Who Is Athulya Rajakumar? Indian-American Journalist And Documented Dreamer

A 23-year-old Indian-American aspiring journalist Athulya Rajakumar told the lawmakers in the United States that she is an American and hopes to be recognised as one. She also hopes that she will not be forced to leave the country in eight months without any reforms in the immigration system, which addresses the issues with regards to the aged out kids.

Athulya Rajakumar is a documented dreamer. The term is attached with the children who come to the US as dependents of their parents, who hold the legal permit to work in the country like an H-1B foreign work visa. Once these children turn 21 they lose their dependency status.

To the members of the Senate Judiciary Subcommission on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Safety, Rajakumar said that due to this law she will be forced to leave the country in the next eight months, which means that she will have to leave behind a place which she called home for 20 years and a mother, who is the only family that she is left with.

Suggested Reading: Five Fearless Women Journalists Covering The Ukraine-Russia War

Who Is Athulya Rajakumar?

Rajakumar said this during the subcommittee's hearing on 'Removing Barriers to Legal Migration.' Rajakumar informed the lawmakers that there are over 5,000 documented dreamers who face this issue every year.

"We are Americans, all we hope is to be recognised as that, to finally give meaning to the lives we have lived here so far. I hope you can improve the dream for all of us," she said.

Rajakumar had recently graduated from the Moody College of Communication, which is affiliated with the University of Texas at Austin. She is an aspiring journalist, who shared the story of her family's struggle through these laws which also contributed to her brother's death.

She had gotten a full-time offer from a major news corporation in Houston but the company withdrew the offer because of her visa status. "But worst of all, being considered an alien, an outsider in the only place you know to call home s a different kind of pain," she told the senators.

According to Rajakumar's Linkedin bio, she s now a project manager at a ProCom Consulting company. She has done her internship at KXAN-TV and has the experience of being a freelance reporter at The Daily Texan.