Immigration Interview

Interviewer: Joshua Crayne

Interviewee: Phanendra Babu Devineni

1.
Q. What county are you from?
A. India, Andre Pradesh
2.
Q. What languages do you speak?
A. Telegue and English
3.
Q. What religion do you practice?
A. Hindu
4.
Q. How did you get to the states?
A. His brother came to the United States for his MBA, and his brother paid for him to come to the States to study.
5.
Q. How old were you when you came to the United States?
A. He was 18.
6.
Q. Are you a legal citizen?
A. Yes, he has dual citizenship in the U.S. and in India.
7.
Q. Do you feel exiled because you are an immigrant living in the United States?
A. When he arrived in the U.S. he did feel exiled until he met his friends in college. He has not felt exiled until lately with the hate crimes that are happening in New York.
8.
Q. Do you still have family in India?
A. Yes, his whole family is over there except for a brother in Detroit, Michigan and a sister in Tennessee.
9.
Q. Do you try to instill the culture from India in your children?
A. Yes very much so, he has one son and two daughters. He said that when his son was young he was trying to find a young Indian girl that he could marry. But his brother told him that he couldn’t choose the woman his son Krishna would marry because this is America and things are different then back home.
10.
Q. What is your profession?
A. He is a manager for a scrap metal company in Dallas, Texas.

As I was talking with Phanendra Babu Devineni (He goes by Bob, he says it's more American), he left me with a story about a time when he felt exiled and hated by Americans. He said that in 2002 he was coming home from the air port to surprise his family. And two police officers pulled him over, when he asked them what he had done the officers said “you know why we pulled you over, now get out of your car.” They proceeded to search the car.