A Letter from a Foreign Student in the US

Orson Scott Card this week in the Rhino Times has A Letter from a Foreign Student in the US. References that might lead to the student’s identity have removed or changed.

As I was growing up in [my country], I saw some of my relatives and family friends left home after they finished their education. Many of them went to the United States to pursue advanced degrees or to seek working opportunities, while others headed for other countries. Many of those who went to America have never come back. I wondered why.

Very often in my childhood as well as my teenage years, I heard or saw the name of the United States of America in the news. In almost all of these circumstances, I was constantly brought to the knowledge of how powerful and successful this country was. I wondered why.

Being a follower of sports started as young as I could understand what was happening on the television, I saw the United Stated of America always ranked number one on the medal list and Americans always broke world records in every Olympic Games. I wondered why.

Nearly 10 years ago, there was an immigration trend occurred in [my country]. Many people feared the government, which took over in 19–. Although not everyone could immigrate to America, there were still a lot of people tried. Two of my high school friends moved to America with their families. Both of them have never come back. However, there are a lot of people who immigrated to Canada and Australia have come back. I wondered why.

In many of my textbooks used in high school, whenever the subject of economics was taught, the pictures of the World Trade Center must be on the pages. And the teachers always told us that New York was the center of the world economics. I wondered why.

As I grew older, it was I, myself, had the opportunity to study abroad. When my relatives and friends found out that I was going to –––, which was an American university, they unanimously told me not to go back to [my country] after graduation. Instead, they suggested me to find a job here in the United States. Some of them even went further to ask me to marry an America so that I could become a US permanent resident, or even a US citizen. I wondered why.

The “I Wondered Why” list goes on and on even when I first came to the United States. I wondered why the United States of America was so special so that hundreds of thousands of people would do as much as they could in order to become a US citizen, or at least a US permanent resident. I wondered why Americans were always so pride of their countries.

I was happy to know that everyone, including non-Americans, could have an opportunity to attend the American History course in university. Many people asked me why I did not take this course in my freshman year so that I did not need to worry about it as I started taking major classes. My response to it was that I wanted to wait until the last stage of my degree so that I would not take the course merely to fulfill university general education requirements, but seriously and carefully study the subject in order to find out why America was so special. Read the rest here.