I am an immigrant. Or maybe an expat. Or maybe the line between the two says more about power than identity.
I came to America almost 34 years ago carrying a story that millions of young people still carry today — that the West is the land of unfiltered opportunity. I knew nothing of the shadows beneath the skyscrapers. Nothing of the history written in blood and labor. Nothing of the machinery that extracts value from newcomers long before it ever considers giving anything back.
I arrived with the script: work hard, earn your place, stay grateful, keep your head down. The model minority manual — unspoken but universally understood. And like so many, I believed that doing everything “right” would eventually buy me belonging.
But you can live inside a myth for only so long before you begin to see its cracks.
America is a country built on the backs of immigrants — yet quietly resentful of them.
That’s the first immigrant illusion: you can do everything right and still never be fully accepted.
I’ve spent the past thirty-plus years navigating that illusion — the immigrant who does well, becomes “successful,” checks the visa boxes, plays the game. The model minority whose story is celebrated as proof that America works.
But tolerance is not belonging.
And comfort is not acceptance.
The Middle Eastern Paradox: Welcome Without Permanence
Over the past two weeks, traveling across the Middle East, I found myself confronting a second illusion, just as powerful:
Warmth is not the same as inclusion.
And inclusion is not the same as equality.
The Middle East needs immigrants — tens of millions of them. Economically, demographically, structurally. Without immigrant labor, the region doesn’t just suffer. It stops. The cities shrink. The services vanish. The entire machinery of life grinds to a halt.
In the Gulf, strangers greet you like a brother. They ask about your family, your travels, your story. They call you habibi. They recognize your roots not as a threat, but as a bridge.
And yet — belonging stops where policy begins.
No matter how many years you live there…
No matter how much you contribute…
No matter how warmly you’re embraced…
you will never be woven into the nation’s future.
It is social inclusion without political inclusion.
A generosity of spirit paired with a rigidity of structure.
A welcome that is deep — but not permanent.
The Middle East doesn’t hide its hierarchy — it formalizes it. And for millions of workers, that clarity is both stability and constraint.
The Western Paradox: Rights Without Welcome
Flip the script.
In the U.S., Canada, the UK, Australia — the rhetoric is thick with values.
Diversity. Inclusion. Equality. Human rights.
A place where “anyone can make it.”
But the lived reality?
• Hate crimes are rising.
• Immigration is weaponized during elections.
• Policy swings leave millions in limbo.
• Assimilation is demanded, never reciprocated.
The West offers pathways to legal inclusion — but emotional inclusion? Cultural inclusion? Social inclusion? Those are doled out sparingly, reluctantly, often never at all.
Because your belonging is often tied to your usefulness.
Your acceptance is contingent.
Your presence is tolerated, not celebrated.
The same society that advertises diversity will treat you as the exception that “made it,” not the norm that should have been possible for everyone.
The U.S. in particular lives with a breathtaking contradiction:
It markets itself as a nation of immigrants
while electing leaders who demonize immigrants.
Which leads to the harder question: is a right truly a right if you never feel welcome using it?
The Moral Price of Comfort
Every country — East or West — hides behind the same story: “We are helping people by giving them opportunity.”
But immigrants help nations far more than nations help immigrants.
They are the invisible infrastructure. The underwritten workforce. The quiet, relentless engine that keeps the world running while rarely being invited to write the story.
And this leaves us with the immigrant’s impossible choice:
Is it kinder to be welcomed but never integrated?
Or integrated on paper but rarely welcomed in practice?
And as an immigrant myself — one who enjoys certain privileges, one who moves through airports with a passport that opens doors — I can’t ignore it. I may be welcomed into conference rooms, classrooms, boardrooms, and ministries, but I’m still part of a global system that assigns value to humans based on economics, not humanity.
Every country wants the labor.
Few want the people.
Almost none want the responsibility.
This is where global education enters the frame. We encourage students to study overseas to “see the world,” to “gain exposure,” to “become global citizens.” But we rarely tell them the truth:
Studying overseas is the soft launch into an immigration system.
You’ll be welcomed as revenue.
You’ll be praised as talent.
You’ll be tolerated as long as you remain useful.
The question is whether that’s good enough.
So what are we actually preparing young people for? To belong? Or to serve? To integrate? Or to perform? To lead? Or to fill the gaps locals won’t?
The Student Illusion: “Better Life” Without the Fine Print
These questions sit in my chest because it’s the same questions so many international students face today — whether they realize it or not.
Students don’t cross borders only for education.
They cross for certainty.
Stability.
Possibility.
Escape.
But no one tells students what lies behind the marketing: that racism is not a historical artifact but a daily reality, that visa status often carries more weight than talent, and that loneliness and identity erosion shadow every immigrant journey. No one prepares them for the emotional cost of moving across borders — only the academic one.
I didn’t know any of this when I left India.
And millions still don’t know it when they leave today.
