The Immigrant Experience in America (TIEIA)

Simone W. Johnson Smith
  • 4.9 (13)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Weekly

The Immigrant Experience In America Podcast amplifies and humanizes the experiences of immigrants living in The United States of America and around the world. We are building a human library of immigrant stories. Connect with us at thebridgeconcepts.org to add yours to our library. Are you an immigrant, expat, international professional, international student new to the United States (or another country) and struggling to make sense of your new environment? Culture shock and adjustment challenges impact many of approximately 218 million migrants moving across the globe (UN, 2024). Are you feeling misunderstood and out of touch because you are struggling to understand the unstated rules of the new culture? That's what we do each week on The Immigrant Experience in America. Every episode is an in-depth look at adjustment challenges, navigating the pitfalls of immigrant life, and becoming a third culture person. I was inspired to start this podcast by my own experience as an immigrant American who legally migrated to the United States but yet has frequent experiences of a love-hate relationship of America with its immigrant population and as a result of a larger vacuum surrounding the positive contributions of immigrants to American Life. We will sit down with successful immigrant Americans to discuss how they navigated the complexity of being an immigrant-American to achieve their American Dream. This is a spot for us to get real - peel back the layers, if you will, of what it means to be an immigrant living away from their birth country. Our intention is to serve as a bridge from your culture to the American (or other country) culture – giving you a roadmap of tools and language to understand the unstated rules of the new country/culture, wherever you find yourself in the world. Disclaimer: The Immigrant Experience in America podcast is produced in my personal capacity. The views and opinions shared by me and my guests are our own and do not reflect the views, policies, or positions of the U.S. government or USCIS.

  1. 1d ago

    From Toronto to South Texas — Building a Firm for the People Bigger Firms Skip with Jason D'Souza, Esq. (Ep. 233)

    Jason D'Souza is the founder and lead trial attorney of D'Souza Injury Lawyers in San Antonio, Texas — an intentionally lean, thirty-person practice focused on oilfield, trucking, and serious-injury cases in the smaller South Texas communities that bigger firms often overlook. Born and raised in Toronto to Indian immigrant parents, Jason moved to the U.S. for law school, met his wife (and now firm CFO) on the third day of orientation, and built a career and a citizenship that were never guaranteed — he wasn't even a U.S. citizen when he founded his firm in 2015, and spent years navigating a green card system that offered no real certainty.   This conversation moves through the layered pressure of being a child of Indian immigrants expected to become a lawyer, doctor, or engineer, and the quieter rebellion of choosing personal injury law over the corporate track his community expected. Jason talks candidly about a formative early case — a Mexican immigrant dishwasher hurt on the job, dismissed as replaceable — that became the moment he understood exactly why he practices law. He also speaks to the real, present-day resistance he faces representing oilfield and trucking workers in small Texas counties where he's been made to feel like an outsider for doing exactly that, and to what it actually meant to become a U.S. citizen in 2018, not for sentiment, but because he wanted the right to vote in the country he'd built his life in.   This episode is for immigrant professionals carrying the weight of proving a sacrifice was worth it, for anyone who's had to separate what success was supposed to look like from what it actually means to them, and for anyone building something meant to serve the people other people overlook.   Learn more or reach Jason directly: search D'Souza Injury Lawyers online, or find the firm on Facebook and Instagram. New to the U.S.? Start here → thebridgeconcepts.org/newcomer Ready to build your real number? Get The Giving Plan Workbook, the full picture of what comes in, what goes out, and the honest number that makes it sustainable. → thebridgeconcepts.org/giving-plan-workbook.html Not started yet? Get The Black Tax Boundary Kit free first. → thebridgeconcepts.org/black-tax-boundary-kit.html Ready for the fuller plan, built around your specific number? Apply for a Chemistry Call. → https://form.jotform.com/261967575607068 Want the conversation to continue weekly? Subscribe to The Thrive Abroad Brief. → thriveabroad.substack.com The Immigrant Experience in America Subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@theimmigrantexperience Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music Support the show on Patreon Visit: thebridgeconcepts.org Follow along: LinkedIn | TikTok | Instagram | Facebook Share your story with us: thebridgeconcepts.org/podcast.html#share-your-story This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. For guidance specific to your immigration status, consult a licensed immigration attorney. For guidance specific to your financial situation, consult a licensed financial professional.

