The Arrivals was a project started when I was in my first year of graduate school at the University of North Texas. Myself and two fellow students were interested in working on a multimedia project from beginning to end- meaning we wanted to come up with the story, figure out how to tell it, produce the storytelling elements and develop a website.

This was 2013, one year after President Obama’s administration issued Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). At that time, there were an estimated one million undocumented students living in the United States and many of them attended or wanted to attend school right along with us. Many of these students arrived in the U.S. when they were just children, with no choice but to make this country their home. These undocumented youth struggle with simple things that other American’s might take for granted because of their undocumented status.

We decided to focus our project on these undocumented students and how their lived were impacted by DACA. For my piece, I wanted to reach out to a student not of Latin decent- not because those stories aren’t valid or don’t need to be told- but because I believe part of my job as a journalist is to address and help combat stereotypes.

This is the story of Kiran Jahangir, a young women who moved to the United States from Pakistan when she was eight years old.

Click here to view the entire project.

Rebirth