Week 1 - Yufei Liu sec A04

In “Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia”, professor Caroline Valverde especially pointed out how the “tower” system in academia has made Asian American or colored womxn in general vulnerable. As a foreign student, though not an outsider to American society and Asian American culture, I have learned the anxiety of not just colored, but foreign womxn scholars in this country. Despite the issues brought up in professor Valverde’s book, those womxn also have to go through a tremendous amount of fear to stay in  this country and serve for academia. To concur this fear, there is a very “simple” process: application for H-1B visa>qualifying for a green card>getting American citizenship. But what is holding these high scholars back when the process itself is so self-explanatory? First, in order to get an H-1B visa, a foreign scholar has to use their exceptional GPA and resume to convince an employer, who has every right to hire a local person without going through any trouble with the government. Meanwhile, even if this scholar got her supporter, getting an H-1B is still like winning a lottery. A victory of winning this visa doesn’t end it all. To eventually ensure their position and career in this country, a green card is still necessary. And we all know how it goes for this one. From personal experience, I still hear about momxn getting married with whoever that has a citizenship in order to get that golden ticket to stay. Though I don’t have negative opinions on how other people want to deal with their lives, their action has made it incredibly hard for many other womxn to qualify for a green card. After all, depression from education system might not have broken a foreign womxn scholar yet, their struggle with the government probably will.
Why is being a colored womxn scholar so incredibly hard? And why does a foreign professor deserve all the dissings on ratemyprofessor.com for her accent when she had to go through so much just to teach here?

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