  2. 1d ago ·  Bonus

    Introducing: On Purpose with Jay Shetty

    Introducing ⁠BENNY BLANCO: The Secret to Failing Your Way to Success from On Purpose with Jay Shetty. Follow the show: On Purpose with Jay Shetty Record producer, songwriter, and music executive Benny Blanco joins Jay for an unfiltered, hilarious, and deeply vulnerable conversation about redefining success, overcoming crippling phobias, and why embracing failure is the ultimate secret to unlocking your true creative potential. Benny pulls back the curtain on his chart-topping music career, sharing behind-the-scenes stories with artists like Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, and Britney Spears, while diving into his candid new book on mastering life’s setbacks. Together they explore how to overcome the fear of embarrassment, build emotional resilience, protect your mental health while chasing big dreams, and maintain a grounded, loving relationship under the spotlight. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty Mazda crafts cars for people who do more than simply move. Visit Mazdausa.com to learn more. Consumer reports does not endorse products or services. PURPOSE10 for 10% at altrarunning.com/onpurpose. Free Shipping and Free 30-Day Trial. JAY’S DAILY WISDOM DELIVERED STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX Join 900,000+ readers discovering how small daily shifts create big life change with my free newsletter. Subscribe here: https://news.jayshetty.me/subscribe Check out our Apple subscription to unlock bonus content of On Purpose! https://lnk.to/JayShettyPodcast What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 01:58 Looking Back at the Songs That Started It All 03:07 Repeat “I Am a Failure” 04:18 Overcoming Embarrassment and Taking Big Swings 06:28 Early Lessons in Failure 08:20 Choosing Non-Traditional Creative Paths 09:51 Mom’s Dreams Vs Choosing Your Own Path 11:11 Turning Doubt Into Motivation 12:05 Ignoring The Haters and Finding Your Spark 13:39 Turning Small Steps Into Big Momentum 14:59 The Success Stool: Balancing Life’s 3 Pillars 15:37 The Power of Small Daily Habits 17:12 Relationships Need Watering Too 18:46 Facing Failure, Fear and a Phobia of Flying 21:45 Taking Micro-Steps to Conquer Deep Fears 23:04 One Task at a Time 24:04 Bruno Mars’ Journey 27:13 Authenticity vs. Imitation in Creative Expression 28:35 Late-Night Songwriting with Ed Sheeran 33:41 Trusting That It Will Work Out 34:19 Finding Your Unique Sound Beyond Influences 36:23 Unfiltered Vulnerability & Asking for Help 39:19 Celebrating Wins vs. Constant Over-Achieving 40:06 Standing Your Ground: Britney Spears to Julia Michaels 43:57 Grammy Perspective and Redefining Success 48:53 When a Failure Turns Into Your Biggest Win (“Diamonds”) 50:58 Mental Health Breakdown Amid Peak Success 53:06 Priority Management, Boundaries, and Emotional Check-ins 55:32 The Power of Saying “No” to Protect Your Peace 57:22 Why Benny Wrote His New Book 58:53 Benny Blanco on Final Five Episode Resources: Pre-order F*ck Failure | https://www.amazon.com/dp/1668205246?lv=shuf&bestFormat=true&social_share=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_13VQ1DN9JWKWJSK7YN2A&channelId=704&ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cp_ud_dp_13VQ1DN9JWKWJSK7YN2A&plpRedirect=mhFallback Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/itsbennyblanco/ TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@itsbennyblanco YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqrBKQHQVEvD2Q9FP0DCP2g X | https://x.com/ItsBennyBlanco Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/itsbennyblanco/ Watch Friends Keep Secrets | https://linktr.ee/friendskeepsecrets Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices DISCLAIMER: Please note, this is an independent podcast episode not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced in conjunction with the host podcast feed or any of its media entities. The views and opinions expressed in this episode are solely those of the creators and guests. For any concerns, please reach out to team@podroll.fm.

