It was just a few months after the Twin Towers fell on 9/11, and everyone in my family was headed to visit our relatives in Nigeria for a month. Everyone — except for me.

My mother, holding three American degrees, had been in the United States for years via student and work visas, and my four siblings were all born in New Jersey. I wasn’t an American citizen yet, because I was born in Nigeria. And if I left the United States, I would be placed on a blacklist that would prevent me from returning. 

I cried as my mother told me that I would be staying with my cousins in New York City instead — not because I was being left behind, but because neither of us knew what the future held,…

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