Most immigrants never tell you about their dreams. Not the aspirational kind—those get plenty of airtime. The other kind.
The ones where Kristina McPherson, now a Canadian citizen with a decade behind her, wakes up convinced her status has expired. The panic is so visceral that she has to check her documents to remind herself that she made it. She’s safe. But someone else isn’t—and their fear has become hers.
“I always dream that my status is going to expire because their status is expiring,” McPherson explains. “It’s the trauma—you’re almost triggered. You end up over-identifying.”
This is what McPherson calls Post-Immigration Stress Disorder—a term she coined in 2023 to name something millions experience but few discuss. It’s the anxiety of living on two timelines: surviving today while bureaucratic machinery decides your tomorrow. It’s binge-watching an entire Netflix series to numb dread. It’s telling your brother not to ask about Christmas plans in March because you genuinely don’t know which country you’ll be in. It’s succeeding on paper while privately unravelling.
