I didn't know the difference between a passport and a visa. I didn’t know what being U.S. American meant outside of the U.S.– I had lived there my entire life. It was my first time in the UAE.

Growing up in Connecticut, I, like the majority of my Asian-American friends, always checked the Asian-American box whenever asked about my identity. Nobody challenged that identification until I stepped out of Connecticut and came to Abu Dhabi.

At NYU Abu Dhabi, as I interacted with friends from various backgrounds, I realized the power of a U.S. American passport. Upon looking at a friend’s resume, I couldn’t help but ask, “Why did you put your nationality in your resume?”

I found it strange that someone would add their citizenship to their resume if the employer was only going to look at their qualifications. I received my response:

“No Maeda, everyone does it here to boost their chances of getting a higher paying job, especially if you have a Western passport!”

The statistics support her claim, although the UAE government has tried to dismantle the discrimination. Three-quarters of UAE residents believe that a person’s nationality determines their social and professional mobility. 85% of respondents, according to a survey run by The National, agreed that salary disparities between differing nationalities is an issue in the workplace.

A veteran UAE resident and a friend of mine rationalized the disparities that non-Western nationals face saying that they would still earn more in the UAE than they would in their own countries.

Nevertheless, this discrimination bothered me. Although I am thankful to be a U.S. American citizen, I face a different kind of difficulty as a non-stereotypical U.S. American. In one instance, while waiting in the health center for the check up required during the visa process, the staff shamelessly discussed in Arabic how strange it was for an Indonesian-looking person to not be a maid and, most interestingly, be of U.S. American nationality. “Wallah?” said one staff to the other in disbelief. “Wallah,” her colleague confirmed.

In another instance, while shopping in the city, a man approached me to recruit me as a maid in broken English. Upon replying “What?” in my U.S. American accent, he snatched back the business card he had given me and ran off.

These two incidents just were a taste of people’s perception of me in Abu Dhabi as a non-stereotypical U.S. American. I am a person of color, look Southeast Asian and wear the hijab. I look as if I don’t belong in the U.S. I didn’t look Americanized, as a friend said when I struggled to understand what had happened to me.

These perceptions, of course, are fueled by the socioeconomic realities of the UAE. Low-skilled labor and domestic help are dominated by people of non-Western nationality. The majority of migrants are men, 146,000 are females, mainly of Indian, Bangladeshi, Indonesian and Filipino nationality, and they work as domestic help or in retail.

Upon further reflection, I realize his mentality is no different from that of some of people in the U.S., those Islamophobes who have discriminated against me and my fellow Muslims, a phenomenon well-documented by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“Terrorist!” one had yelled at me, while I was praying in public. Instances like these were accompanied by two decades of post Sept. 11 stares and glances of caution from people in the U.S. I had a very lonely, ostracized upbringing in Connecticut.

Kids in my neighborhood avoided me, with the most forward of them telling my brother, who doesn’t look like a stereotypical Muslim, that I was terrorist. My hijab scared them. It is hard enough to be just a Muslim girl, so I did not openly acknowledge that I was U.S. American out loud for the fear of someone again yelling, “Go back to your country!” or even just a blatant “You're not a real American!” The worst of my nightmares is to be pushed onto the train tracks on the route I take to get to NYUNY, just as a fellow hijabi experienced.

Upon hearing such struggles, my NYUAD friends try to calm me by saying, “At least you have an American passport!” The boldest of them said, “You must be imagining the discrimination.” The irony is that while some non-Westerners in the UAE are quite blinded by my U.S. American identity, this same identity is ignored while I am in the U.S. Yes, being U.S. American in the Gulf lowers the chances that I work as a maid. But being U.S. American in the U.S. can't protect me from being pushed onto train tracks. The glorified perceptions some non-Westerners have of U.S. American nationals puts down the struggles I have faced as a non-stereotypical U.S. American.

In the last three years, I learned that in different places, some people choose to overemphasize certain aspects of my identity. Growing up in Connecticut I had accepted the realities of being a U.S. American-Muslim post-Sept. 11. Some people in the U.S. fear or hate me because of my Muslim identity to the point of not acknowledging my U.S. American identity. But outside the U.S., I am treated by some as an Indonesian migrant worker, until they realize my nationality. Upon realizing my passport, they venerate my U.S. American identity as a guarantee of respectful treatment that other nationalities, including those that look like me, might not necessarily receive.

There is more to the Asian-American box than what I check in the forms.