With newborn baby, Bhutanese refugee family plants American roots
Posted On July 18, 2011
OAKLAND — The first American citizen in the Mainali family didn’t have to flee her country, grow up stateless in another or testify about her life to interviewers with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Her parents already handled all of that.
All baby Shreya Laxmi Mainali needed to do was arrive healthy, which she did, crying softly as she was born June 26 on the ninth floor at Highland Hospital.
“The life of Shreya will be much more better than ours,” said Leela Mainali, exhausted but smiling after her daughter’s birth. “She will be no more refugee now. She is an American citizen.”