Growing up in Pakistan, I did not just hear an idea. I was made to believe in it. It echoed through classrooms, textbooks and conversations so consistently that it stopped feeling like an opinion and started feeling like truth. I was told, again and again, that I came from the “third world,” that I was “developing” and that somewhere across oceans existed a standard I had yet to reach. That standard had a name, and it was always the same. The West. And within that hierarchy, one country stood above all others. The United States.

I was not just taught that America was developed. I was taught that it was the destination. A superpower. A place where effort supposedly guarantees reward, where dreams are not only valid but achievable. The “American Dream” was not just a phrase. It was an expectation. It shaped what I thought success looked like long before I ever questioned it. And I believed it.

For people like me, moving abroad was never just about education or career. It was never that simple. It was symbolic. It meant I had made it. It meant I had crossed into a life that was supposedly better, fuller, more complete. Families celebrated it. Communities admired it. And over time, it stopped being a choice and became something closer to an obligation.

From a distance, the dream did not just look appealing. It looked perfect. But I have learned that distance does not just create admiration. It creates an illusion.

When I arrived, the shift was immediate, even if I did not want to admit it at first. Yes, there is freedom. Yes, there are opportunities. As a student, I found spaces that encouraged growth, mentors who supported me and experiences that shaped me in ways I value deeply. But I also saw what no one had prepared me for.

There is a hierarchy here that does not introduce itself, but it exists. I have felt it. No matter how hard I work, how strong my grades are or how much I contribute, there are invisible boundaries that I am expected not to cross. Respect does not always come freely. Recognition is not always equal. I have seen my journey reduced, simplified and sometimes subtly dismissed, not because it lacks value, but because it does not fit into a dominant narrative.

And I refuse to pretend that this is incidental. It is structural.

What unsettles me the most is the expectation that I should be grateful in silence. That I should treat every opportunity as something given to me, not something I have earned. That I should accept imbalance because I am “lucky” to be here. I reject that.

Because that distinction, between earning and being given, is not small. It reshapes how I see myself. It demands that I shrink parts of my identity in order to fit into a space that was never designed with me in mind.

And then there is the cost that no one fully acknowledges. Yes, the currency is stronger. Yes, the opportunities can be broader. But I know exactly what I have traded for that. I have traded proximity to my family. I have traded familiarity. I have traded the kind of belonging that does not need explanation.

I live in between, now. Not fully here, not fully there. And no version of the “American Dream” ever warned me about that.

There are also the arguments people use to justify this migration. Safety. Freedom. Stability. And while those realities exist, I refuse to accept how simplified they are made to seem. Safety is not guaranteed anywhere. Freedom is not equally distributed here. I have felt uncertainty in American cities in ways I never did back home. I have seen silence here too, just shaped differently.

So no, this is not a rejection of America. I have grown here. I have learned here. I have been exposed to perspectives that matter. I am grateful for that. But I will not let gratitude silence truth.

The real issue is not that the American Dream exists. It is that it is glorified to the point where it overshadows every other possibility. It is presented as complete, as if it comes without contradiction, without cost or without consequence. It does not.

What frustrates me even more is that this glorification makes us look at our own homes as incomplete, teaching us that fulfillment exists somewhere else and that success is something we have to leave for, whereas staying is somehow settling. I refuse to accept that narrative anymore.

Leaving has forced me to see something clearly. The dream was never owned by one country. It was never limited to one geography. It exists in different forms, shaped by different lives and is rooted in different places. Questioning the American Dream is not disrespect. It is clarity. It is recognizing that no place offers everything, and no dream should demand that I diminish who I am to fit inside it. The most dangerous lie I was ever taught was not that the American Dream exists. It is that it is the only one that matters.