He has my identical habits of mind. He scents my swindle, even through a bad cell-phone connection. My paisan sees through my ruses and schemes like I see through cellophane. He's like a spouse. Worse, I see his.
Natives always think they're rooking the dumb foreigner.
Meanwhile this recent immigrant buys a home with the proceeds from a type of transaction which produced four fractured ribs and a crushed cheekbone in the old country. And he still has funds left over to send to the relatives back home. Not that there's anything new or novel in these sentiments. But they lack all sharpness of wit and penetration of the intellect. As a one-way street these sentiments by themselves would never work for economic progress.