    Introducing: On Purpose with Jay Shetty

  3. Sep 7

    The Black Tax: The Real Number (Week 6 of the 90-Day Black Tax Series, Ep. 232)

    Last week's question was whether anything was flowing back into your cup. This week, Simone gets specific about the number underneath that question, the one most of us have never actually written down in full. Simone draws a clear line between a starting number and a real one. The Black Tax Boundary Kit gave listeners a rough sense of what leaves and what stays, real and enough to begin with, but a real number means writing down everything that comes in, not the version said out loud at gatherings, and everything that goes out to family, including the parts that stopped getting counted because counting them felt disloyal. She names a pattern worth sitting with: we round the number in our own favor without meaning to, not from dishonesty but because the real number is uncomfortable, and rounding is how we avoid sitting with it, whether that means underestimating what we give or overestimating what we can actually afford to keep giving. Her core claim is direct: a plan built on a rounded number is not a plan, it is a guess wearing the clothes of a plan, and guesses tend to fail exactly when the pressure is highest. She walks through what building the real number actually involves inside the Giving Plan Workbook, income, recurring support, the one-time asks over the past year, personal savings, and the honest gap between what is being given and what can be sustainably given without a person's own future going to zero. She closes with a specific instruction: once you have the number, do not act on it right away, sit with it for a day, because it is not a verdict on how much you love your family, it is information. This episode is for anyone who has done rough math on the black tax before but never let themselves see the full, honest number. It sets up next week's turn toward the actual conversations, what to do once the number is known. About Simone W. Johnson-Smith Simone is the founder of Thrive Abroad and The Bridge Concepts, LLC, a Jamaican-born American intercultural strategist, coach, and former U.S. diplomat. She is the International Impact Book Award-winning author of Decoding America & Coming Home to Yourself: The Immigrant Experience, available on Amazon, and host of this podcast, reaching listeners in over 100 countries. #BlackTax #GivingPlan #ImmigrantFinance #DecodingAmerica #ThriveAbroad #FirstGenWealth New to the U.S.? Start here → thebridgeconcepts.org/newcomer Ready to build your real number? Get The Giving Plan Workbook, the full picture of what comes in, what goes out, and the honest number that makes it sustainable. → thebridgeconcepts.org/giving-plan-workbook.html Not started yet? Get The Black Tax Boundary Kit free first. → thebridgeconcepts.org/black-tax-boundary-kit.html Ready for the fuller plan, built around your specific number? Apply for a Chemistry Call. → https://form.jotform.com/261967575607068 Want the conversation to continue weekly? Subscribe to The Thrive Abroad Brief. → thriveabroad.substack.com The Immigrant Experience in America Subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@theimmigrantexperience Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music Support the show on Patreon Visit: thebridgeconcepts.org Follow along: LinkedIn | TikTok | Instagram | Facebook Share your story with us: thebridgeconcepts.org/podcast.html#share-your-story This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. For guidance specific to your immigration status, consult a licensed immigration attorney. For guidance specific to your financial situation, consult a licensed financial professional.

  4. Sep 2

    Not Just an Immigrant — Faith, Motherhood, and Rebuilding a Life Beyond Haiti - Dr. Lynda Charles (Episode 231)

