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How the Immigrant Scarcity Mindset Holds Us Back

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Failure is not the enemy of success, inertia, fear and apathy are. If you failed, it means you believed in yourself enough to try. When my parents immigrated to America from Taiwan in the late 1960s, they didn’t know a soul, not even each other. They came to the United States for graduate school as a result of the Immigration and Naturalizaton Act of 1965, which eliminated the old quota system that gave preference to western Europeans. My mother went to Fresno, California and my dad went to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Other immigrants have much more harrowing stories of coming to this country as refugees who escaped oppressive regimes in Southeast Asia. The shared a commonality of all of these new immigrants from Asia was that they came to this country with little to nothing and had to work odd jobs to make ends meet. Most of them barely spoke any English, but they still had to find ways to provide for themselves and their families. Every penny counted and they could not afford to spend on any lu

Abstract: In “How the Immigrant Scarcity Mindset Holds Us Back,” Dave Lu examines the psychological and cultural impact of the scarcity mindset, particularly among immigrant communities. Rooted in experiences of hardship, this mindset fosters a belief that resources such as money, opportunities, and security are limited and must be preserved at all costs. Lu argues that this fear-based approach can hinder personal and professional growth, leading individuals to avoid risk and favor stability over potential advancement. Drawing from personal anecdotes and observations, he contrasts this with…

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