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How I Became an American

My path to US citizenship was a long and difficult one.

A dream deferred: “The American dream I experienced is out of reach for most people,” writes Pramila Jayapal.

As with many other immigrants who choose to become Americans, my path to US citizenship was a long and difficult one. I was born in Chennai, India, and was raised in India, Indonesia, and Singapore. My parents believed deeply in the importance of an education—specifically, an American education, which they thought would enable me to achieve anything. So, when I was 16, my mother and father took their last meager savings and sent me to America by myself for college.

It took me 17 years, several degrees, and an alphabet soup of visas to ultimately get my citizenship. The penultimate step was marriage to a US citizen. That gave me a green card around the same time that I also received a prestigious two-year fellowship to live in India.

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The American Revolution’s Long Tail Richard Kreitner

The American Revolution’s Long Tail

We planned things out carefully: I would get pregnant toward the end of the fellowship and return to the United States just in time to give birth and retain my permanent-resident status. But those plans quickly fell through after my daughter was born prematurely in India at 26 and a half weeks, weighing one pound, 14 ounces. The doctors gave her a 40 percent chance of survival, and I refused to leave her side. Her life was paramount, even if it meant I might lose my green card. Thanks to incredible advocacy from my institute, a deal was cut with the US embassy to restore my green card, but there was a catch: The years I had spent qualifying for citizenship would be erased from the record. I would have to start from scratch. I didn’t care. It allowed me to not be separated from my daughter and to return to the US once she was stable enough to fly.

That terrifying ordeal made me even more determined to become a US citizen so I would never again face the prospect of being separated from my family. I waited the requisite three years, passed my citizenship tests, and finally received my approval.

Even 26 years later, I have never forgotten the day when the process was finished. In the cavernous hall of the historic Immigration and Naturalization Service building in Seattle, I stood with hundreds of people from all over the world, many of whom had also waited decades. Some were........

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