of State is committed to ensuring that its visa process upholds the highest standards for U.S. national security and public safety. We are currently reviewing and evaluating existing screening and vetting procedures worldwide.
Zimbabwean applicants like Frank were directed to a consulate in South Africa—which Frank describes as a “deterrent,” because he had to pay for transport to, and accommodation in, a place where he has no relatives or acquaintances. And most alarming: “You have no idea when they’ll give you your passport back, and you can’t cross back to Zimbabwe without your passport.” Basically: if he went through with it, he would be potentially trapped in South Africa until a decision was reached—and potentially waste the money that went into consulate fees, travel, and lodging should his visa get denied. But again, the playwright conference came to his aid, buying his plane ticket to Johannesburg and booking him a hotel.
Then, in January 2026, a little under two months before Frank’s visa interview, another roadblock came along—one that was seemingly uncrossable: the U.S. partially suspended visas (including student ones) for Zimbabweans as part of a larger “travel ban” for 39 countries that sought to “protect our nation and its citizens by using rigorous, security-focused screening and vetting procedures to ensure that individuals approved for a visa do not endanger national security or public safety.”
That’s when Frank emailed me:
Hi Francisco,
How are you doing? Happy new year!
I just wanted to check in and ask how you’re doing since it’s been a while. How’s work and the writing and everything? Are you working on anything exciting these days?
I’m doing well on this side, considering. I’m sure you’ve heard about the recent Trump decrees partially suspending visas for Zimbabwe and other countries. It looks like my chances of coming there are much slimmer now, but I’m still going to go to the visa interview, just in case there’s a glitch in the system or something.
I hope you’re having a good new year so far,
Frank
The email is classic Frank: If I were him, I’d write something filled with cusswords at this country and all who have anything to do with it—but instead, he asks about my work and roots for glitches in the system. His optimism seemed unshakeable; even when I spoke to him for this article, closer to his interview date, he maintained that he’d go through with it because it was not a guaranteed no (which he was correct about—the government’s language is vague enough to allow for some doubt). He called it “a roll of the dice.”
I pressed him: How did he feel throughout the whole thing? He couldn’t be happy about it! He opened up, the only time I’ve ever heard him express a negative feeling in the whole time I’ve known him:
Yeah… It’s very discouraging. Because the whole thing feels malicious, like there’s a real agenda against Zimbabweans, [or] Africans in general. You can’t help but feel like someone definitely doesn’t want you [in the U.S.], like all the legalese is trying to cover up a policy that says “we don’t really want you here.” I mean, the first time [when the dates did not line up], I got really depressed because I was really looking forward to it. And then [when the travel ban went into effect], I was like, “I should have expected this.” It’s just a steady rate of disappointment.
That feeling, “I should have expected this,” is one I’ve heard from other immigrants and have felt myself. It’s part of the madness of the immigration game: the rules are incredibly confusing and often arbitrary, but it can still feel like it’s my fault when things don’t go my way. “I should have known better,” I catch myself thinking. “Who am I to dream this high? Who am I to say I deserve to go to this school or to work at this institution or to live in this country?” It broke my heart to hear Frank express something like that so early in his journey. But maybe it doesn’t bother him as much as it does me. “I think that’s the first mistake I made the first time around: everything stops, and I’m waiting for this,” he tells me, referring to his first shot at getting the student visa. “But then I realized: time is still moving. I’ll be [in Harare], even if I do end up moving, for half a year at least. I can do things here, and then, if things go well, I may even choose not to go.” And things are going well; he’s developing a new play, and looking forward to a full production of his first script (the one he wrote in a rush to meet the conference deadline) this coming October. “If I don’t go there, I have plenty to look forward to here.”
I envy him for that. I threw my lot in with this place, and while I can and will change course if needed, knowing when to do so is a tricky part. Like Dalida, I’ve put a lot into my life here, and it feels almost impossible to give it up. It’s hard not to look at the state of this country and think: What have I done?
V. Vakil, fighting for exceptions
Being an immigrant in the United States sometimes feels like it should entitle one to an honorary law degree: I know so much about specific visa types, the process of applying for them, and the rights and responsibilities each of them entails, that I constantly have to pause when talking about the subject to repeat “I am not a lawyer,” because I unwittingly sound like one. My friend Vakil, an immigration lawyer—both in the sense that he is an immigrant and learned it all in the flesh, but also in the sense that he went to law school and passed the bar—taught me to sound even more like one: he said I should answer any question with “it depends.”
This is true of any law, he says, but especially of immigration law: “the hardest kind, even more so than tax law.” I’ve often been frustrated by this very thing when dealing with attorneys—the way they won’t commit to a single answer, but rather keep asking questions and withholding a verdict. And yet, they’re only playing by the rules of an arena where there simply is no objective answer. Vakil knows this intimately. An Iranian emigré, he navigated the visa path all the way to citizenship, and has dedicated himself to helping his family join him—I’ve met some of them, including his mom, sister, and niece (who is a very cute child). His dad, though, is still in Iran. The petition that Vakil submitted on his behalf was approved, but the case moved to processing at the National Visa Center, where it remained for two years in limbo—or, rather, “administrative processing,” which the Department of State defines as situations in which the consular officer determines that “additional information from sources other than the applicant may help establish an applicant’s eligibility for a visa.” As Vakil explained to me, this “can lead to very long delays, sometimes extending for years.”
