What do I do when my foreign degree counts for nothing here?

You built a degree and years of experience back home, and here it seems to count for nothing. That is a real loss and a real insult, and it is worth naming plainly: it is not fair. Your knowledge did not evaporate at a border. The system is slow to see it, and that gap is exhausting and demeaning to stand in. But hold the difference between not recognized and not real. What you know is still in you. The skill, the training, the judgment, none of it was erased by a move. What is missing is the local proof, the paperwork this place demands, and that is a task to complete, not a verdict on your worth. Painful and unjust, but a task, and tasks can be done. Find out the single most important step to getting your qualifications recognized here, and start it this week. Talk to one person who has walked this road before you. You are not starting from zero. You are carrying everything you earned and adding the local proof this place insists on. The value was always real. Now make it legible.