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For Cj Luteli, Portland Community College is one of the first steps to realizing a big dream.
Luteli came to the U.S. from Tanzania in fall 2023, first studying at a Texas community college before transferring to PCC a year later, citing its affordability as a key factor. Luteli meant to transfer out after a year but ended up growing fond of PCC. She has spent this year fulfilling more prerequisites for a mechanical engineering degree. She’s taken up a computer aided design mechanical drafting certificate and is involved in the student body, serving on PCC’s Educational Advisory Council. She has hopes to attend medical school in the future.
But like many of PCC’s international students, Luteli’s hopes hinge on a date that’s approaching quickly: April 22.
That’s the day PCC officials say they must register about 350 international students in the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System to keep them on their F-1 student visas, allowing them to stay in the U.S. legally. As PCC’s largest union—the Federation of Faculty and Academic Professionals—strikes for a third week, the college has already pushed spring term back a week and winter term final grades still aren’t submitted. (A second union officially ratified a contract on Thursday.)
International students worry the clock will run out on them. The federal deadline is still nearly a month away, but PCC has urged international students to make backup plans now—and options are limited.
Their visas require them to attend most classes in person, so online options are off the table. The college has suggested a number of alternative institutions to transfer into, but many of those schools are impractical. Some students are here without cars and would have to ride a bus to schools that are hours away. And real financial barriers further limit transfers—many scholarship windows have closed for the academic year, and many students have purchased health insurance through PCC.
That leaves an option that feels unfathomable: leaving the U.S.
“My country, from January 1, 2026, there was a presidential proclamation that placed my country on a travel ban. If I go back home right now, I can’t get back in, and if I can get back in, it means I have wasted three years of my education over here,” Luteli says. “We are stuck in a state of limbo whereby you don’t know where you’re going, and you don’t know what to do.”
Luteli says she supports PCCFFAP, the striking union; she believes professors deserve wages that keep up with the cost of inflation. But she, along with other international students, say they feel their voices have been lost in the broader conversation about the consequences of a prolonged strike.
Rianna Robertson-LeVay, an academic professional in PCC’s Office of International Student Services, is part of PCCFFAP and currently on strike. When she’s not, she’s responsible for understanding government regulations around the F-1 visa status, helping international students and PCC navigate them.
Robertson-LeVay says she opted to strike because she supports the faculty and staff who make PCC function, and because many of them are not compensated well. She says she hoped that a collective effort to join the picket line would bring PCC to see the value of the union’s labor faster.
And yet, as the days continue to go by, Robertson-LeVay now worries about the students who she works with in her day job. Her students have, over the past year and a half, had to navigate shifting governmental regulations around immigration alongside all the complicated pieces of the U.S., like health insurance and a different educational system.
“The sad part is, regardless of whether this is resolved tomorrow or in two weeks, the thing I don’t know is if we’re going to even have international students in two weeks. That would be such a disservice to our school, but also to our international students,” Robertson-LeVay says. “They’re really involved students who give unique perspectives. It’s a chance for people to learn about life beyond Portland, and beyond the United States.”
Alicia Adams, PCC’s Director of International Student Services, says it takes a lot for an international student to get to the U.S. And though international students pay about double the price for each credit at PCC when compared to domestic students, Adams says the college is still a comparatively affordable option for international students. PCC has in the last decade welcomed more students from countries where coming to the U.S. entails a big financial struggle, she says.
Adams says PCC must abide by federal regulations—sothat if the strike continues, there’s no working around the rules that require students to attend most classes in person and by a certain date. That means PCC’s international students face difficult choices in the weeks ahead.
“I have felt so worried for them,” Adams says. “I love our students and seeing them go through this, and not really understanding why. I’m helping them through those emotions of, ‘But there’s got to be another way, how can I get this to not affect me?’ Unfortunately, it does, and that breaks my heart.’”
Since the strike began, PCC officials have encouraged international students to develop backup plans to transfer to another institution. The college is encouraging international students to obtain acceptances to another school in case the strike continues.
“If the strike continues for several weeks, you will need to transfer, exit the U.S., or take an action advised by an immigration attorney by April 22, 2026,” a March 17 email to international students read. “While we hope the strike does not continue this long, we want to make sure every student has a plan before that date so that no one loses their F-1 status because there is no way to know for sure when a strike will end.”
Fareeha Nayebare, the student trustee on PCC’s Board of Directors and president of the Associated Students of PCC, is herself an international student from Uganda. She says the college’s backup plans for international students don’t provide much solace after all. (And she adds that the phrase “backup plan” minimizes the gravity of the situation.) Affordable options like Mt. Hood Community College are too far away for her, she says, and four-year colleges require financial cushions she doesn’t have.
A lot is resting on Nayebare’s success in the U.S., she tells WW. Back home in Uganda, she has four brothers and a single mom. She works a job at the college and is pursuing credits to put toward an accounting degree. “My family depends on the paycheck that I get from PCC. If I don’t get that, that means that’s my family starving back home,” she says. Nayebare says she hopes that her PCC education will ultimately help her open a private accounting practice. She wants to afford to build her mom a house.
Robertson-LeVay says much of her role at the college has involved advocating for international students, who have been affected by everything from shifting courses online to accessing reduced fares on TriMet, which requires documentation.
“Because international students have such a small population, they are often forgotten,” Robertson-LeVay says. “I’m frustrated that it’s come to this point where PCC as an institution and the union are fighting this battle, and I feel like my students are the ones who are going to get hurt the most.”
Luteli says that she feels her concerns are dismissed outside of the International Student Services office, and that many PCC community members don’t understand the weight the strike carries for students. And she adds she thinks that PCC management should consider the financial contributions international students make to the college as a reason to cut a deal. At this point, she says she thinks ending the strike is the only hope she has to maintain visa status.
“This is not just going back home. It’s about ending futures that we hoped for, huge futures that we hope will make a difference one day in our homes, in our families back home,” Nayebare says. “Not everybody has a silver platter. We worked hard to be here. All of this is just being shattered. We just want a decision to be made.”