After Vakil’s niece was born, the family attempted to get her grandpa a tourist visa, “trying our luck to see whether he could come for a short visit and meet her while we were still stuck waiting through the long immigrant-visa process.” It was denied for lack of ties to the home country—“both of his children are in the U.S., and he is retired,” Vakil told me, which marked his father as a high risk for immigration to the U.S. Then, last year, they succeeded in getting an interview scheduled for his green card. The case had a slim chance of success, since the proclamation that affected Frank (the so-called “travel ban”) also applied to Vakil’s father—though Vakil told me there was a possible way through: “[the travel ban] contained an exception for immigrant visas for ethnic and religious minorities facing persecution in Iran.” Because Vakil’s father is Azeri, he could be approved under that exception.
But when I got the news of the immigrant visa pause, which also included Iran, in January, I texted Vakil—and the situation was getting to him: “At this point, it is unclear whether the interview will proceed at all, and if it does, whether a waiver request would be accepted, and even then, whether a visa would actually be issued. Combined with what is unfolding in Iran, this has been psychologically draining. These are hard days.” The interview did proceed, and Vakil attended it with his father (in Turkey, it’s worth noting, as there is no consulate in Iran), but to no avail: while the ethnic minority exception was accepted, “the officer’s position was that no visa could be issued unless both [Vaki’s father’s] administrative processing cleared and the 75-country immigrant-visa pause was lifted.” The case remains in limbo.
I felt bad asking him to help me with this article, considering all he’s going through. But I knew I had to speak to him—not just because my honorary law degree is insufficient to provide the factual outlook this story needs, but because I was also hoping that, if I asked “Should we all just give up and leave?”, he’d answer with an “it depends” that would give me hope. And much like he did with in father’s case, he said we can’t discount exceptions:
In practice, the reason behind a ban or proclamation matters a great deal, because that is what tells you where the pressure points are and whether there is any room to push for an exception. So when the stated rationale is national security, or terrorist affiliation, or some other broad language of suspicion, we have to respond on those terms. We now include entire sections in briefs and RFE responses laying out the person’s background, their history in the United States, the fact that they were already vetted when they first received a visa, the fact that they have maintained status, worked lawfully, paid taxes, built a life, and given the government no reason to doubt who they are. We used to submit only what was necessary to establish the underlying petition. Now we submit much more, because the case is no longer just about eligibility. It has also become about disproving suspicion.
I push him: does this work? All this labor to fight rules that, as Frank says, feel almost like smokescreens for a much simpler “we don’t want you here?” Vakil told me that he has, in fact, secured waivers—but he admits that the number is “so low—maybe a few cases out of a thousand that would have traditionally been processed and approved.” More importantly, he says the ordinances work not just by outright denying or suspending petitions, but by making the process even harder and more expensive: “No lawyer would do the additional work that is to track your whole background and come up with good arguments for free” (he estimates it would inflate legal fees, which usually hover in the $5-15K per case, by an extra $2-3K). “So yeah,” he concludes, “the deterrent part is working well.”
I ask him how his clientele, which is substantially made up of artists, is holding up—and his response makes me think of Dalida, Sofía, Frank, and so many other people I know:
What I see is more frustration, more costs, and more missed opportunities. I have had multiple O-1 cases where the petitioner was very supportive and genuinely wanted to hire the artist, but the process dragged on for over a year, and at some point they had to make a practical decision. So the artist ends up hearing: “we support you, we want this to work, but we need to fill the role, and your opportunity is gone.” I have had clients tell me: “I don’t know what to do anymore. I have no job, no income, and the one opportunity that gave me hope is now gone.” That takes a serious psychological toll; in some cases, I would call it depression. The damage is not only financial. It is also emotional, because after doing everything the right way, they start to feel the system is asking them to disappear quietly. And still, many of them are not leaving. People say, “go back to your country,” but for many that is not a real option—going back would often mean returning to a life far worse than the one they are struggling through here, a life under a regime that brutally suppresses artistic freedom and offers little realistic hope of financial stability. So they are left in this terrible in-between state: they cannot build stability here, but they cannot safely or realistically return either. The system does not just block people. It leaves them stranded.
