Qian Zhang has lived in Lisbon since 2023.
When Qian Zhang boarded a flight from Shanghai to Boston at age 18, she thought she was heading towards the “best version” of her life. It was 2009, throughout President Barack Obama’s first time period, when the U.S. economic system was rebounding and alternatives for well-educated employees appeared plentiful.
She was certain for Dartmouth College, a best choice for a lot of Chinese college students, and later discovered her means to Harvard Business School.
Qian embraced the American dream: the promise of equal alternative, a rustic that rewards expertise and exhausting work, and a spot the place international residents like her might belong.
By her early 30s, she was a vp at a worldwide agency in Boston, incomes six figures a yr. But behind the glittering resume was a actuality outlined by her immigration standing.
Like lots of of 1000’s of international professionals, Qian lived on an H-1B work visa — the doc that tethered her job, her skill to journey, and her complete sense of safety to the grace of her employer. “Your entire life is tied to your job,” she mentioned. “If you lose the job, you lose the visa. If you lose the visa, you lose the country.”
At first, she pushed apart her anxieties. She purchased property, constructed friendships, and informed herself she was no totally different from her American colleagues.
But annually introduced contemporary reminders: holidays minimize brief to fly again to China for visa paperwork, discreet job searches as a result of altering employers required contemporary visa sponsorships, and the fixed concern that one misstep might unravel her life. “The H-1B made me feel like a second-class citizen,” she mentioned.
Your complete life is tied to your job. If you lose the job, you lose the [H-1B] visa. If you lose the visa, you lose the nation.
Qian Zhang
Former H-1B visa holder
In 2022, 4 months after her promotion to vp, Qian stop. A yr later, she packed her life into suitcases once more. This time, she was leaving for good.
Now, the 35-year-old resides in Portugal’s capital, Lisbon, along with her accomplice, Swiss artist-filmmaker Tobias Madison, and their new child baby. The Portuguese solar and slower tempo, she says, have begun to heal the trauma of a decade in America, the place each promotion, trip and romantic entanglement felt shadowed by the identical concern: what occurs if her visa disappears?
Chasing the dream — and the visa
The H-1B visa basically formed her profession path, Qian mentioned. “Only a handful of sectors even sponsor it — finance, tech, consulting, law and medicine. You don’t have many options,” she mentioned.
She had performed a number of stints in Boston, from technique consulting to enterprise growth at a tech agency, earlier than rising to grow to be a vp at a shopper merchandise firm.
“When the economy is strong, you may have a chance to compete on an equal footing with other job seekers. But when the economy is bad, you’re the last pick, if you’re picked at all.”
Her nervousness deepened throughout President Donald Trump’s first time period, when visa processing delays and audits rose. Even Qian, who appeared to embody the kind of high-skilled employee the U.S. claimed to prize, felt susceptible. “I had a conflict at work once and thought, if I get fired, I might have to leave immediately,” she recalled. “I was so anxious I actually crashed my car.”
The nation was now not the one she entered in 2009, she mentioned. Reading the feedback below information articles about immigration was sobering. “The America I went to believed in openness, in welcoming talent,” she mentioned. “The America I left was divided, suspicious, anxious.”
Her disillusionment echoed a broader development of slowing worldwide pupil enrollment within the U.S. lately.
“America used to be the dream,” she mentioned. “Now people like me look elsewhere.”
A brand new chapter
Lisbon, with its tiled streets and Atlantic sunsets, is a world away from Boston and New York. Qian and her accomplice are renovating a farmhouse within the Portuguese countryside. She is writing a e-book and exploring inventive initiatives. Life is slower, cheaper, freer, she mentioned.
Portugal has been a hotspot for digital nomads, luring international distant employees with pleasant visa insurance policies, a greater high quality of life, and a decrease price of dwelling.
Her visa course of in Portugal, she mentioned, was “the easiest of my life.” When she pressed her lawyer for what might go incorrect, the lawyer reassured her: “Don’t worry, we are not the U.S.”
Qian Zhang has lived in Lisbon since 2023.
Her years in America gave her monetary safety — she graduated when the economic system was robust, saved responsibly and invested prudently. That cushion allowed her to begin over. “I was lucky,” she mentioned. “I caught the right wave.”
Still, she is ambivalent in regards to the nation that formed her maturity. “I used to see everything through the lens of the U.S.,” she mentioned. “Now I see it’s not the center of the world.”
She hopes the U.S. can rediscover the openness that when drew her in. “I want America to become the America we believed in,” she mentioned. “Open. Confident. Free. Not this fearful, closed-off version of itself.”
Until then, she mentioned, extra folks like her will preserve leaving. “Maybe,” she added with a small smile, “America needs us more than we need America.”
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