SHIFTING PERCEPTIONS: Coming to America: Crossing the border between promise and politics

Journalists like to think that the world would be finished without them. Nothing illustrates this vanity more than the joke by my old school journalism teacher that even when the world ends, reporters will be there to tell those in paradise what is happening on the other side.

This illusion deprives the profession of its sanity. It keeps reporters chasing an endless news cycle where bad news is good copy. A moment’s respite creates a sense of guilt and panic, and rest can sometimes feel like a luxury.

I decided, after 60, that it would be mad to continue in this tradition; that at least, once every year, I will learn again what normal life feels like.

So, I rested my column for three weeks and decided to go to America at a time when many normal people will ask what on earth I’m looking for in a country whose president is not in the mood for immigrants.

It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than to visit America these days.

Getting a visa

If I needed a fresh visa to visit today, I’d be unlikely to get it. And that has nothing to do with anything in my past or present travel record to the US or elsewhere. Even getting the interview date would take months, if not up to one year.

Since January this year, Nigeria has been one of the 14 African countries on the US partial travel restriction list; 11 others, including Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Niger and Somalia, are on the full travel ban list.

I have travelled to more than 40 countries around the world in the course of my work and have never once overstayed or been in any trouble. America used to be my favourite holiday spot. My friends, Buddy and Paula Baker, Floridians now in their 70s, epitomised the essential American spirit of warmth, kindness and generosity.

Inventive spirit and diversity

America’s inventive spirit and diversity remind me of my country.

I also loved the crazy motorways. The freedom to rent and drive a car, whenever I was visiting, overrode my alarm at the blissful ignorance of many ordinary Americans about other parts of the world, not to mention the perennial danger of the country’s loose gun control laws.

Back to the visa issue. I’m fortunate to be on a five-year visa issued three years ago, before the present occupant of the White House won his second term and changed everything. Non-immigrant visas are now single-entry, three months, with a vetting process that could require the presentation of your grandmother’s wisdom tooth.

Under a new plan that could apply to Nigeria and many other African countries from this June, US consular diplomatic posts may be significantly reduced, further raising visa costs and restricting access for applicants.

On paper, that shouldn’t bother me, since I’m in good standing for another two years.

Yet, under the current climate, having a valid visa is one thing; entering the US, quite another.

According to one source__,__ US airports receive between 210,000 and 250,000 foreign visitors daily, depending on the time of the year. Vetting of arrivals rose after September 11, but heightened scrutiny has been recorded since 2025, after President Donald Trump’s inauguration for a second term.

And scrutiny could sometimes involve US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) browsing your phone and checking your social media posts. In 2025, for example, WIRED magazine reported that CBP conducted more than 55,424 electronic-device searches.

Preparing for America

As I prepared for this trip, two unrelated, fairly recent examples of what I thought were US under-consular overreach under Trump crossed my mind.

One was the revocation of the visa of Africa’s first Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, for what many believed was his outspoken criticism of Trump, including remarks that compared the president to the former Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin.

It doesn’t matter that Trump had, without a reason and relying on what was at best dubious information, called Nigeria a shithole and a disgraced country.

Omar Abdulkadir Artan

The other example, which happened days before my trip, was the revocation of the valid visa of the Somali Fifa referee, Omar Abdulkadir Artan, on arrival in the US, for alleged links to a terrorist group – an allegation that Artan has denied, but which Fifa has refused to be drawn into.

With all of these swirling, I didn’t know what to expect on this trip, and more than once I toyed with cancelling. America didn’t quite look like the place it used to be, not just for me but even for many decent US citizens who have seen their country change in a rather grotesque way these past few months.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, especially given my very strong views on some of Trump’s actions, for which I have no apologies.

Will it still be the same America that was warm towards visitors, friendly to strangers and generous in spirit? Or is the country now overcome by ferocious meanness, fear of otherness and narrow-minded insularity?

After six hours from Abuja to Frankfurt, a two-hour stopover, and a 10-hour 35-minute flight, I walked off the Lufthansa plane at Houston International Airport on the morning of 10 June, towards border security, unsure what to expect; that feeling you get approaching the yard of a once-dependable friend who has lately become the neighbourhood bully.

The border police surprised me.

Apart from a Customs officer flagging me and extracting a small packet of velvet tamarind (called liki-liki in my neck of the woods) from my luggage, my entry was uneventful.

The Customs and Border Protection were warm, courteous and professional. I’ve encountered a couple of other police officers in Houston and Florida who gave me the feeling that perhaps, just perhaps, there’s a redeeming hope.

I’ve only been visiting for a few days, and perhaps the spirit of the Fifa World Cup 2026 (the US being one of the three host countries) may also account for the cordiality, especially with hundreds of thousands of tourists visiting at this time. White House common sense is perhaps putting its best foot forward, for now.

Whatever happens, there are some things I promised myself I won’t do for my mother’s sake. I won’t drive, even if I could, and I won’t walk the streets, day or night, without my passport.

Their America

It was never so in the last over one-and-a-half decades that I’ve been coming to America. Visiting was always such great fun. When I was planning this holiday nearly one year ago, I couldn’t imagine that doubt and hesitation would replace trust, hope and freedom.

But what does it matter? This is their America.

And maybe my old teacher was right, after all. When all is said and done, we journalists will still be here telling the incredibly fraught story of what happened in their America to those in another America. DM

Ishiekwene is Editor-in-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the book, Writing for Media and Monetising It.