Episode 36: Anonymous 2 | Season 2 Finale

In this episode: Native American Code Talkers; Stuck in Visa Limbo inside the US; and Two Personal Thoughts from the host. Season 2 Finale Episode!

Episode Guide

In this Episode: Four Acts, including: 1) Hate mail received by us, and a response; 2) Beautiful words spoken during Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s SCOTUS confirmation hearings; 3) Native American Code Talkers during World Wars I and II; and 4) Anonymous Story of Sarah, stuck in immigration limbo inside the US.

Content Warning: While this episode has no explicit or graphic material, some of the stories may be mildly disturbing to listeners due to family estrangement, and difficult circumstances due to various reasons including (but not limited to) immigration constraints.

Disclaimer: This episode is not meant to provide legal advice for immigration, and the podcast is not responsible for its material being mistakenly taken as immigration advice. For immigration advice please consult the USCIS and immigration attorneys.

• mm.ss: Segment Info (Index)
• 0.00: Voices in this Episode
• 0.49: Act 0 – Introduction to this Episode.
• 1.56: Act 1 – The Podcast’s First Hate Mail. A Comment from the Host.
• 6.00: Act 2 – Words Matter, Language Matters.
  • Beautiful words by Senator Alex Padilla (CA) about “naming immigrants”, spoken at Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson‘s confirmation hearing for her historical SCOTUS nomination.
• 8.30: Act 3 – Code Talkers, Native American.
  • The untold story of Native Americans from many tribes who served in the US military and battlefronts during World War 1 and World War 2. They devised a code based on their language, and some even were POWs. The Code Talkers.
• 14.45: Act 4 – Stuck Inside the US. The Story of Sarah, Anonymous.
  • A legal immigrant waits for a physical immigration document, which never arrives.
  • Disclaimer: This episode is not meant to provide legal advice for immigration, and the podcast is not responsible for its material being mistakenly taken as immigration advice. For immigration advice please consult the USCIS and immigration attorneys.
  • Disclaimer 2: The incidents described in this story occurred in the late 2010s. Recently in 2020 the USCIS reportedly announced that it is allowing employers to use the online approval to start employment, even before the employee receives the physical EAD card. We at the podcast believe this change was long overdue.
• 25.36: Closing Words.

Featured in this Episode

• Because the narrators chose to remain anonymous, no further information is available about them.
• The (anonymous) narrators in this episode are different individuals from narrators in any other episodes of this podcast.

Useful and Relevant Links

• Act 3
  • Burger King Display in Kayenta, Arizona (Navajo Code Talkers Display)
  • American Indian Museum (Smithsonian) Page on Code Talkers
  • National World War 2 Museum Page on Code Talkers
  • Wikipedia Information about some of the Native American tribes/First Nations mentioned in the episode: Choctaw, Ho-Chunk, Eastern Cherokees, Comanches, Cheyennes, Yankton Sioux, Osage Nation, Hopi, Navajo, Meskwaki, Chippewa/Ojibwe, Oneida.
• Act 4. Stuck Inside the US. The Story of Sarah, Anonymous
  • Curricular Practical Training for F1 Students
  • Optional Practical Training (OPT) and EAD
  • US Government Page on OPT (Optional Practical Training) and CPT (Curricular Practical Training)

Upcoming and Related Episodes 

This marks the Finale episode of Season 2. In Season 2, we have visited 5 continents, 6 countries, and interviewed about 15 individuals over 13 episodes.

If you liked this episode you might also like our Episode 15: Anonymous – 1, the season finale of Season 1.

Stay tuned for awesome remix episodes coming up during summer 2022!

Recently on Season 2

• Central America and South America: 2 Episodes
  • Interview with Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Prof. Northeastern (Silicon Valley), Entrepreneur, Yahoo! Labs Worldwide VP and Leader. Immigrant from Chile. [Episode 35]
  • Interview with Thamar Solorio, Prof U. Houston and stalwart researcher in NLP and ML. Immigrant from Mexico. [Episode 34]
• Romania Segment: 3 Episodes
  • Interview with Rada Mihalcea, Prof U. Michigan, and stalwart researcher in NLP and ML. [Episode 33]
  • Interview with Ion Stoica, Founder/Creator of Apache Spark, Ray, Mesos, and founder of Databricks, Anyscale, Conviva. Prof at UC Berkeley. [Episode 32]
  • From Romania: Episode featuring 2 distinguished Computer Scientists (Ion Stoica, Rada Mihalcea). [Episode 31]
• Israel Segment: 4 Episodes
  • Interview with Regina Barzilay, Prof MIT, and Cancer Survivor. Double Immigrant from Moldova to Israel, and then Israel to US. [Episode 30]
  • Interview with Moshe Vardi, Prof Rice Univ, and Winner of Gödel Prize and Knuth Prize. [Episode 29]
  • Interview with Tal Rabin, Prof UPenn and Head of Research, Algorand Foundation. [Episode 28]
  • From Israel: Episode featuring 3 distinguished Computer Scientists (Tal Rabin, Moshe Vardi, Regina Barzilay). [Episode 27]
• India Segment: 3 Episodes
  • Interview with Pratima Rao Gluckman, author of book “Nevertheless, She Persisted: True Stories of Women Leaders in Tech”, and immigrant from India, and leader in Silicon Valley. [Episode 26]
  • IIT Madras, Computer Science Batch of 1998: Interview with 7 graduates from that batch (comprising about 25% of the batch). 4 PhDs + 3 Masters. 3 entrepreneurs, 3 industry long-timers, and 1 Professor (host). [Episode 24, Episode 25]

In case you missed it | Season 1 

Season 1 featured 22 episodes where we visited 5 continents, and 7 countries. Check them out!

• Remix Episodes featuring Impostor Syndrome, Balkan Wars, Wars in Lebanon and Egypt, Industry vs. Academia, Computer Science in 1970s and 80s, Diversity and IOI, PhD and Entrepreneurship.
• Several anonymous narrators, from across many continents. (Episode 15).
• Our interview with Danqi Chen, Gold Medal winner at IOI (Informatics Olympiad) in 2008 (only woman Gold medal winner), and student in famous Yao Class at Tsinghua University. (Episode 14).
• Our interview with Jelani Nelson, “immigrant” from US Virgin Islands and creator of AddisCoder program in Ethiopia (Episode 13), especially his last segment on IOI data inequity analysis.
• Our third segment (Episodes 9, 10, 11, 12) on Middle East, featuring entrepreneurs and a famous academic family from Iran, Lebanon, and Egypt, starting with the Middle East Entrepreneurs lead episode.
• Our second segment (Episodes 5, 6, 7, 8) featuring Computer Scientists from Brazil, all of whom spent careers in both academia and industry, going To and Fro between Brazil and US, and to and fro between academia and industry.
• Our first segment (Episodes 1, 2, 3, 4) featuring Computer Scientists from Yugoslavia, A Country That No Longer Exists?
• Check them out!

• Credits
  • Music Credits for Podcast
  • The caption picture at top of page is of the “Eagle” rock formation in Antelope Canyon, Arizona, US. Lands protected for and by the Navajo Sovereign Nation Peoples. Pic taken by Indranil Gupta.

 The Immigrant Computer Scientists Podcast is available for free on your favorite devices & apps: Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and many more!