Who We Were, Who We Became

The Chinatown subway musician—a doctor in his past life, a street performer in this one.

The silent factory worker—once a lawyer, now assembling products in a windowless warehouse.

The woman behind the cash register—a former engineer, now struggling to ask, "Do you need a bag?" in English.

Somewhere between one country and another, one language and another, their entire identities were erased.

Because here’s the thing: Immigrants don’t start from zero. They start from negative.

They arrive in a new country not just with the weight of learning a new system—but with the burden of knowing they will never fully be seen for who they were.

They rebuild from scratch. They trade expertise for survival. They take jobs that don’t match their skills, not because they lack ability, but because the world doesn’t have time for accents, for foreign credentials, for the patience to see beyond a name that’s hard to pronounce.

And yet, they keep going. They keep showing up. They swallow the pride of what they left behind to build something new.

Because maybe, deep down, they know something the rest of the world forgets:

A person’s worth isn’t in their title, their degree, or the language they speak.

It’s in the way they refuse to disappear.