During this whole time, my spouse was not allowed to work. We knew this going in. We agreed that she would go to college and complete grad school. The timing worked out well. Now that we no longer have any legal job restrictions, she is able to take any job she wants (and there are plenty in her field).

We enjoyed California resident tuition rates for six years of her college and grad school. It worked out to about the same as what I paid for my own education as a citizen of my own country. Far better quality too.

We lived a frugal life on one income: our little apartment in the Tenderloin, transit and walk everywhere. For most of the time, I had work that I liked and enjoyed and that compensated me meaningfully. Some days I felt like it was a struggle, other days it was clear why we chose the struggle.

I built expertise and a reputation in a very short time. I already had a career before coming here, but coming here accelerated it in ways that I don’t think anywhere else could.

I was made to feel at home from the moment I landed, perhaps a function of (1) geography (2) industry. I was invited to serve at the highest levels of government without being a citizen; I felt valued regardless of my immigration status.

Of course, in learning about the immigration system I also learned about the severe injustice. I spent some time volunteering with queer Chinese asylum seekers who needed language support in immigration court. I learned that the benefits I obtained were hard fought by other Asian immigrants before me: a Chinese immigrant a hundred something years ago is the reason this country has the privilege of birthright citizenship.

Everywhere I went, I noticed how my relatively easy path today was paved by activists before me.

That just a decade and a bit ago, an old lady named Edith sued the government over taxes, and that’s the reason why my wife was able to come here as my wife.

I met so many queer immigrants in their 60s who, when they came here, could not find ways to stay: their American partners could not sponsor them. Now it’s a matter of fact, even if some want to remove it.

I traveled across California in my jobs, and met and saw people and places marked by tragedy. Not just one, not dozens, but hundreds of sites of massacres and ‘suspicious fires’ that wiped out entire communities of Chinese Americans who faced horrible erasure and violence on the west coast.

That even as I feel relatively ‘settled’ here today as part of a group that seems to have some power here in the Bay Area, it wasn’t always that way.

So many things I did not choose, that also happened to me by lottery of birth.

I was born in a small country, that wasn’t India or China or Mexico, so I never realistically had the ‘10-100 year wait’ that others faced.

I have the passport of a rich country, so I was never once asked to show strong ties to my country of origin, or show bank statements, for any of my visas.

I had never been denied a visa.

Being married to someone who had the opposite experience in almost all of those, I was glad to be able to ‘share’ some of my privileges, but also mad to see the disparity and injustice.

In 2022, my visa was approved and hers was not: she couldn’t come home for months. It could have been up to a year or more, they said. They didn’t like that she had a brown name.

There are many, many things wrong with America. But I suppose why I, and 11-15 million immigrants every year (‘legal’), and many more ‘not’, still find our way here is that this country feels like an unfinished story.

And it is one of very few that says to people who were not born here, that you can write whatever you want on it as well. *

* with caveats. And carve-outs.

I actually remember having a conversation with a friend a decade ago. She was also in her ‘just got a green card’ phase. There’s a period before that where it’s best you don’t leave the country.

As someone who was in many countries a week at the time, I asked: was it worth it? She said yes

All through my last year of literally not being able to leave (again, there are carve-outs for emergencies), I asked: is this going to be worth it?

I think that in 2017, when I first met my wife, I couldn’t have imagined what our life together would look like. At the time, it looked like endless cohabitation and visa runs to each other’s countries.

Today, in 2026: I think it was worth it.

It was very difficult, but it was worth it.

She’s about to graduate and become a psychotherapist; she’s had world class training.

I’m about to start another company. Being here, as a permanent resident, will also change the form and shape of the type of company that I’m able to build this time.

Most of all, it is very common for us to see queer people of color in their 60s, 70s and 80s and beyond. It is easy for me to see what type of lives they have built; what is possible for me.

Without coming here, I would have imagined that being an older queer person meant sadness and isolation, not joy and community (and legal recognition).

I have an aunt who moved to New York City 40 years ago and never left. I asked her what she thought about leaving Singapore / coming to NYC.

She said, in Singapore I would have had all of that and in New York I have all of *this*. It’s never the same. But my family is here, so this is where I am. Of course I think of what I left behind but that’s not real, that’s not my actual life. My life is here now.

She told me this in 2012. When I first contemplated moving here (it took me 6 more years to do it)

We’re on the opposite ends of this country. I saw her recently in New York City.

At some point she just said, I like that nobody gets in my business here. I don’t think I can go back to Singapore for that reason.

I laughed, and said, same, auntie