KC Cares: Eye of an Immigrant ensures those in need don’t lack necessities

Photo by ItsBaliVisuals

Being an immigrant is tough, and in the current climate, the experience can be discouraging and downright scary. Eye of an Immigrant aims to help make the process easier for foreigners while also providing a platform for their stories.

For Komalpreet Kaur, founder and executive director of the organization, it’s a topic not far from home. Though she was born in New York, both her parents immigrated separately while fleeing severe violence against Sikhs in the Punjab region of India.

When her parents finally got their green cards in 2013, “that really changed the trajectory for us. We grew up witnessing a lot of what immigrant families have to go through,” she says.

That included dealing with language barriers that saw Kaur helping her parents with translation and even legal documents at a young age. She took that personal experience and channeled it into a junior year project at Olathe East High School in 2020 that became Eye of an Immigrant.

Kaur noticed that a lot of the discourse around immigration didn’t match what she knew about the process. In turn, she wanted to highlight individual stories to “shift that narrative here in Kansas City, and that started with sharing stories of our neighbors and people that we recognize, business owners and artists in the Kansas City metro area,” she says.

A blog that grew into a podcast, From Home to Here, serves as a space where immigrants and their children share stories of why they came to the United States, as well as the hardships they’ve encountered and accomplishments they’ve achieved along the way.

“A lot of times, immigrant families are told to be quiet, not ruffle any feathers, keep their heads low, not bring attention to themselves, and because of that, they’re too often too scared to share their stories. We hope that by creating this community of individuals that are openly sharing their stories, others will also be open to sharing their stories,” Kaur says.

Stephanie Reyes, whose parents both came to the United States from Mexico, embraced the opportunity to talk about her and her family’s experiences.

Photo by ItsBaliVisuals

She hopes that by sharing her experiences on the podcast, she can help those who might feel isolated “realize that there are more people like them, that look like them, that sound like them, that act like them, or allow us to find each other,” Reyes says.

One topic that came up on the podcast was her childhood in Liberty.

“Being Mexican-American, raised by Mexican immigrants, but being raised in the suburbs of a predominantly white neighborhood and trying to understand how to fit in amongst a majority of white people—I got a lot of traction on that as well, people just being able to relate and wanting to preserve their culture as much as they can and be proud of it while also trying to fit in… in high school, in middle school,” she says.

For Reyes, the podcast provides a platform to show how people are more alike than different.

“We’re everywhere, and we’re your neighbors. We’re the people who are packing your groceries. We’re the people who are cooking your food. We’re all over the place. We’re making this world function just as much as everyone else is making this world function,” Reyes says. “…I’m just a nail tech. It was really important to me, as a ‘regular girl.’ I don’t own a business. I’m not anything huge, and she still asked me to share my story and my background and what I grew up with.”

That sense of community is important to Kaur, knowing that foreigners don’t always have the most inclusive access to resources.

“You feel like the outsider, and you work your entire life in America to give back to your community, help boost the economy or do things that are beneficial to our neighbors, and those are the things that very rarely get recognized or appreciated. Our goal is to just cultivate understanding of these journeys,” she says.

After receiving a 501(c)(3) status from the IRS, Eye of an Immigrant was able to expand from just sharing stories to taking an active role in making those immigration journeys easier.

The biggest piece of that is providing financial assistance for all the different expenses involved in immigration: application fees, filing fees, attorneys, and more. Immigrants working with an accredited organization or attorney can be eligible for this help.

“We know this path is costly, and oftentimes you have to choose between attorney fees or an extra meal, and those are choices that they shouldn’t have to make,” Kaur says.

Kaur says recent legislation raised existing fees and created new ones, making an already pricey process more expensive. She estimates her own family spent more than $50,000 on their whole immigration journey.

“A lot of times, immigrant parents choose to immigrate not for themselves but for their children, to give their children the opportunities they did not have and to give their children a future they would not have had they stayed. That’s true for my family,” she says.

Beyond helping with fees, Eye of an Immigrant also works to connect people with resources for finding a job and other important services.

For more information on Eye of an Immigrant, visit eyeofanimmigrant.org.