    Dr. Lynda Charles is a former UNICEF public health leader, a leadership development coach certified through John Maxwell, and the author of the memoir Not Just an IMMIGRANT. In this conversation, she traces her journey between Haiti and the United States across two distinct chapters of her life — the first as a young woman fleeing a death threat after returning from medical training in France, and the second, years later, moving her three young children out of Port-au-Prince after gang violence made daily life in Haiti unbearable. Lynda speaks candidly about what it took to rebuild her identity in a new country, describing how her faith became the anchor that carried her through both immigration journeys and through earlier experiences of abuse. She reflects on her professional path from medical school and a UNICEF nutrition and emergency role in Haiti to becoming a leadership coach for women navigating identity and life transitions in the U.S. — a pivot her mother still doesn't fully understand, even as former clients now call her mother directly to tell her how much Lynda has helped them. The conversation also moves through the daily reality of gang violence and displacement in Haiti today, what it means to parent three children while her husband remains behind, and how becoming a mother herself changed the way she understands the sacrifices her own mother made. This episode is for anyone rebuilding an identity across borders, for immigrant mothers holding a family together across distance, and for anyone who has ever had to explain — to family, to a new country, or to themselves — that they are not just an immigrant, but a full and complete person who arrived with everything they already were. Dr. Charles's memoir, Not Just an IMMIGRANT, is available now — check her website or Amazon author page for purchase details. Connect with her on LinkedIn to follow her leadership coaching work. #DecodingAmerica #ThriveAbroad #ImmigrantExperience #HaitianAmerican #Faith #Motherhood #DecodingAmericaFauxPas New to the U.S.? Start here: https://thebridgeconcepts.org/newcomer Already established, and the financial piece resonated? Start with the free Black Tax Boundary Kit: https://thebridgeconcepts.org/black-tax-boundary-kit.html, then apply for a Chemistry Call: https://form.jotform.com/261967575607068 And for the ongoing conversation every week, subscribe to The Thrive Abroad Brief on Substack: https://thriveabroad.substack.com The Immigrant Experience in America Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theimmigrantexperience Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music Support the show: Patreon Website: https://thebridgeconcepts.org Follow: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonewjohnson/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theimmigrantexperience Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theimmigrantexperiencepod/ Facebook: @simonewjohnson Share your story with us: https://thebridgeconcepts.org/podcast.html#share-your-story The views and opinions shared by me and my guests are our own and do not reflect the views, policies, or positions of the U.S. government or USCIS. Please note: I do not provide immigration legal services or case-specific guidance. My work focuses on cultural adjustment, financial empowerment, and personal growth.

  5. Aug 31

    The Black Tax: The Two Cups (Week 5 of the 90 Day Black Tax Series, Ep. 230)

    Picture two cups. One is yours. In the opening episode of the second month of the series, Simone offers a single image to hold everything discussed so far, and opens the paid next step for anyone ready to build the actual plan. Simone ties the first month together in one picture: every dollar sent home is water poured from one cup into another, and if the pouring only moves in one direction, the first cup runs dry. She traces the image back to something a past podcast guest said, that money is something spiritual, something that fills whatever space it is let to fill, and names directly that most of us from collectivist communities were taught to fill everyone else's cup first, with nobody teaching us to check whether our own was still being filled from anywhere at all. She is careful to draw a clear line: this is not an episode about giving less, it is about making sure the cup gets refilled, so the giving can actually continue instead of quietly draining until there is nothing left to pour. She closes month one and opens month two by introducing The Giving Plan Workbook, the paid next step after the free Black Tax Boundary Kit, built around a full picture of what comes in, what goes out, and the number most of us have never had the courage to write down in full. This episode is for anyone who finished the first four weeks feeling like the problem had a name, and is now ready for the actual mechanics of a plan, not just the language for the pain. It marks the shift in the series from naming the black tax to building the tools to manage it. About Simone W. Johnson-Smith Simone is the founder of Thrive Abroad and The Bridge Concepts, LLC, a Jamaican-born American intercultural strategist, coach, and former U.S. diplomat. She is the International Impact Book Award-winning author of Decoding America & Coming Home to Yourself: The Immigrant Experience, available on Amazon, and host of this podcast, reaching listeners in over 100 countries. #BlackTax #GivingPlan #ImmigrantFinance #DecodingAmerica #ThriveAbroad #FirstGenWealth New to the U.S.? Start here → thebridgeconcepts.org/newcomer Ready to build the plan around your specific number? Get The Giving Plan Workbook, a full picture of what comes in, what goes out, and the number that makes it sustainable. → thebridgeconcepts.org/giving-plan-workbook.html Not started yet? Get The Black Tax Boundary Kit free first. → thebridgeconcepts.org/black-tax-boundary-kit.html Ready for the fuller plan, built around your specific number? Apply for a Chemistry Call. → https://form.jotform.com/261967575607068 Want the conversation to continue weekly? Subscribe to The Thrive Abroad Brief. → thriveabroad.substack.com The Immigrant Experience in America Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@theimmigrantexperience Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music Support the show: Patreon Website: https://thebridgeconcepts.org Follow: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonewjohnson/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theimmigrantexperience Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theimmigrantexperiencepod/ Facebook: @simonewjohnson Share your story with us: https://thebridgeconcepts.org/podcast.html#share-your-story The views and opinions shared by me and my guests are our own and do not reflect the views, policies, or positions of any employer. Please note: I do not provide immigration legal services or case-specific guidance. My work focuses on cultural adjustment, financial empowerment, and personal growth.

