Qian Zhang has been living in Lisbon since 2023.
When Qian Zhang rose from Shanghai to Boston at the age of 18, she thought she would head for the “best version” of her life. It was in 2009, while President Barack Obama’s first term when the US economy recovered and the opportunities for well-trained employees seemed to be plenty of.
She was a Dartmouth College, a top election for many Chinese students, and later found her way to Harvard Business School.
Qian accepted the American dream: the promise of equal opportunities, a country that rewarded talent and hard work, and a place where global citizens could belong.
At the beginning of 30 she was Vice President of a Global company in Boston and received six figures a year. But behind the glittering curriculum vitae was a reality that was defined by its immigration status.
Like hundreds of thousands of foreign specialists, Qian lived from an H-1B working visa visa of the document that had connected her job, her ability to travel and her overall feeling of security for the grace of her employer. “Your whole life is tied to your job,” she said. “If you lose your job, you lose the visa. If you lose the visa, you will lose the country.”
First she pushed her fears aside. She bought property, built friendships and said that she was no different from her American colleagues.
Every year there was new memories: holidays that fly back to China to find paperwork, discrete work search, since changed employers new sponsorship sponsorship and the constant fear that a misstep could dissolve their lives is required. “The H-1b felt like a second class citizen,” she said.
Your whole life is tied to your job. If you lose the job, you will lose it [H-1B] Visa. If you lose the visa, you will lose the country.
Qian Zhang
Former H-1b visa holder
In 2022, four months after her promotion to Vice President, Qian ends. A year later she packed her life in a suitcase again. This time she finally went.
Now the 35-year-old lives in Portugal’s capital Lisbon with her partner, her Swiss artist filmker Tobias Madison and her newborn child. The Portuguese sun and the slower pace, she says, have started to heal the trauma of a decade in America, in which every promotion, every vacation and every romantic entanglement felt shaded by the same fear: What happens if your visa disappears?
Chase the dream – and the visa
The H-1b visa has fundamentally shaped its career path, said Qian. “Only a handful of industries even sponsor it – finance, technology, advice, law and medicine. They don’t have many options,” she said.
She had carried out several stations in Boston, from strategy consulting to business development in a technology company before increasing to the vice president of a consumer production company.
“If the economy is strong, you may have the chance to compete equally with other job seekers. However, if the economy is bad, you are the last choice if you are selected at all.”
Her fear increased as Visa processing delays and audits during the first term of office of President Donald Trump. Even Qian, who seemed to embody the type of highly qualified worker that the United States claimed as a prize. “I once had a conflict at work and thought when I was fired, I might have to go immediately,” she recalled. “I was so scared that I actually crashed my car.”
The country was no longer what she entered in 2009, she said. Reading the comments under news articles about immigration was sober. “The America I believed in openness to make talents inviting,” she said. “The America I left was shared, suspicious and anxious.”
Her disillusionment has repeated a broader trend to slow down international students in the United States in recent years.
“America used to be the dream,” she said. “Now people look like me somewhere else.”
A new chapter
With its tiled streets and Atlantic sunsets, Lisbon is a world outside of Boston and New York. Qian and your partner renovate a farmhouse in the Portuguese landscape. She writes a book and explores creative projects. Life is slower, cheaper, freer, she said.
Portugal was a hotspot for digital nomads and attracted foreign workers with friendly Visa guidelines, a better quality of life and less living costs.
Her visa process in Portugal, she said, was “the simplest of my life”. When she pressed her lawyer on what could go wrong, the lawyer assured her: “Don’t worry, we are not the USA.”
Qian Zhang has been living in Lisbon since 2023.
Her years in America gave her financial security – she concluded its conclusion when the economy was strong, saved responsibly and carefully invested. This pillow allowed her to start over. “I was lucky,” she said. “I caught the right wave.”
Nevertheless, she is ambivalent to the country that shaped her adulthood. “I saw everything through the United States lens,” she said. “Now I see that it is not the center of the world.”
She hopes that the United States can rediscover the openness that it once put on. “I want America to be America that we believed in,” she said. “Open. Confident. Free. Not this anxious, closed version of itself.”
Until then, she said, more people will go on. “Maybe” added with a little smile, “America needs more than we need America.”
Are you ready to buy a house? Take CNBC smarter and take the new online course to buy your first house. Expert instructors help you to weigh the costs of renting, to prepare, to prepare financially and to navigate confidently in every step of the process – from the basics of mortgages to the completion of the business. Register today and use the Early Bird voucher code for an introductory 30% discount on 97 USD (+taxes and fees) by July 15, 2025.
Register for CNBC to make the newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and life, and ask you to join our exclusive community to connect with experts and colleagues.
Comments are closed.