I hear you especially with regards to Indians. I grew up back and forth between Singapore and America. I call it America cos I spent most of my youth in the South. Indian mixed. Right now, back in Singapore.
My brother is thinking of going to America for his film studies but hasn't been there. It's hard to explain to him to not get caught up with "being impressed and chasing experiences" cos they are soft power fabrications. Idolatry even, where you are the one sacrificing for the few before being sacrificed once that glaze in your eyes disappears. He doesn't know it but has already compiled some misguided "authentically American bucket list".
I've been there myself and seen others grow disenchanted, usually starts off with In-and-Outs and White Castles before moving to Mustangs and McMansions. The further you go, the more hollow and isolated you become from yourself and your identity and community. I chose to come back cos of family once I realised even having my own yacht (true story) would never fill me and my void as much as living a "commoner's life" with them especially when in their old age. I was lucky to realise but that required me to be voluntarily sacrificed, financially. Losing the money wasn't the hard part.
We, Asians and Indians, love to get caught up with how our lives in the West should look, a lot of times out of spite to incite jealousy from our relatives. Even if it's not working out for us, we would still try to sell them that veneer just to see their expressions and watch their wrinkles tighten. It's that cos revealing the honest truth would be very predictably countered with their schadenfreude. It's like two snakes trying to out charm and out manoeuvre the other in battle. So much so that we would be willing brush off our own degradation and ill-treatment and would rather hold on for dear life on a sinking ship than face a shore full of sneering faces. And so, we keep talking it up, trying to avoid the truth only to paint ourselves into a corner.
I just hope I can get through to him because I do want him to be successful and at the same time, avoid the same painful pitfalls. It's almost like he has some skewed impression, a lot of us did and still do, that he would somehow transform from a Muhammed Azman to a Micheal Arnold and live "that privileged movie-esque glossy life" the moment TSA stamps his passport. But, if he's trying to go in like that and also work in the film industry, I'm afraid he would almost too easily and inadvertently turn into another Uncle Tamilselvam or the next Dinesh D'Souza.
I know I had done some cringy I'm-not-that-kind-of-Asian-lol antics myself. It's kind of how America (and the West) likes to play us against our kind and ourselves for crumbs of acceptance and assimilation. Much easier to fall prey when you are on your own and not around people like now. Even though, I make less now but I'm so much more at peace with my psyche. Living in America used to always make me feel like God had shortchanged me by making me an Asian male, how fucked up is that?
I've now come to find out that fastest and easiast way to be a self-hating Asian is to be an idol worshipper of the Western cult of the self and have since been trying to get back in touch with God and religion. Singapore and Asia is chockfull of girls like that, especially the ones that Daddy sent to school overseas and came back with accents and fauxminism ideologies.