After many years of living in the United States, I’ve noticed something I wish weren’t true: many people don’t really like immigrants—even the ones doing absolutely nothing wrong.
I believe this unease comes from a lack of trust, and I want to share why, based on my lived experience.
I arrived in the U.S. when I was already over 30. I’m 44 now, and I can say with certainty that assimilation has been one of the greatest challenges of my life. By the age of 25, most people are formed—at least in terms of their core values. To ask someone to change the very foundation of their identity after that is to ask them to dismantle themselves entirely, and try to rebuild from the rubble.
Immigrants who arrive in the U.S. as adults always go through a process of adaptation. Always. There’s a negotiation of values and beliefs, a psychological reckoning between the culture we came from and the one we’re entering. This process is stressful, often painful, and never instant. Those who assimilate faster may be less attached to their native culture—or they may be supported by a strong family structure that provides cultural reinforcement.
But if you’re alone, middle-aged, complex, and from a culture very different from mainstream America, the road to assimilation can feel impossible. You’re caught between wanting to belong and not wanting to lose yourself in the process.
What I’ve experienced in the U.S. is a quiet but persistent expectation: fit in or go home. Be like us. Look like us. Talk like us. Think like us. This is especially true in environments where difference isn’t embraced but quietly punished. And I understand why—it’s hard to trust what you don’t understand.
So we try to fit in. But for an immigrant in their thirties or forties, fitting in can mean shedding core values, traditions, passions, and entire ways of seeing the world. And if you happen to love the parts of you that need to be erased in order to fit in? It’s even harder. Imagine being asked to betray your favorite parts of yourself just to earn the right to be accepted.
Let me give you a metaphor: imagine a person with ears and a nose arriving on a planet where those features don’t exist. To be accepted, they must cut them off. Now consider that our values, beliefs, and emotions are far more deeply embedded than any physical feature. What we’re being asked to do often goes even deeper.
And yet—we want to assimilate. Not because we don’t love where we came from, but because we want to feel safe. Understood. Trusted. We want to belong in a place that tells us belonging is possible. And many of us want to share what we know and love with you—to enrich the American culture, not compete with it. The U.S. is a rare place where you don’t need to travel far to encounter the wisdom, rituals, and beauty of almost every major world culture. We’re here. Right in front of you. But instead of learning from us, we’re often put through a meat grinder. Made to perform generic behaviors that feel foreign, inauthentic, and forced.
And here’s what happens when people are forced to fit in rather than welcomed as they are: we pretend.
We pretend we don’t mind avoiding eye contact, even though in our culture it’s a sign of warmth. We pretend that we’re comfortable with a casual “Wanna grab a beer?” invite that feels cold and transactional. We pretend we’re okay when inside we’re grieving parts of ourselves that feel unwelcome. We pretend we don’t love the sunset so much it brings tears to our eyes—because we’re afraid of being labeled “too emotional” or “performative.” We pretend to smile at the cashier, even though we don’t feel like smiling, because we know it’s expected.
We pretend to be like you because we know, on some level, that if we don’t, you won’t let us in.
And what do you do with people who are constantly pretending?
You don’t trust them.
And there it is.
