President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming second term in office has garnered mixed responses from members of the Wichita State community, though, one feeling is clear across the board. 

“There’s definitely, I would say, a climate of uncertainty,” Wichita State student Dion Samuel said.

In his first term as president, Trump succeeded in drastically changing immigration policy in the country. Through more than 400 executive actions, Migration Policy Institute analysts report that the former president “significantly restricted humanitarian protection, increased enforcement and made legal immigration more difficult.” 

Since then, Trump’s focus on controlling immigration has continued. From Trump promising the “largest deportation” in U.S. history to undoing Biden-era rules, people are anticipating a tighter fist on the country’s immigration.

Ian Tennant is a Canadian citizen with a green card. He works as an assistant professor of communication at WSU. Tennant illustrated the atmosphere leading up to Trump’s second time in office.

“It just feels like people — everybody’s holding their breath until Jan. 20,” Tennant said. “When he actually has the levers of power, what will Trump do?”

Samuel is an international senator for WSU’s Student Government Association. He said while much of Trump’s rhetoric focuses on illegal immigration, it tends to have a larger effect.

“Donald Trump, the sort of emotions he stirs up, kind of gets people mad at all these immigrants: legal, illegal or international students,” Samuel, who is from Sri Lanka, said.

Trump’s first term and impact

In January 2017, Trump signed an executive order that effectively banned immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries. Many criticized the move as being a “Muslim ban,” although Trump denied this claim.

In 2017, Wichita State’s International Office said most students who would have been affected had returned to the United States before the order. Nationwide, though, students around the world were stranded.

The ban faced legal challenges, and some countries were removed while others were added. Ultimately, though, the ban was not fully reversed until January 2021 by President Joe Biden.

“It doesn’t really matter if your country is on the (2017) list or not. It doesn’t also really matter if all your papers are in order or not,” said Kartikeya Saboo, an assistant professor in WSU’s Department of Anthropology. “What this does is that it creates a generalized anxiety.”

This feeling is one of the most exhausting emotions in life, according to Saboo and multiple studies.

“For a lot of people, whether they were immediately affected (by the ban) or not, the sense was, ‘We don’t know what’s going to happen to us next,’” Saboo said. “And there was also … a sense of injustice to this because even though you weren’t affected directly, you knew that you could easily become a target of this. And there was … no fairness to it.”

Early last month, WSU’s Office of International Education issued a travel advisory to international students and faculty, suggesting they return to the United States before Trump takes office, noting the 2017 executive order. 

WSU joined more than a dozen schools that have issued similar warnings to their students.

Saboo said he noticed nervousness among international students toward the end of the semester after the advisory had been issued. He said some even canceled their travels. Others continued their visits apprehensively. 

“And I think this is going to be the question that they’re going to be asked at every lunch, every dinner, every gathering of friends,” Saboo said. “This is going to be one of the topics. ‘Hey, are you going back?’ ‘Is it okay?’ ‘What’s going on?’ ‘Do you know?’”

International student Anshika Chauhan has experienced this firsthand. The freshman traveled home to India in December. Her return to WSU is scheduled after Trump reenters office.

“Here, internationally, the message, it has been widespread about the travel advisory … and everyone is talking about it,” Chauhan said. “My parents, my relatives — they are really concerned.”

Chauhan said situations like these create unease for international students like her because there is no “backup plan.”

“We are not sure what to expect … Like, will there be a ban?” Chauhan said. “… Even for the long term; we as international students — it’s really concerning what we can expect from the future.”

Instability of studying and working abroad

Life for non-citizens living in the U.S., including international students, can be precarious. With work and school dependent on national policies and procedures, there can be uncertainty even without changing national leadership.

“You never know what’s ahead for us when you are an immigrant, right?” Chauhan said. “So even for now, when I come back, I have no idea what … immigration might look like. And even for the future, I have no idea what policies could be made for international students that could affect our jobs, our future careers here in the U.S. So, yeah, it’s very unpredictable.”

An Indian immigrant, Saboo has lived in the United States for 17 years. His work as a cultural anthropologist and ethnographer brought him to the Midwest after studying in New Jersey for his master’s degree and Ph.D.

Throughout the nearly two decades he’s spent in the country, he’s frequently looked to the future, constantly dealing with paperwork for work permits to prolong his life and work in the country.

“And I must emphasize to you that this is an incredibly stressful process for people who come and work here because by the time you finish the first (work permit) and get the approvals, you’re already looking two years ahead,” Saboo said.

A third-year computer science student, Samuel hopes to work in the United States post-graduation via Optional Practical Training, which allows international students to work in the States. The program is intended to give recent graduates or students temporary experience in their field.

Samuel worries about what might happen to the program under Trump, though.

“I don’t know what he might do, honestly,” Samuel said. “He might cancel the program, and that’ll mean I only have a year and a half left in the U.S. That’s kind of uncertain, like, that’s scary to me. I don’t think he’ll do something that crazy, but you can never say.”

The constant worries paired with a changing political landscape can create feelings of susceptibility for this population.

“We international students in such situations, we become so vulnerable, and it’s so hard to see that even after how much we impact the U.S. economy, how much we impact the whole U.S., because of the cultural diversity that we bring, we still have to face so much instability,” Chauhan said.

January and the next four years

For many immigrants and international students, the situation later this month will be one they react to rather than prepare for.

“We can all talk and speculate up until then, but really, we don’t really know until it actually happens,” Tennant said.

And many fear what another era of Trump leadership could mean in the long term.

“This ban might come; it might not come,” Saboo said. “But what happens over the next four years? That is the other part where there is a sense of tension, nervousness, injustice and outrage.”