This paper investigates the discursive links between international students in the United States and suicide to understanding the liminal relationship of students of Asian and Middle Eastern descent and the U.S. Through an investigation of representations of the self-inflicted deaths of non-white international students in immigration policy and popular culture, this paper works to tease out the place of international students as exceptional inclusions in U.S. higher education and in the “American” national imaginary. These representations link to material concerns for individuals and institutions as students are imagined as essential for U.S. prosperity and threatening to U.S. security. Early reports from Virginia Tech in April 2007 assumed that Seung-Hui Cho, the then “unidentified Asian student” who fatally shot thirty-two people before killing himself, was a Pakistani Muslim international student. While this might seem arbitrary, the reports built on popular associations between international students and suicide, such as the widely covered 1991 incident in which Gang Lu, a Chinese post-graduate student at the University of Iowa, shot and killed five people before taking his own life. International students were linked to suicide when it was discovered that a man involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center entered the US on a student visa. This connection was furthered by findings that three of the participants in the September 11th 2001 suicide-hijackings entered the country on student visas. These links are not simply sensational. Though often under-acknowledged in the popular press, Asian international students represent a disturbing percentage of suicide attempts on U.S. college campuses, estimated by a Cornell University study at 63%. Building on the work of Talal Asad, Michel Foucault, and Stephania Pandalfo on race, suicide, and the nation-state, this paper considers the repercussions of the linkage of international students and suicide for US immigration policy and public perceptions of students from the Middle East and Asia. What are the effects of this perceived connection for U.S. immigration and visa law, higher education policy, and university administration? Specifically, if Asian and Middle Eastern international students are understood as at once essential for sustaining America’s place in the global economy and statistically the highest suicide risks, what means are in place to sort “properly” future oriented international students from those who are possibly suicidal or terroristic? How does this process both reflect ‘American’ liberal assumptions about personhood, mental health, and futurity attendant upon belonging in the US?