Indian-American Neera Tanden, who has been nominated as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget by President-elect Joe Biden, on Tuesday shared the inspiring story of her mother who immigrated to the US from India. Like the Vice President-elect’s (Kamala Harris) mother, Shyamala, my mother, Maya, was born in India. Like so many millions, across every generation, she came to America to pursue a better life, said Tanden at the Biden Transition headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware.
I was raised in a suburb of Boston a middle-class kid. But when I was five, my parents got divorced and my mom was left on her own with two children and without a job, said Tanden, who was born in Bedford, Massachusetts to immigrant parents from India. After her parents divorced, Tanden’s mother was on welfare for nearly two years before obtaining a job as a travel agent. She faced a choice: return to India, where at the time divorce was stigmatized and opportunity would be limited, or keep…