From Language Learner to Local: Navigating English-Speaking Countries as an Immigrant

People usually reach out to me and ask about how to adapt to the United States after having migrated from various countries. Often, the people who reached out to me come from various backgrounds. Some are well-educated and majored in various fields of expertise areas from their country of origin. Others started college or other undergraduate curricula before migrating from their countries to the U.S.

I’ve always enjoyed sharing my stories, lessons learned, pitfalls, and things I wished I’d known before moving from my country of origin to the U.S.; upon arrival to the U.S.; in my first-year journey; five years later, and so forth. Throughout the years of mentoring and helping people find their voice, and their own path, helping them cope, and managing expectations of their own, I compiled a list of frequent concerns and some amazing discoveries that I have noted.

If you are reading this and have some concerns or challenges, I hope this brings value to you and that you get something from the lessons learned and take something away from my experience. Happy reading. If you find value, feel free to pass this along to someone who may also benefit.

Over the years, since I started volunteering and sharing my stories of how I came from a non-English speaking country with a Bachelor of Science in Human resources and had to start over in college and earn another bachelor’s in cyber security and was fortunate to be working with some of the most impressive minds in the world, people had reached out to me. They asked how they should proceed with their dreams. Should they go to school and start over?

Should they get married? Should they launch a business? If yes, which one? I usually said there is no wrong solution to these questions and recommend the following.

For the non-English speakers, meaning if you came from a country where English is not your first language, nor your native language, but you obtained a higher education degree like a bachelor’s or you graduated with a specific field of study from your country of origin before you migrated to the United States. Give yourself time to learn and grasp your surroundings. For most people, this time means a minimum of five years.

On the road to these five years, you need to keep your eyes open, watch and learn. During this time, you allow yourself many mistakes as if you were a child.

These five years require that you remain patient and kind to yourself.

You mustn’t just copy anyone’s practice or approach. Remember that everyone has different use cases, backgrounds, coping mechanisms, support systems, plans, and dreams. Therefore, you need to find what makes sense to you.

Remember that you have skills, but you may lack the confidence to express these competencies fully.

 I learned that we call skills any ability or expertise that we learned or acquired in school or through specific training, practice, and experience to perform a specific task or activity effectively and efficiently.

A skill can be acquired in various domains, such as intellectual, physical, social, or creative areas, enabling individuals to solve problems, achieve goals, and produce desired outcomes. Skills can range from simple and basic tasks to complex and specialized abilities, often requiring a combination of cognitive, motor, and interpersonal capabilities.

Having learned what skills are, I hope you understand why we immigrants have skills but lack confidence when we leave our area of comfort. Our home countries are where we feel at home and know our surroundings, the culture, and what to expect of any of our contributions.

Although we are skilled, when we try to contribute these skills to society abroad, we sometimes fail to connect with the culture in place and feel discouraged and incompetent. And when we feel incompetent, we are quick to judge ourselves, and we can feel easily overwhelmed because we lack confidence. Without confidence, we quickly feel the urge to give up. Let me encourage you not to give up.

Instead, select a path matching your skills and commit to it for the next five years. Relentless is essential here because there will be days when you will be discouraged and looking forward to quitting, but you have to keep hold and continue to move forward.

First, you need to identify your area of skill. What are you good at? What comes to you naturally and feels like a burden to everybody else around you?

Identifying your unique or specific area of excellence helps you narrow your focus. Refrain from stretching yourself thin by following multiple avenues or multiple endeavors. You are one person with limited resources and time. Focus on what you excel at and grow that skill.

Use your resources efficiently and remember that no one is ever successful alone. Anyone with such a claim, please run away from such a person because they cannot be further from the truth. Find your genuine resources and leap from the shoulders of giants.

I want to pause here and acknowledge additional challenges that many of you may face depending on the age group. Some may have families and loved ones that they left behind and can’t wait to reunite with their families. Please be mindful of this family, their needs, and their potential future. We will return to these challenges and possible ways to help later.

Now, you’ve identified that unique skill of yourself and started to put it to work. You find a nice niche area where you can put this skill to the test. Now what? Beware of the abusers. Unfortunately, you will meet people striving to take advantage of your naivety or lack of knowledge of the guest country’s culture.

Please don’t be fooled or be used. Unfortunately, sometimes, the people are also immigrants, just like yourself, who have finally figured out a way out. Instead of becoming good, these people seek to exploit the vulnerability of unaware new immigrants.

For this, what you can do in your first year is to be mindful of these types of people and please educate yourself, don’t be complaisant.

Lastly, beware of false men and women of God who ask you to bring your hard-earned money for God’s miracles. God is a God of sense. Miracles exist, but no one gets their miracles by sitting around. You must work and meet your miracles.

Remember that being kind and being a giver is fantastic, and always seek to bless others at any opportunity you get because there is obviously great joy in giving. There are mostly more gains in giving than receiving, so don’t lose sight of giving. However, only practice a giving that comes from your heart, not a giving that someone forces you or entices you to do. If it is a job, keep your eyes open for too-good-to-be-true promotions or gifts. Especially gives that hide as gifts but are, in fact, abuse and misuse of a person’s talent.

A common thing I’ve noticed with us immigrants is that in the first few years, because we lack confidence, we mainly sell ourselves short and let ourselves be used by bad-intentioned people who seek to take advantage and use us as much as possible. The longer you stay uneducated and blind, the longer these sorts of people can use you. So, please be mindful of promotions that come with no raise. Be mindful of empty titles as well. If you had to take any such title, let it be something that aligns with your skill and things you love and always want to do. Don’t sell yourself away with an empty title, or anything of any matter, if that means you are miserable and will struggle to look at yourself in the mirror.

Keep learning. Knowledge is power. Be like a child always. Always be opened minded and fascinated with things in life. Don’t be foolish or over your head, either.

Forget about the news, social media, or the many news outlets around you. These are just distractions. You can do without all these outlets. What you need is real connections with real people and books.

When among people, listen carefully. When reading, summarize what you’ve learned in one sentence paragraph, remember this sentence, or action, and apply it daily. If there was no action, perhaps you learned what aspect of life you never wish to experience; note this as well. Human beings can’t recall information on demand due to short-term memory, so if you don’t write things down, you will forget and make mistakes you knew about and could have avoided. It is worthwhile writing important things down. Regardless of whether it is a bad or a good experience, please write it down. I write even other people’s bad experiences down and the reason why is so I can never forget not to make the same mistake, or if it was a way someone made me feel through their actions, I write these down as well, so I don’t behave similarly toward another human being.

Now your fifth anniversary is fast approaching. You didn’t even know how you made it this far. However, your consistent learning and adapting were compounding without you taking notice, you will wake up and feel as you just caught a revelation. Let me tell you that there is no revelation. You always had these talents in you, this tenacity and such power and gift in you, but you are just now getting to know the you that you always were and the amazing you within you all along.

You’ve come halfway. The remaining road ahead will be fast-tracked since you have now acquired all you need to succeed.

Now you’ve discovered the power of grit, the power of pushing through, the power of believing in oneself. Congratulations.

Use this power to carry you to the top. Impact the world now that you’ve found yourself. As Sir Robert Baden-Powell would say, leave the world better than you found it.

If any of these recommendations give you any comfort or insight, please know that you have more to know than you realize. Many life’s situations leave us hopeless and powerless, but if we push through, we always emerge stronger than before.