Mehta’s work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Granta, Harper’s, Time, Newsweek, The New York Review of Books[4] and Scroll.in,[5] and has been featured on NPR’s Fresh Air, and NPR's All Things Considered.

Mehta has also written original screenplays for films, including New York, I Love You (2008) and Mission Kashmir (2000) with novelist Vikram Chandra.

A forthright defense of immigrants, both legal and illegal, in the wake of colonialism, the book argued that "the West has forced people to become migrants.

"[7] Mehta was born in Kolkata, India, to Gujarati parents and raised in Mumbai, where he lived until his family moved to New York City in 1977.

[2] Mehta is an Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University[9] and lives in Manhattan with his wife Darshana Narayanan.