"America is home to lower-middle-class immigrants; the well-offs must strive to find means to establish their prosperous future in their homeland, Pakistan."

These words, reportedly spoken by a senior bureaucrat, have stirred a storm of emotional reactions on social media. Some called them insensitive. Others hailed them as a much-needed truth. What struck me, however, was not the debate, but what these words reveal about our collective mindset as a nation caught between migration dreams and homeland anxieties.

In the same viral statement, the bureaucrat compared his own retired life in Pakistan — surrounded by familiar faces, childhood memories and cultural belonging — to that of his sister who lives alone in New Jersey. Once settled abroad with her husband and children, she now navigates old age in quiet solitude. Her children are educated and successful, but busy in their own lives, scattered by ambition and distance. This contrast is not a criticism of migration, but a stark reminder of what we rarely discuss: the........

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