  6. Aug 28

    The Black Tax: The System Nobody Explained (Week 4 of 90-Day Black Tax Series, Ep. 229)

    Nobody sat down and explained a credit score. In the closing episode of the first month of the Black Tax series, Simone names a second, quieter system running underneath everything discussed so far, the financial architecture nobody hands new arrivals on the way in, and makes the case for why it matters just as much as the family side of the equation. Simone traces her own credit history back to lessons learned the way most of us learn the hard things here, a mistake first, the rule understood only afterward. She names the specific gaps directly: a credit score built from nothing, retirement rules that reward starting early over starting well, and the razor-thin difference between a debt that builds you and a debt that empties you, wearing the exact same paperwork. She is careful to draw the same distinction she drew in week two, that this is not a story about being bad with money any more than the black tax was ever a story about being bad at boundaries, it is a story about being handed half a map and expected to navigate the whole territory. The heart of the episode ties all four weeks together in one image: the black tax and the unexplained financial system are not two separate weights, they pull from the same direction at the same time, from two different sources, family asking from one side and a system built without us in mind asking from the other, both drawing from the same number most of us have still never fully written down. She closes the first month with a reframe rather than a solution, understanding that both pressures are real and that neither is a personal failing changes the work from willpower on two fronts into building one honest, sustainable plan that can hold both. This episode closes out the first month of the series for anyone who has felt both pressures at once and assumed they were unrelated, or worse, personal failures. It sets up the next phase of the series, where the show moves from naming what is happening to building the actual plan around it. About Simone W. Johnson-Smith Simone is the founder of Thrive Abroad and The Bridge Concepts, LLC, a Jamaican-born American intercultural strategist, coach, and former U.S. diplomat. She is the International Impact Book Award-winning author of Decoding America & Coming Home to Yourself: The Immigrant Experience, available on Amazon, and host of this podcast, reaching listeners in over 100 countries. #BlackTax #ImmigrantFinance #DecodingAmerica #ThriveAbroad #FirstGenWealth #CreditScore New to the U.S.? Start here → thebridgeconcepts.org/newcomer Already established, and the financial piece resonated? Get The Black Tax Boundary Kit, a free starting number and three scripts for the conversations that get hard. → thebridgeconcepts.org/black-tax-boundary-kit.html Ready for the fuller plan, built around your specific number? Apply for a Chemistry Call. → https://form.jotform.com/261967575607068 Want the conversation to continue weekly? Subscribe to The Thrive Abroad Brief. → thriveabroad.substack.com The Immigrant Experience in America Subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@theimmigrantexperience Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music Support the show on Patreon Visit: thebridgeconcepts.org Follow along: LinkedIn | TikTok | Instagram | Facebook Share your story with us: thebridgeconcepts.org/podcast.html#share-your-story This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. For guidance specific to your immigration status, consult a licensed immigration attorney. For guidance specific to your financial situation, consult a licensed financial professional.

