Oftentimes, folks need to laugh at relatable comedy before they can genuinely begin to sympathize with the plights of their fellow man. It’s not the case that the situations being joked about being funny. In fact, they are generally tragic and deeply serious. Nevertheless, humor is universal, and a clever punchline can be just the way to bridge the gap between folks with wildly disparate lives.

In a country with as much diversity as the United States, comedy can even be viewed as a political tool, as humor may be the only thing that is shared by nearly the entire population.

Mohammed Amer, a comedian with a handful of well-received specials under his belt, didn’t have what many would consider a typical American childhood. He is Palestinian, and his family fled war-torn Kuwait when he was a small boy. From a young age, he was privy to all the trials and tribulations that have become synonymous with immigrating to America. Mo, the new Netflix and A24 series he created, is loosely based on his early life. Mohammed chooses to find humor in his lifelong struggles with alienation, both personal and legal.

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Here’s what Mo has to say about the immigrant experience.

No Documentation Leads to Tenuous Employment

One of the most consistent struggles in Mo is Amer’s inability to hold down a stable job. Though many folks feel insecure at or simply downright hate their jobs, immigrants have to deal with the unique anxiety of never technically being employed at the places where they make their livelihoods.

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At the beginning of the series, Mo Najarr is working at a cell phone repair show and is apparently quite good at his job. However, when his boss hears about an ICE raid that was carried out at a mobile retailer nearby, he is forced to fire Mo. As he needs a source of income to help support his family, Mo is forced to get another job immediately.

For a time, he sells different products out of the back of his car, which is illegal. As such, he has no recourse when a drug dealer decides to start taking a cut of his profits. Later, Mo finds steady, albeit backbreaking, work as a laborer on an olive farm. Undocumented workers are always moments away from being fired, and they can be abused by their bosses, who have no fear that immigrants will question the legality of how they are being treated at work.

Traumatic Injury Could Come With Crippling Debt and More

Medical drama should be no stranger to anyone living in the United States. In one of the series’ first episodes, Mo is shot while shopping at a grocery store. When he wakes up on a gurney, he shrugs off his bullet wound to spare himself from the debt he would incur by taking an ambulance to the hospital, citing the fact that he is uninsured to the paramedics.

Instead of going to the hospital, Mo gets stitched up by his tattoo artist friend and begins to purchase cough syrup from the same man, using it to make lean (a mix of Codeine laced cough syrup, soda, and sometimes candy) as a sort of homemade painkiller. Though many Americans have been forced to employ similar strategies to avoid medical debt, illegal immigrants have the unique fear that being registered at a hospital could result in them being caught by immigration authorities.

The last few episodes of Mo see Mohammed’s family attempting to navigate the incredibly frustrating bureaucratic red tape surrounding the process of immigrant legalization. They spend an entire day in an immigration office, and almost every single person that they interact with is profoundly unpleasant.

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After spending hours in the stuffy government building, they realize that their appointment is actually at a building across the street. Their lawyer needs to fight tooth and nail with an employee at the other office to even see the judge.

When the family finally gets in a courtroom, they learn that the judge knew their husband/father. As such, he has to recuse himself from the case, which delays the family’s attempts to gain legal status for an unknown amount of time… possibly years.

Given its subject matter, Mo could have easily been a drama, but that simply isn’t how Mohammed Amer has chosen to frame his life. It’s unclear whether or not the show will return for another season. However, the eight episodes that comprise the first installment contained a lot of important lessons for viewers about how difficult it is to be an immigrant in America. All it takes is a Netflix subscription to get this effective crash course in multiculturalism.