VI. The final petition
At the end of each conversation, I asked each person what they needed, especially considering that the readership for this article is bound to be majority Americans. A theme emerged in all of their answers—one that makes a lot of sense to me: I’ve noticed after many, many, MANY conversations about this issue that Americans tend to be most comfortable discussing immigration through a political lens (an issue that appeals to, or turns off, voters), an economic one (immigrants as force that bolsters, or depresses, the economy), or (the most common in liberal circles) a cultural one—a matter of language, tradition, or ancestry. What Americans don’t feel comfortable talking about is immigration as a legal reality: that in this country, our ability to live, work, actively participate in society, or be safe from discrimination is conditionally granted to us based on our immigration status—or, as the current administration often puts it, that for us these are “privileges, not rights.”
This also means that whatever innate rights the law does grant us are not always respected; when most Americans see the violence coming through their screens, they see an abusive, xenophobic administration, whereas we see the almost inevitable result of a system that has been oppressing us for decades. The quiet part’s being said out loud. This makes Americans uncomfortable, I think, because it doesn’t change according to their personal beliefs, the city they live in, or the good deeds they might perform personally: it is the law of the land. “This isn’t my country,” I’ve heard several people say when confronted with the horrific news—but it is your country, as Sofía put it:
I had a childhood in the US. You were taught at school that your square foot was your area: “Hey Tommy, this is Sofía’s square foot, don’t make her uncomfortable.” And helping is not just donating. It’s putting yourself in an uncomfortable position, having empathy with the guy next door: “That’s your square foot. I don’t want my square foot to be like that. I’ll send you money from here,” you know? “But to really feel what you’re going through and to comprehend how that will play out for you as a human... no.”
The people who have consistently reached out to help me are all foreigners. My American friends, they don’t know what to say. They don’t have the emotional tools to actually show up. They prefer to detach. And I think Trump is… he’s like a puppet that’s just showing the U.S. what they really are.
It can, in fact, feel like Americans actively resist learning more—because learning more would lead to taking actions that, as Vakil put it, are too much trouble:
Most employers in the U.S. don’t want the headache. They just want to show their support through a post or a statement, but are much less willing to step into the actual difficulty of the situation. I would say the most important thing is for them to connect with these individuals on a human level, and stand behind them in a concrete way. Especially when it comes to waiver cases, it definitely would make an impact to have a letter from a well-known organization attesting in detail on somebody’s character, sort of sponsoring them in a way: “We know this person, we trust this person, and we vouch for them.” That kind of support means far more than abstract expressions of solidarity.
Dalida, who experienced this same unwillingness at a company that supposedly practiced its values in all its operations, reminded me that it feels particularly cruel precisely because we are trying to do things “the right way:”
I definitely want more understanding of what it takes to even go down the legal path of immigration—by those who hire, by those who speak to social justice, by those who tell our stories—and to understand the cost, and the toll it takes on us. The danger is so immediate right now for the ones who are undocumented that, of course, people are focusing their attention on them—but there needs to be an understanding of what leads folks [to become undocumented].
Talking to each of them, I heard them put into words things I myself have felt but never expressed in that particular way. In some ways, by naming the lonelines America has caused me, they were making me feel less alone. But then I checked in with Frank before publishing this article, and he told me he had gone through with the interview, and his visa was denied. No MFA for him, no theater career in the United States. I won’t get to meet him in person any time soon, and that hurts.
Then he told me a story that reminded me of something vital:
Last night, I was invited by a friend to an American embassy event that was about celebrating 250 years of American independence through Zimbabwean art, part of the Freedom 250 events. It was the first time I felt myself actually getting pissed about the whole thing: the hypocrisy, the way Americans are still allowed to come here anytime they want, enjoy our culture and art, use it to celebrate their own history (there were literally a few paintings of the Founding Fathers), and yet they won’t allow any of us to go there. It really felt a lot like imperialism, ironically… I’m getting a clearer picture of what America is and what it’s about, and I’m becoming increasingly sure that that’s not the kind of place I want to be at, at least not right now. So, to me, at this point, that visa denial is not really a bad thing.
He’s absolutely right: It’s the United States that entered our own square feet first. In Argentina, checking the peso-dollar exchange rate every day is more important than checking the weather. I grew up surrounded by American culture, imposed on me to the detriment of my own; it is undoubtedly the reason I am here. This country entered my square foot from the moment I was born, without permission or even a warning—it is why I was so hurt at the rude awakening of the past ten years, which has done so much to erode those dreams sold to me by Hollywood and Broadway. There was, and never has been, any reciprocity. It’s been “America First” all the way.
So I’ll end on a warning I’ve made before to my readers, describing the “American nightmare:”
America’s biggest threat may not be outsiders coming in and taking up space, but outsiders not caring about it, not even trying to come in because they don’t dream about this country anymore. In the nightmare, Americans will have no one to watch their movies and TV shows because their own companies will have decided it’s more lucrative to produce content in, and for, other markets; no one will buy their products because tariffs will have made them too expensive; no one will develop their technology because the brains that would do so will stay in their own countries, afraid to come here and be mistreated. If that day comes when America is no longer number one in our minds, a rude awakening awaits its citizens, now sufferers of the nightmares that we’ll be finally rid of.
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