  7. Aug 26

    A Penpal Story — From Kashubian Poland to a 40-Year American Marriage - Dr. Danuta Charland (Episode 228)

    Dr. Danuta Charland is a Pre-Health Academic Advisor at Boston University's Sargent College, and in 2026 she marks 40 years of living in the United States. Danuta grew up in Kashubia, an ethnic region in northern Poland with its own language and identity distinct from the broader Polish culture — a heritage she carried through a childhood under the Iron Curtain and into an American life that began, improbably, with a two-dollar penpal address. In this conversation, Danuta walks through what it meant to grow up Kashubian inside Poland, including the quiet discrimination her family faced for speaking their own language, and what it was like coming of age under Soviet-era censorship — including a professor imprisoned for collecting a list of Solidarity Movement supporters, and her own encounter with an armed National Guard patrol on the way home from visiting her brother at university. At the center of the episode is the story that gives it its name: how a high school English assignment led Danuta to write to the International Penpal League of Boston, how her husband Tom bought her address for two dollars out of curiosity about Poland's role in World War II, and how four years of letters — delayed by dictionaries, reviewed a dozen times before being sent — became a courtship, a delayed airport reunion, and a marriage now spanning more than four decades. Danuta reflects on what that slower, more deliberate way of connecting gave her that instant communication today doesn't, and on the long, nerve-wracking process of leaving a communist country to build a life in the U.S. This episode is for anyone who has ever wondered what patience and delayed gratification can build — and for anyone navigating what it means to hold two identities, two languages, and two homes at once. Danuta's poetry collection, Często normalny świat, is available directly: https://czec.pl/czsto-normalny-swiat or https://kaszubskaksiazka.pl/poezja/1067-czesto-normalny-swiat.html (ISBN 978-83-66052-95-6). Her essay "Immigration" (pp. 337–340) appears in Daniel Kalinowski's Emigracja kaszubska w Stanach Zjednoczonych: historia i dziedzictwo (The Kashubian Emigration in the United States), Akademia Pomorska w Słupsku, 2022: https://czec.pl/emigracja-kaszubska-w-stanach-zjednoczonych-historia-i-dziedzictwo Reach Danuta directly at danuta.charland@gmail.com. #DecodingAmerica #ThriveAbroad #ImmigrantExperience #PolishAmerican #Kashubia #PenpalStory #IronCurtain New to the U.S.? Start with the free guide to your first ninety days. → The One Who Made It Out Guide Already established, and the financial piece of this conversation hit home? Start with the free Black Tax Boundary Kit: naming the pattern, finding your real giving number, and three scripts for the moment it gets hard. → Black Tax Boundary Kit Ready to build the full plan, not just the number? Apply for a free Chemistry Call. → Chemistry Call Want a weekly note on immigration, identity, and money, in under five minutes? The Thrive Abroad Brief. → Thrive Abroad Brief Snack Bites The Immigrant Experience in America Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@theimmigrantexperience Listen to more episodes on: 💼 Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3OK7xCN 💼 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3DKXsiE 💼 Amazon: https://amzn.to/43VG4Cn 📱 Support our Patreon: https://bit.ly/3KwUiTz 📱 Connect with Simone! 💼 Website: https://www.thebridgeconcepts.org 📱 Follow us on Social Media: 💼 LinkedIn: /simonewjohnson 💼 Instagram: /theimmigrantexperiencepodcast 💼 TikTok: /theimmigrantexperience 📱 Share your story with us: https://www.thebridgeconcepts.org/podcast.html#share-your-story Disclaimer: The Immigrant Experience in America podcast is produced in my personal capacity. The views and opinions shared by me and my guests are our own and do not reflect the views, policies, or positions of any employer. Please note: I do not provide immigration legal services or case-specific guidance. My work focuses on cultural adjustment, financial empowerment, and personal growth.

