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Deepa Iyer is the executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), Chair of the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, and mother to a three-year-old. Follow her on Twitter @dviyer and reach her at deepa@saalt.org.
Deepa Iyer
Deepa Iyer is the executive director of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), Chair of the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, and mother to a three-year-old. Foll
Blog Post List
May 30, 2013
Photo on right: Deepa with her mother in Nashville, Tennessee, circa 1975 As an immigrant, a South Asian American, and a mother, the current debate over immigration policy is deeply personal to me. At the time my parents moved from India to spend a year in Nashville, Tennessee, I was two and a half, around the same age as my own son is now. As I navigate life with a toddler, I often reflect on the experiences that my mother had when she became a new immigrant in the United States. It is hard for me to imagine the isolation that she must have felt in a new country, not yet “home.” In India, my...
MomsRising
Together
December 10, 2012
Like so many others in the United States, I am a product of the American immigration system. I was twelve when my mother and brother took a long plane ride from Kerala (India) to Kentucky to join my father. We had been separated for a year from him as he navigated the Immigration and Naturalization Service as it was known at the time, and prepared to bring us over. Bleary-eyed and tired when we arrived, I remember going to our new home, an apartment in the suburbs, and having my first taste of pizza. My immigrant experience was for the most part a privileged and mundane one – especially in...
MomsRising
Together