When Qian Zhang boarded a flight from Shanghai to Boston at age 18, she thought she was heading toward the "best version" of her life. It was 2009, during President Barack Obama's first term, when the U.S. economy was rebounding and opportunities for well-educated workers seemed plentiful.

She was bound for Dartmouth College, a top choice for many Chinese students, and later found her way to Harvard Business School.

Qian embraced the American dream: the promise of equal opportunity, a country that rewards talent and hard work, and a place where global citizens like her could belong.

By her early 30s, she was a vice president at a global firm in Boston, earning six figures a year. But behind the glittering resume was a reality defined by her immigration status.

Like hundreds of thousands of foreign professionals, Qian lived on an H-1B work visa — the document that tethered her job, her ability to travel, and her entire sense of security to the grace of her employer. "Your entire life is tied to your job," she said. "If you lose the job, you lose the visa. If you lose the visa, you lose the country."

At first, she pushed aside her anxieties. She bought property, built friendships, and told herself she was no different from her American colleagues.

But each year brought fresh reminders: vacations cut short to fly back to China for visa paperwork, discreet job searches because changing employers required fresh visa sponsorships, and the constant fear that one misstep could unravel her life. "The H-1B made me feel like a second-class citizen," she said.

In 2022, four months after her promotion to vice president, Qian quit. A year later, she packed her life into suitcases again. This time, she was leaving for good.

Now, the 35-year-old resides in Portugal's capital, Lisbon, with her partner, Swiss artist-filmmaker Tobias Madison, and their newborn child. The Portuguese sun and slower pace, she says, have begun to heal the trauma of a decade in America, where every promotion, vacation and romantic entanglement felt shadowed by the same fear: what happens if her visa disappears?

Chasing the dream — and the visa

The H-1B visa fundamentally shaped her career path, Qian said. "Only a handful of sectors even sponsor it — finance, tech, consulting, law and medicine. You don't have many options," she said.

She had done several stints in Boston, from strategy consulting to business development at a tech firm, before rising to become a vice president at a consumer products company.

"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 anxiety deepened during President Donald Trump's first term, when visa processing delays and audits rose. Even Qian, who seemed to embody the type of high-skilled worker the U.S. claimed to prize, felt vulnerable. "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 country was no longer the one she entered in 2009, she said. Reading the comments under news articles about immigration was sobering. "The America I went to believed in openness, in welcoming talent," she said. "The America I left was divided, suspicious, anxious."

Her disillusionment echoed a broader trend of slowing international student enrollment in the U.S. in recent years.

"America used to be the dream," she said. "Now people like me look elsewhere."

A new chapter

Lisbon, with its tiled streets and Atlantic sunsets, is a world away from Boston and New York. Qian and her partner are renovating a farmhouse in the Portuguese countryside. She is writing a book and exploring creative projects. Life is slower, cheaper, freer, she said.

Portugal has been a hotspot for digital nomads, luring foreign remote workers with friendly visa policies, a better quality of life, and a lower cost of living.

Her visa process in Portugal, she said, was "the easiest of my life." When she pressed her lawyer for what could go wrong, the lawyer reassured her: "Don't worry, we are not the U.S."

Her years in America gave her financial security — she graduated when the economy was strong, saved responsibly and invested prudently. That cushion allowed her to start over. "I was lucky," she said. "I caught the right wave."

Still, she is ambivalent about the country that shaped her adulthood. "I used to see everything through the lens of the U.S.," she said. "Now I see it's not the center of the world."

She hopes the U.S. can rediscover the openness that once drew her in. "I want America to become the America we believed in," she said. "Open. Confident. Free. Not this fearful, closed-off version of itself."

Until then, she said, more people like her will keep leaving. "Maybe," she added with a small smile, "America needs us more than we need America."

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