Hi. I’m coming on here today to let you know that I am saying goodbye to my dream of becoming a doctor. I know it’s cheesy to say but, I have wanted to be a doctor ever since I could actually think about what job I might want in my adult life. Knowing that I was an international student, I knew that my opportunities and my attempts would always be limited but I always had hope in this country’s immigration system. I came to this country when I was entering the first grade from kindergarten at the age of six or seven. My father had obtained a work visa and had brought me and my family along to the USA from India at that time. For the past 14 years, I have lived in this country, becoming more American than I ever was an Indian. The US has been and forever will be by home but I am never going to be considered a legal permanent resident of this country.
Knowing all of this, I still entered into my undergraduate degree as a biology major thinking that through some miracle, the immigration system would not fail me. I maintained perfect 4.0 GPA in my degree, got a leadership position at a health related club at my university, volunteered at my local ER for the past year and a half and did research and shadowing too. Being an international premed meant that every single one of these things was doubly harder to get into. In order to volunteer at my local hospital, you needed a SSN and I did not have that. After a couple weeks of persistence, I finally managed to get that. When I tried to get a job as a COVID contact tracer at my university, they had to reject me because they needed an SSN. Every single summer research program that I have found requires permanent residency or citizenship. Every single time I see a cool opportunity that I know I could do, I am crestfallen when I see the mocking “accepting only citizens or permanent residents.” on the application. When I look on the news about immigration, I can’t help but grow enraged at the idiots, both democrat and Republican who waffle back and forth doing nothing to change the status quo. Just know that the age of bipartisanship is dead and gone. Because of a quirk in the immigration laws of this country, I will at the age of 21, “age out” of my parent’s visa application and so, I will be reduced to nothing more than an international student who might have come to this country only to do their undergraduate degree. After that, if I were to continue on this premed path, I will have to apply to only the top tier schools and nothing more because 95% of medical schools do not accept international students.
As my peers in class go onto pursue their dreams, I have been forced to come to the conclusion that I have to drop my passion and pursue a more practical degree for people like me. I’ve been extremely depressed for the last few months and I just don’t know what to say to make me feel better. I hate that the country I call home does not want me here. If I am forced to go back to India because I have aged out, I don’t know what I would do. I think that at that point, I will go off to the big man in the sky because I am not leaving the only country that I would call home alive. I know that this rant will probably be heard by nobody but I just needed to vent to feel heard.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/immigration/comments/pgn84u/giving_up_on_my_dreams/