We have created a global education system that sells dreams like products and hides the fine print like a payday loan. Students are shocked when the world they arrive in does not match the world they imagined. But they were never told the truth. They were only shown the brochure.
The Complicity I Must Admit
And I have to name my own complicity. I work in global education. I benefit from the very system I’m critiquing. I have built a career helping young people pursue opportunities abroad, even as I know how unequal the global landscape truly is.
This is the tension I live with:
I believe in global education — deeply. I’ve seen it transform lives.
But I also know it can mislead students when the full truth is hidden.
So part of my work — part of our responsibility — is to make the invisible visible.
Not to tell students what to choose, but to ensure they know what choosing entails.
Not to sell them a destination, but to prepare them for the realities beneath it.
Because if we are not honest about the world they’re entering, then we become part of the illusion too.
The Work That Must Be Done
That is why our work — at Gen Next, at universities, in high schools everywhere — must be different. We cannot keep exporting glossy narratives while students walk blindly into global hierarchies they do not yet understand.
Our responsibility is simple:
Prepare them not just for admission, but for the afterlife of admission.
Not just for careers, but for identity.
Not just for opportunity, but for belonging — or the lack of it.
If we do that well, we don’t eliminate the risks.
But we eliminate the deceit.
The Global Truth Beneath the Marketing
The world still runs on immigrant labor.
And immigrant sacrifice is still the cheapest subsidy in the global economy.
Our skylines? Built by immigrants.
Our hospitals? Powered by immigrants.
Our research labs? Staffed by immigrants.
Our food supply? Harvested by immigrants.
Our caregiving economy? Held up by immigrants.
Immigrants aren’t the beneficiaries of opportunity — they are the silencers of national decline.
Without them, both East and West fall apart — economically, demographically, socially.
Yet the systems built on their backs still treat them as temporary tools, not permanent partners.
That is the moral contradiction of our time: the world depends on people it refuses to fully embrace.
So What Now? What Do We Do With These Truths?
Here is where responsibility begins.
If you’re an educator
1. Tell students the whole truth — not just the glossy version that sells.
2. Teach the history of the countries they dream of — colonialism, racism, immigration politics.
3. Prepare them for belonging, not just employability.
4. Embed belonging, community, and cultural literacy into counseling — not just applications.
5. Normalize conversations about identity, loss, loneliness, and reinvention.
6. Challenge your own romanticism of “the West” — students inherit your illusions.
If you’re a university
1. Stop treating international students as revenue lines.
2. Provide mental health support that reflects immigrant realities.
3. Build communities where assimilation isn’t the entry fee.
4. Tell the truth about visas, limits, and precarity.
5. Treat international education as an ecosystem, not a transaction.
If you’re a policymaker
1. Admit your economy depends on immigrant labor.
2. End the divide between “talent” immigrants and “worker” immigrants.
3. Build systems where contribution matters more than birthplace.
4. Protect immigrant families — not just immigrant productivity.
If you’re a student
1. Know that every country has shadows — don’t move blindly.
2. Ask what the country expects of you — and what it will withhold.
3. Build community across cultures — not just within your own.
4. Don’t chase a better life without defining “better.”
5. Remember: opportunity is a door, not a home. Belonging is what you build inside it.
6. Expect discomfort — it is part of the journey, not a sign you’re failing.
The Price of Belonging
Every generation of immigrants inherits the same lie: that we must be grateful for the chance to build someone else’s dream.
But gratitude cannot be a muzzle.
And opportunity cannot be an alibi for exploitation.
Because if the only promise we offer immigrants is employability, then we’ve reduced their entire human journey to a line on a labor-market spreadsheet.
And here’s the truth international education rarely says out loud: today’s international students become tomorrow’s immigrants — the same hierarchy simply follows them across the border.
Three questions linger long after I leave each school visit, each conference panel, each flight:
1. Do we admire immigrants for their resilience, or depend on them for our comfort?
2. If our welcome disappears the moment someone is no longer “useful,” was it ever welcome at all?
3. What would our countries collapse without — immigrant labor, immigrant culture, or immigrant belief in possibility?
I don’t write this to indict the Middle East or the West. I write it because the global system we’ve built runs on the dreams, sweat, and silence of people who will never be fully invited to the table.
The Middle East teaches us that welcome can exist without rights.
The West teaches us that rights can exist without welcome.
Both models fall short of the dignity immigrants deserve.
So here are the questions we must confront — educator, policymaker, student, citizen:
If immigrants are the backbone of the global future, why do we continue treating them as temporary solutions to permanent problems?
If the world needs immigrants so desperately, why does it struggle so much to fully embrace them?
And what would it take to build a future where people aren’t useful first and human second?
Every nation will eventually face the same reckoning: the future of immigration isn’t a policy debate — it’s a moral audit. And the human cost of our comfort is what will be measured.
Until we answer that, global education will remain what it is today — a passport, not a promise.
Ex Cogitatione, Progressus
Girish
