My Immigration Career

As any child with immigrant parents will tell you, you have three career choices after college: doctor, lawyer, or engineer. My parents, arriving in the United States over twenty years ago, had said the same to me. I’d settled on lawyer because math made me sick, and soon began to build the perfect law school resume, taking every internship in law and politics that I could get my hands on. I spent several months at a tiny probate firm, had a stint in a D.C. lobbying office, and even had the chance to work on Pramila Jayapal’s historic bid for Congress, campaigning to help her become the first Indian-American woman to enter the United States Congress. But my heart was never in politics in the way that I saw Representative Jayapal’s was, and
With that in mind, my motivation to become a journalist stems from two sources: first, my coursework taught me that journalism, unlike many other professions, is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. I never fully comprehended why until I spent time working under lawyers, politicians, and lobbyists, witnessing a side of society that needed to be held accountable. Secondly, my worldview— informed by the experiences of my own family and families like us— gave me a unique opportunity to see stories that others may not; that is, my background forces me to acknowledge the plight of those who are often overlooked. My mother, an immigrant, a brown-skinned woman of color, has a story that was not told until you read it a moment ago. My father, a blue-collar worker from rural England, grew up in a community where peoples’ voices were never heard, let alone listened to. Therefore, I decided to become a journalist because I knew that I needed to use my skills and my perspective to give a platform to those people and communities that are underrepresented, misrepresented, or in danger of being