Being here for two and half years, I realized that many minority issues are under tremendous attention, such as injustices imposed on African Americans, Latinos, women and gays. But international students are easily ignored.

In the 2008-2009 academic year, 671,616 international students came to the U.S. to study. Most of the international students came to the U.S. literally without knowing anybody.

Although they have been learning English, they are not fluent at it. On top of that, they need time to adjust to American culture.

According to the Bing Dictionary, the definitions of minority is a “smaller socially defined group; a group of people, within a society, whose members have different ethnic, racial, national, religious, sexual, political, linguistic or other characteristics from the rest of society.”

International students are usually not considered a minority. Maybe because minority usually associates with disadvantages, but international students are considered rich by many.                International students who came to America are definitely privileged compared to their peers in their home country.

But the truth is that Americans see one side of the story.

Community colleges like DVC  charge $230 per unit for international students. But compared to other state universities and private universities, it is still the cheapest.  So for many of the middle class families, community college is their first and only choice.

When they needed to demonstrate their financial ability to study in America to the U. S. Embassy, many of them borrowed money from friends and relatives and then save money in their bank account and show some documents to the U.S. Embassy.

In fact, quite contrary to many people’s belief that international students are rich, these students with middle class family background are living a very frugal life in the U. S.

The rationale behind the notions of African Americans being criminals and international students being rich are the same to me.

When one person or many people from a group does something or shows one quality, we tend to assume all the people from that group does that thing or has that quality.

We don’t even realize that we are labeling people.

I have come to realize that DVC doesn’t care about international students’ well being in general.

All they care about is money. We are only here to be exploited.

The only time the school ever sent an email to international students exclusively is when they demand and threaten us to pay the health insurance on time, or we will be dropped from our classes and forced out of the United States.

There is no surprise that the U. S government wants more international students to study in the United States under these kind of economic conditions. In fact, international students contribute an estimated $17.8-billion to the U.S. economy a year.

The same with all the other people who first came to the U.S. international students face many challenges and injustice.

However, with more international students awakening to the fact that we can be treated better than just ATMs, the issues about international students will come to attention.

Only when we see an individual through his or her own characteristics not instead through a stereotype about the group this person belongs to, we are able to have a fair society.

– Emma Li, student

Note: The Inquirer is republishing this letter from our December 8, 2011 edition in order to properly credit the author.