Alien: The Experience of a Foreign Resident.

Abstract

One night, I woke up in the pitch black to the deafening sound of a detonated bomb. The explosion killed dozens of people and shattered every window in our home, and in the dry heat of that disorienting night, all I sought was safety. I was 11 years old and living in Riyadh at the time, where my family had just relocated for my father’s job. That night, our quiet residential compound of mostly non-Saudi nationals was bombed by Islamic extremists against the Westernization of the country.1 Their message was clear: “We don’t want you here.” Miraculously unharmed, we left the country within days. Although grateful for the opportunities to experience different cultures during our frequent moves, I grew distanced from my birth country, Japan. I never lived anywhere long enough to feel like I could call it home. Then, in 2010, I came to the United States for college. Maybe I would find a home here, I hoped. Over the ensuing decade, as a foreigner, I became versed in the alphabet and number soup of visas on which my education and career would come to rely: F-1, J-1, OPT, H-1B. My visa status was a source of constant stress. The bureaucracy of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services was difficult to navigate. Worse, at every step of the way, I felt bluntly reminded of my status as deemed by the US government: officially, an “alien.” I felt alien … Address correspondence to Jamie Lim, MD, Department of Pediatrics, Boston Medical Center, 801 Albany St, 2nd Floor, Boston, MA 02119. E-mail: jamie.lim2{at}bmc.org