The immigration lawyer who hid her undocumented past
Qian Julie Wang arrived in the US as an undocumented child migrant. It was a secret she kept for years. When she began working on deportation cases, her past started to haunt her.
Qian Julie Wang arrived in the United States from China at the age of 7. Her family didn’t have permission to be in the country and so she always told people she’d been born there. But after fulfilling her ambition to become a lawyer, her secret became harder to bear. She was often working on immigration and deportation cases, and found it painful and conflicting to make judgements when she’d been in a similar situation. She then faced an agonising dilemma: to keep her secret or come clean. She knew that either decision could potentially mean the end of her career.
This interview was first broadcast in October 2021
Presenter: Emily Webb
Producer: Katy Takatsuki
Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com
Beautiful Country is by Qian Julie Wang
(Picture: Qian Julie Wang. Credit: Ryan Muir)
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Podcast: Lives Less Ordinary
Step into someone else’s life and expect the unexpected