Maeve Higgins: 'This is America, and skin colour is what we can go by'

Immigrants in America face racialisation — something that many of them don’t expect or fully understand until they live there 

Abdi Nor Iftin was born in Mogadishu and won a place in the US green card lottery, allowing him to move to Maine. Picture: Carl D Walsh/Portland Portland Press Herald/Getty Images

"As a kid, I used to pray to come to America. I had always said that it is here that my life will be better, away from all troubles of clan wars and aimless shootings in Mogadishu.”

Since moving to the US in 2014, Abdi Nor Iftin has indeed made an extraordinary life for himself.