  8. Aug 19

    The Black Tax: Honor Your Mother and Fund Your Future (Week 3 of 90-Day Black Tax Series)

    Honoring your roots and funding your future can feel like a choice between two competing instructions. In week three of the 90-day black tax series, Simone makes the case that they were never actually in competition, even though it can feel that way when the phone rings and the math does not add up. Simone traces the belief back to something nobody taught her directly, a feeling absorbed in the space between what was said and what was implied, in the quiet math of every dollar that left before she asked whether it should. She widens the lens beyond her own culture, naming how this shows up across Afro-Caribbean, African, and Asian communities, as the brown tax in Latin American culture, and pointing listeners back to week one's naming of the Filipino term. She shares a sobering pattern she has observed, immigrants who worked and gave for decades, sent money home to build houses that were never finished, and returned to find the sacrifice went unmatched, a caution against giving without a plan rather than a reason to stop giving. The heart of the episode is a real, usable script for an honest number: I have a hundred dollars, home needs eighty, I only have twenty left, I am sorry, I love you, this is what I have to give right now, offered as an alternative to going into debt out of fear of setting a boundary. She reframes the whole conversation as stewardship instead of survival, building something sustainable enough to still be standing in twenty years, rather than giving until it hurts because the hurting feels like proof of love. She is candid that this comes from her own history with burnout, not from theory. This episode is for the immigrant professional who has felt the pull between honoring family and building a future and assumed one had to lose. It continues directly from weeks one and two, naming the black tax and the pushback that comes with setting any limit around it, and lands on the case that giving on purpose, with a number attached, is not a smaller kind of love than giving without limits. Simone is the founder of Thrive Abroad and The Bridge Concepts, LLC, a Jamaican-born American intercultural strategist, coach, speaker and former U.S. diplomat. She is the International Impact Book Award-winning author of Decoding America & Coming Home to Yourself: The Immigrant Experience, available on Amazon and online worldwide, and host of this podcast, reaching listeners in over 100 countries. #BlackTax #ImmigrantFinance #DecodingAmerica #ThriveAbroad #Stewardship #FirstGenWealth New to the U.S.? Start here → thebridgeconcepts.org/newcomer Already established, and the financial piece resonated? Get The Black Tax Boundary Kit, a free starting number and three scripts for the conversations that get hard. → thebridgeconcepts.org/black-tax-boundary-kit.html Ready for the fuller plan, built around your specific number? Apply for a Chemistry Call. → [https://form.jotform.com/261967575607068]  Want the conversation to continue weekly? Subscribe to The Thrive Abroad Brief. → thriveabroad.substack.com The Immigrant Experience in America Subscribe on YouTube: youtube.com/@theimmigrantexperience Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Amazon Music Support the show on Patreon Visit: thebridgeconcepts.org Follow along: LinkedIn | TikTok | Instagram | Facebook Share your story with us: thebridgeconcepts.org/podcast.html#share-your-story This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. For guidance specific to your immigration status, consult a licensed immigration attorney. For guidance specific to your financial situation, consult a licensed financial professional.

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About

The Immigrant Experience In America Podcast amplifies and humanizes the experiences of immigrants living in The United States of America and around the world. We are building a human library of immigrant stories. Connect with us at thebridgeconcepts.org to add yours to our library. Are you an immigrant, expat, international professional, international student new to the United States (or another country) and struggling to make sense of your new environment? Culture shock and adjustment challenges impact many of approximately 218 million migrants moving across the globe (UN, 2024). Are you feeling misunderstood and out of touch because you are struggling to understand the unstated rules of the new culture? That's what we do each week on The Immigrant Experience in America. Every episode is an in-depth look at adjustment challenges, navigating the pitfalls of immigrant life, and becoming a third culture person. I was inspired to start this podcast by my own experience as an immigrant American who legally migrated to the United States but yet has frequent experiences of a love-hate relationship of America with its immigrant population and as a result of a larger vacuum surrounding the positive contributions of immigrants to American Life. We will sit down with successful immigrant Americans to discuss how they navigated the complexity of being an immigrant-American to achieve their American Dream. This is a spot for us to get real - peel back the layers, if you will, of what it means to be an immigrant living away from their birth country. Our intention is to serve as a bridge from your culture to the American (or other country) culture – giving you a roadmap of tools and language to understand the unstated rules of the new country/culture, wherever you find yourself in the world. Disclaimer: The Immigrant Experience in America podcast is produced in my personal capacity. The views and opinions shared by me and my guests are our own and do not reflect the views, policies, or positions of the U.S. government or USCIS.

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