Welcome to strangers from KCW's independent producer project and storycentral.org.

My name is Leah Tao, and I'm an immigrant to the U.S.

But my experience has been quite different from most of the people we often think of as

immigrants. I mean, sure, getting a green card was a huge pain in the ass for me. But I was not

poor, and I was not brown, and I did not come here because my family's welfare

dependent on it, or because it was my one hope that my children would have opportunities that I

didn't. I remember in my early years in New York, I worked in a restaurant where all the busboys

were from Bangladesh. And at some point, one of the guys became eligible for American citizenship.

And we all helped him study for the citizenship test, because his English wasn't very good.

And the day of the test, he came in to see us afterwards, and he was beaming telling us about the

questions and his answers, and on the question, why do you want to be an American citizen? He'd written,

I heart America, with an actual heart, just like the famous New York slogan, I heart New York.

And he did. He really loved America. But why, I thought, you work six days a week, 12 hours a day, you're 47 years old, and you make in a whole week what I can make in one good night as a waitress in the same restaurant.

Doesn't that seem unfair to you?

Doesn't life seem hard and cold in this place?

But it didn't. Not to roughaphson. He felt lucky, even blessed. You know, being from Denmark where there's far greater

social equality, this was kind of a shock to me. I mean, not that people like Raphsson existed

or that they worked for pennies, but that they

were so grateful for their circumstance.

But, you know, one of the great things about New York is that even though you have these big

social divides, everyone is physically shoved together in such a way that you actually have

kind of a shared experience across these class barriers.

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