BY MARJORIE TOLSDORF
“On November 9, 2006, my father left for work in Al Hillah, a city below Baghdad, but never returned,” said Taif Jany. “He was kidnapped on his way home while in a car with two of his colleagues and their driver. Only the body of the driver was found the next morning, shot execution style. The other three passengers, my father included, were just missing.”
Taif Jany fled Iraq and aimed to build a new life in the United States. Unable to obtain a work permit while on a student visa, Taif applied for asylum for the opportunity to stay, waiting years for permission to work as a result. In response to his experiences as an immigrant in the United States, he dedicates his life to changing the nature of the immigration system at its core and to building the foundations of a nation void of persecution. His work highlights the contributions made by immigrants to the U.S. economy and society to alter the negative impression of immigrants held by native-born Americans and bridge the gap between these two groups.
Not long after his father’s disappearance, his family began a search mission to find information about what happened to him. Taif and his brother stopped going to school, and his mother’s health deteriorated significantly. After weeks of searching and failing to find anything about his father, his mother decided the family would leave Iraq and seek refuge in Syria. They packed a few suitcases, locked their house, and left everything behind. His family sought asylum in Syria in late 2006, the only neighboring country accepting Iraqi refugees at the time.
Syria felt beautiful and peaceful to Taif and his family when they arrived. They lived in Syria for two years. During that time, Taif won a scholarship to study in the United States through the Iraq Student Project, a grassroot organization that was founded to help displaced Iraqi students finish their education in the US. In 2008, Taif moved to Schenectady, New York to attend Union College, where he studied Sociology and French. “It was a difficult transition,” said Taif. “No matter what, life is challenging for refugees. We live in a constant state of uncertainty; about what the future will look like, about what tomorrow will look like.” The most effective way he found to make the United States feel more like home was getting to know the American people and exploring their lives to learn as much from them as possible.
After graduation, Taif aspired to work on U.S. foreign policy on Capitol Hill. He secured various internships in Washington, D.C. while on his Optional Practice Training (OPT) visa, a visa allotted to foreign students permitting them to work for one year after graduating. He was unable to obtain a work sponsorship visa, which omitted him from the pool of yearly college graduates who aspire to shape U.S. policies with their own voices. “It was incredibly difficult for me to deal with the struggle of not being able to find work after graduation as an international student due to U.S. immigration policy,” said Taif. “So many of my international friends had to leave, unable to access opportunities they hoped to obtain by moving to the United States.” Many U.S. universities give out thousands of dollars in scholarships annually to foreign students, an unfruitful investment when these students are deprived of the opportunity to join the workforce and give back to society.
After his OPT ended, Taif applied for asylum.. After a two-year process, he finally secured a work permit and began working for the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC), an organization that seeks to empower youth in Iraq by raising awareness about their experiences and implementing humanitarian projects to help affected youth in the country. Over the course of three years he focused on humanitarian projects, the largest of which, called Soccer Salam, raised money to support internally-displaced Iraqi youth in the aftermath of ISIS attacks.
Taif Jany, Policy Entrepreneur (Courtesy of: The Next 100, taken by Bridget Badore)
Currently, Taif is making a concerted effort to improve immigration policy through his work at a startup think tank called Next100, which allows young people in the United States to influence policies that pertain to them, rather than leaving policy decisions to politicians who are not directly impacted by their own choices. As an immigrant, Taif strives to influence immigration policy by drawing on personal understanding and experience, highlighting how immigrants are contributing to communities across the US. “I was getting tired of listening to the news which often highlights narrow-minded arguments about immigration reform, discrediting how integral immigrants are to this country’s long history and to the increase in standard of living for native-born individuals,” said Taif.
Taif believes that the term “immigrant” has adopted a singular, inaccurate definition. Each immigrant has her or his own individual, unique story about journeying to the United States. Taif aims to shed light on the diverse faces of immigrants, while also sharing what immigrants and native-born Americans have in common. “Take this interview for example,” said Taif. “You were born in this country, and I was not, yet we both speak the same language, and we are getting to know one another. That is what is missing from today’s national narrative about immigration: immigrants and native-born Americans sitting together and learning from one another.”
44 million immigrants from every corner of the world live in the United States to study, work, and create new lives as of 2017. Nearly half of Fortune 500 companies are founded by foreign-born individuals or their children, which means that immigrants have created a vast amount of work opportunities for natives. Despite these statistics, President Trump passed the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy (RAISE) Act in August of 2017, which aims to decrease the amount of legal immigration in the United States by cutting 50 percent of green cards issued.
The RAISE Act is a response to the homogeneous idea of an immigrant, an idea that is sometimes met with xenophobic sentiment. “It’s weird to me that I had to flee Iraq because I was afraid for my own safety, and now that I am in the United States, that fear has not gone away,” said Taif. In fact, the intensity of hatred towards immigrants in the United States has increased as compared to a decade ago. “It’s unfortunate because there are so many similarities between people, but it feels like no one sees them,” said Taif.
U.S. immigration policy and the reality of contributions made by foreign-born individuals to the United States do not align. Most Americans are related to immigrants or immigrated themselves. Refugees and immigrants contribute to American society by creating new job opportunities, leading social change, and adding value to the diverse cultural fabric of the nation. Taif specifically is contributing to American society by fighting for the people who leave their homelands in search of a better life, one that seems most achievable in the United States. Taif — an Iraqi, a Mandaean, an immigrant— calls the United States home. Like most Americans who enjoy multiple, complex identities and are citizens of a country that was based on the idea of freedom for all, regardless of national origin, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, or any other characteristic a person can claim, Taif takes pride in his roots and in being an immigrant in the United States. He continues to strive for a future he can take pride in, as well. Taif wants to ensure future immigrants will not have to struggle the way he did.
“America is unique because people from all over the world mash up together and make it work,” he said.