Stories
After Fleeing Bloodshed in Gambia, Immigrant Entrepreneur Starts Successful Business in Little Rock
In 2000, when Maf Sonko was 15, his family fled a bloody government crackdown on student demonstrations in their native Gambia. They received asylum and settled in North Carolina, where Sonko finished high school and earned a degree in industrial engineering from North Carolina State University Since then, Sonko… Read More
Business Owner & Indian Immigrant Advocates for Little Rock’s Economic Development
Indian native Rajesh Chokhani spent 13 years with Indian steel and textiles giant Welspun, before the company gave him an important new project: to open a $150 million pipe plant in the United States. Chokhani came to America and… Read More
Indian Native Finds Success in America, Gives Back to Adoptive Home of Corpus Christi
Indian native Kamlesh Bhikha grew up in an entrepreneurial family. His grandfather was a sugarcane and cotton farmer and his father manufactured diamonds, selling the gems he’d fashioned from rough stones. Bhikha also aspired to be his own boss. “The harder you work, the more you reap,’” he says. “And… Read More
After Finding Success, He Turns His Focus to Serving His New Home
When Mathew Ittoop left his native India on New Year’s Eve in 1990, he couldn’t wait to start his new life in the United States. He stepped off the plane and thought, “This is a great country that leads the rest of the world.” Ittoop and his wife landed in New York City, where… Read More
Dallas-Based Artist and Immigrant Found Success Thanks to Her Parent’s Drive for a Better Life
As one of six children in her family in Taipei, Taiwan, Jin-Ya Huang grew up watching her parents struggle to overcome poverty. Her mother scraped together money by cooking and sewing, and her father worked and lived at a distant cement factory, where he was a mechanical engineer. When he lost his job, money… Read More
Dallas DACA-Recipient Works to Improve His Community
Alex Medrano was 11 years old when his mother brought him to the United States from Mexico in search of a better education, an opportunity Medrano fast took advantage of. By his sophomore year of high school, he was taking college classes, and by graduation he had 62 hours of… Read More
It’s the Economy: Nation’s Oldest State Really Needs Its Dreamers
Publicly, Sharon McDonnell’s son’s friend goes by the name “S.” That’s because S is an undocumented immigrant. And although she now has Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a policy that currently shields her from deportation, she cannot be sure how long she will remain protected. None of the country’s… Read More
Deep in Conservative South Carolina, Republican Lawmaker Touts DACA’s Economic Necessity
South Carolina is one of America’s reddest states, and Pickens is its reddest county; 75 percent of voters in the county cast their ballot for President Donald Trump in 2016. But when Neal Collins, a Republican representing Pickens, introduced a bill to help South Carolina Dreamers get an education, his… Read More
An Unresolved DACA Would ‘Tear Our World Apart’
Carolina Hernandez-Arango is a business-administration major in her final year at Wichita State University. She is also a mother of two, a community organizer — and a Dreamer, brought to the United States from Mexico by her parents when she was 3 years old to receive urgent medical treatment. Now,… Read More
The Kangol Kid: Recycled Stereotypes Ignore Decades of Haitian Contributions
Shaun Fequiere was 7 years old when he first experienced the sting of discrimination. Classmates at his elementary school in Brooklyn had learned that his parents were from Haiti, where the main language is a French-based creole, and had started calling him “French fry” and “French poodle.” The teasing escalated,… Read More
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