Three international art and architecture students speak to Elephant about navigating precarity, identity, and the fading promise of the American Dream during Donald Trump’s second term.
The idea of staying in the US flickered in Hana Tanaka’s mind (name changed by request) after seeing her sister build a life here post-Computer Science degree. But that path quickly dimmed with the rise of the Trump era and its heightened targeting of the international community.
Student visas are continuously revoked. Academic funds are cut, and international students are advised to avoid leaving the country, further distancing them from home. The crackdown continues as visa interviews for incoming foreign students have been halted.
“I don’t think I’m staying here,” Hana, a junior at RISD majoring in Jewellery and Metalsmithing, said. “I feel nervous all the time. I feel like my status is being threatened. It could be terminated at any time.” When she graduates next spring, the student artist plans to fly back to Tokyo, where she will return to drawing in preparation for an art exhibition in Europe or the US.
Back in 2023, Hana held her solo exhibition in Singapore. Across eight canvases, she reclaimed the strength of often-confined fairy tale heroines, from Medusa to Japanese Oni, by sketching them in their vulnerabilities and new, redefined power. Each figure meets the viewer’s gaze head-on, unflinching. Googly eyeballs drift through the oversaturated artworks, peeking out from the open stitches of a stuffed bear or woven into the shimmering pattern of peacock feathers. I pierce through their unwavering gazes, into the layered strokes of acrylic and vibrant coloured pencil.
As much as these psychedelic drawings speak of the protagonists’ liberation from conservative narratives, I can’t help but notice a shared thread between them and the student who chose to pursue art in this STEM-oriented system. “I tried to portray inner resilience, being more powerful, and to climb toward autonomy,” Hana told me. In a way, they mirror the decisions that Hana has taken, a self-determined choice to claim her own identity and future as an artist, even if it meant facing uncertainty about staying in the US.
Between 2023 and 2024, around 5,627 international students from Hong Kong came to the US. Of those, 11.4% studied Fine or Applied Arts—the highest percentage of art majors among all countries.
“There was a very low percentage chance that I saw myself studying design in Hong Kong,” explained Ka Yan Tam, a recent USC graduate who double majored in Arts and East Asian Languages and Cultures. “It only made sense if you were studying medicine,” a route often seen as a necessity in Hong Kong. Her long, straight bangs swayed as she spoke, and despite meeting Ka Yan (who goes by Kai) for the first time, her amiable trait felt familiar, perhaps because I had been following her toast illustration account on Instagram for quite some time. In Kai’s illustrated food world, soft, textured brush strokes capture the crisp edges of golden toast and the delicate details of toppings—thinly sliced radishes, oozing poached eggs, swimming blueberries.
It was an early spring day in mid-April when I connected with her on Google Meet from New York. We were on opposite coasts, but we came from a similar academic environment back home. Kai, like many Asian students, arrived in the US for college via an international school—the gateway to studying abroad for college. In that competitive academic system, people like us naturally look to the US for higher education.
It’s the freedom, resources, and opportunities across diverse fields—often unavailable in their home countries—that draw many international students to study in the US. Despite challenges like alienation, the search for belonging, and language barriers, those who choose this path often share a deep, self-driven determination to chase the American Dream. In Kai’s words, “it was just built into my consciousness that for higher education at university, I would definitely go abroad.”
It’s the small things about Hong Kong that Kai misses. In conversation, she reflects on the last time that she made the thirteen-hour flight from Chek Lap Kok to LA, recounting how, on the way to the airport, she begged her parents to stop off at a dim sum restaurant so that she could have one last good bowl of congee.
Studying abroad is a trade-off. In pursuit of a dream, we leave behind family and the comfort of our hometown. Perhaps Hana, who came to the US at sixteen, knows this aching homesickness best. From the concrete jungle of Tokyo, she arrived at Idyllwild Arts Academy, a residential arts high school nestled in a quiet mountain town in California.
For both Kai and Hana, staying in their hometowns to study art wasn’t an option. Hana draws when she’s sad. Growing up, there were many days when she skipped school and drew all day.
She channelled the negativity into her creative works back then, when she struggled to fit into the conforming Japanese school system. “It was too rigid, and there was no unique quality in being there,” Hana recalled. To pursue her lifelong dream as an artist, Hana decided to relocate to the US for a legitimate art school. What started as just a year’s stay in the US ultimately led her to stay until college.
If the environment shapes the artist, Hong Kong’s vibrant art scene couldn’t be better. But for Kai, a Hong Kong native, the support felt distant. “Hong Kong has a great art scene, but the art scene is not necessarily for local artists,” Kai said. “It’s branded in a way where we have these international events, but there’s still a gap in understanding art appreciation due to differences in priorities and value systems.”
Cultural expectations around Hong Kong art also boxed the young artist into depicting crowded skyscrapers, neon lights, and hidden alleyways and markets. “It’s like a constant battle with your own art with patriotism. Do I need to have such a Hong Kong identity to be recognized, or can I just be myself?”
Perhaps for many international art students, studying abroad means more than just pursuing a career—it’s about gaining the agency to shape their own identity and future. Livian Chen, a recent Interior Design graduate from Parsons, didn’t want Taiwan’s academic system to choose the path for her, the way it did for her sister. “In Taiwan, you have to take a test to get into college, but you can’t decide your major,” Livian said. “They just look at your score and then place you into whatever major your score matches.”
A daughter of two interior designers, Livian knew she wanted to follow in their footsteps. Her dream is to design large-scale communal spaces and a hotel imbued with a Japanese aesthetic. But for now, she is focused on applying to a graduate programme in Architecture. It’s a mixture of practical and cultural reasons that pushes her to do so.
International students’ F-1 visas only grant them a year in the US after graduation (unless the major is in the STEM field, which grants three years). Grad school thus becomes a gateway for many abroad students to extend their legal stay, allowing them to continue their educational pursuits, gain more experience in the local workforce, and ultimately build a strong foothold here.
Partly due to her parent’s wishes, Livian is specifically looking to major in Architecture for its STEM certification. She confesses that if Interior Design were considered STEM, she would have continued in that major. “I know there’s a greater future and greater opportunity for being an architect. But whether it is my thing, I can’t tell,” Livian said. “I only know that if I want to have more opportunities [in the US], then I have to pursue that.” In the long run, the aspiring designer wants to stay in the US, where companies and project scales are larger. The high salary compared to back home is also another draw.
Kai, meanwhile, wonders if there’s a glass ceiling to staying in the US. “Am I being provided opportunities to be the best version of myself here, or can I even create that?” she asked. The ongoing struggle to find a company willing to sponsor a work visa is a shared frustration among international students. In creative fields like the arts or humanities, those chances become even slimmer. While large tech companies in STEM fields have clear immigration pathways, many creative companies still lack this kind of support.
“A lot of places wouldn’t hire me as the top priority because it’s a lot of paperwork for them. If there’s nothing special or more competitive about me compared to a local, then I have no reason to be here,” Kai said. “That’s one of the reasons I would be deterred from working in the States.”
And in a time when America is gripped by an increasingly nativist moment, where are the freedom and opportunity that international students once crossed oceans for? Is the American Dream still ours to hold?
Written by Moe Wang
