"Being an American has never meant giving up who you are to become something else," Asra Najam, whose parents immigrated from Karachi in 1996 to Detroit in Michigan and is now a presidential writer at the White House, wrote in a blog post today.
Having lived in the US ever since she was four-years-old, Najam wrote on the White House blog that being American means using the sum of parts to establish communities, build livelihood, reimagine identity, and grow their dreams.
While the husband was of Pakistani origin, the wife was a Pakistani national. Both were killed by the police in an exchange of fire.
In the blog post, Najam narrated her personal story of what it means to be in the US.
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"We lived in an apartment complex fifteen minutes away from the airport and befriended two or three neighbouring Pakistani families," she said.
"My sister and I spent our days at school and our evenings playing in the courtyard with the neighbouring children. Our mothers would drink chai and watch over us. You could find our fathers nearby discussing world politics," she wrote.
"Every time I go home, I still find myself in the company of those same neighbourhood kids. Even though we've all grown up to lead different lives, we still look back to the days when we were all nervous and excited to live in a country where we could be anything we wanted," she said.
By the time they got their green card in 2002, they had already been woven into the fabric of America, she noted, adding that six years later, her parents finally took their oaths of citizenship.
"That day, we knew that the home we had built for ourselves here could never be taken away from us," Najam said.