00:02For me, being American is participating in the society, giving to the society as much as taking from it.
00:12I chose to pursue industrial design as a career instead of painting because as a former refugee coming from Iraq,
00:20a lot of people who helped me and my family solve our problem inspired me to start making creative solutions
00:27for problems.
00:28That's where I'm best at.
00:34As a young teenage girl living in Iraq was very difficult knowing that my father could leave and could never
00:43come back again.
00:44And going through that experience was really tough for me as a child.
00:49The war began in late 2003. We left in the summer of 2006.
00:55My dad got all our passports and my mom told us that we were leaving.
01:00I was excited because I really wanted to be free.
01:10I'm very grateful for being in this country, for embracing me as an individual with a lot of dreams to
01:18achieve and for giving me that freedom to achieve them.
01:25Women's rights are very important to me as a woman who came from a country that looks down on women.
01:33And the issue of accepting refugees to the United States is really important to me because I am just one
01:40small example of the people that have big dreams that they want to achieve,
01:45but they can't because they are in a society that doesn't give them that freedom.
01:52I'm Maryam. I'm 22 years old and I'm from Iraq and I'm a first time voter.
01:58And I'm 25 years old because I don't know why it's a boy who didn't drive through that military.
