Unless you were created in a lab—and as far as I know, that hasn’t yet been done with humans without utilizing human ‘samples’—we all have an origin story of some kind or another. The majority of us reading here have an origin story in America, and a good percentage of that group can probably trace their roots several generations. My family first immigrated here over 100 years ago.
We all got here one way or another, and we’ve all tried to author our own success story. It’s a rote cliché to talk about how this country was built be immigrants, but the reality is that it continues to this day. The Pittsburgh Steelers’ Omar Khan is just another immigrant story of success, and he attributes so much of it to his first-generation American parents.
“My parents have always been the biggest influence in my life. They’ve been my rock. And to this day, the two are the hardest-working people I’ve ever met”, he told Missi Matthews on Friday during a sit-down interview before his press conference that day. He also paid significant homage to his parents during his opening remarks.
“To all my close family and friends, especially my parents, I come from two amazing parents, my mom, my dad, both immigrants”, he said. “My mom is Hispanic, she’s from Honduras, my dad is Indian, both who have had the opportunity to live the American dream and have always done whatever they had to do to make sure my brother, my sister and I always had the resources necessary to succeed. To this day, they’re the two hardest working people I’ve ever met in my life”.
While Khan himself was born in New Orleans, and even went to Tulane—his first job in the NFL was a five-year stint with the Saints—he now has had his roots in Pittsburgh for over two decades. But he’ll never forget where he, and his family, came from.
Little is known about Khan’s parents, but I’m assuming that they met once already in the United States—that could be wrong, but seems a reasonable deduction given that one is Honduran and the other Indian. That makes Khan a second-generation American, having been born here—despite repeated characterizations of him being a first-generation American throughout articles about him this past week.
Khan met his wife here, however, a native of western Pennsylvania. He has planted his roots here for some time, has raised his children here, and now, isn’t going to be going anywhere for a while. Perhaps never leaving again. The son of an immigrant family, making a big name for himself in the NFL and finding his new home, and the home of his own American story.
