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I arrived in the United States carrying two suitcases and a carefully folded dream. For years, this place had existed in my imagination as a future home not only built on opportunity and education, but also the quiet promise that if I worked hard enough, I would belong. I didn’t expect that one of the hardest parts of arriving would be learning how to hold gratitude and fear at the same time.

Growing up in Uganda and later living in multiple countries across continents, I came to understand that international students often live in a continual state of transition. Home is no longer just one place; it’s a memory, a time zone, a voice note from my mother that arrives while I’m walking to class. I miss home in ways that are small but relentless: the smell of familiar food, the ease of speaking without explaining myself, the comfort of knowing the rules without having to read them twice. Missing home is something I expected, but feeling unwanted wasn’t.

In recent months, conversations around immigration enforcement and the role of agencies such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have grown louder, more public and more emotionally charged. For many, these discussions are political or abstract. For international students, they’re personal, even when we try not to make them so. We know that policies debated on screens and podiums have the power to quietly reshape our sense of safety, our plans, our physical presence here and ultimately our future.

What makes this fear particularly difficult is its invisibility. I go to class, turn in assignments and make weekend plans like any other student. On the surface, nothing looks wrong, yet beneath that normalcy is a constant awareness that my presence here is conditional. My life is documented, time-bound and dependent on compliance with rules that can change without warning. That awareness doesn’t disappear just because I am studying, contributing or doing everything “right.”

I’m careful with my words now more than ever – not because I have something to hide, but because I understand the weight they can carry. International students learn early that perception matters. We’re taught, implicitly and explicitly, to be grateful guests. To not take up too much space. To avoid being misunderstood. Gratitude, though, doesn’t erase fear, and silence doesn’t mean the absence of feeling.

What hurts most is the contrast between expectation and reality. This was the place I imagined building a future, not just earning a degree. I pictured belonging as something that would come naturally with time, through friendships, routines and shared experiences. Instead, there are moments when I feel suspended between worlds — no longer fully at home where I came from, but not entirely secure where I am now.

This fear doesn’t come from any single event but from accumulation: from headlines, from overheard conversations, from the knowledge that systems are often indifferent to individual stories. It comes from realizing that even as I begin to feel rooted here, my status remains temporary. Even though I love this place deeply, I still know that it may never fully claim me.

And yet, I stay hopeful. Not because fear has disappeared, but because hope feels like an act of quiet resistance. I continue to show up, to learn, to contribute, to dream, because I believe that presence itself has meaning and that being here, even with uncertainty, matters.

This isn’t a rejection of the country I came to study in, nor is it a political statement. It’s simply the truth of what it feels like to live between permission and belonging: to miss home while trying to make a new one, to love a place that you are still unsure loves you back.

For now, I carry both fear and hope in the same way I carried those two suitcases when I arrived: carefully, deliberately and with the understanding that neither tells the whole story on its own.

Danita is a freshman majoring in advertising.

Disclaimer: Danita is a columnist for The Daily Orange. Her last name is omitted due to privacy concerns.

Published on February 4, 2026 at 9:36 pm