Mikhail Naimy left his Mount Lebanon home in 1912 to travel to the United States, where he attended college and went on to live for fifteen years. The experience of growing up in a Lebanese culture deeply affected by emigration, of leaving home himself, and of living in the West for two decades had a profound influence on Naimy. That influence informs both his non-fiction writing—particularly his monumental autobiography, Sab??n—as well as many of his works of fiction. The narrative of emigration that emerges from Naimy’s writing is nuanced and wide-ranging. It contends with both the popular American conception of a hospitable land opening its “golden door” to “huddled masses” of “tired,” “poor,” and “wretched” immigrants, as described in Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus,” installed at the base of the Statue of Liberty in 1903. Just as important, Naimy’s vision also contests any Lebanese notion of the U.S. as a land with gold-paved streets from which emigrants could return home with New-World riches. Instead, Naimy’s writings offers a complicated and far less romanticized experience of emigration—and one which sounds provocative notes of caution to Arabs seeking to leave home. As one of the most celebrated authors of his era, Naimy helped shape the imaginary of emigration/immigration for generations of Lebanese and other Arabs. This paper, drawing on research from the field of migration studies, the study of social imaginaries, and diasporic literary studies, explores the many ways Naimy addressed emigration both as a theme in his fiction and as an important topic in his non-fiction. It aims to add to our understanding of how Mahjar experience influenced wider Arab thought in the twentieth century.