Their families came to America for different reasons: opportunity, education, safety. Decades later, some of their children — first-generation Americans — chose to go in the other direction.

I am one of them.

I was born in New York, the only member of my family with a US passport at the time. I grew up between America and Japan, and for the past 17 years, I've been living and raising my family in Singapore. My parents are from Argentina, though they were both first-generation Argentines: my father was born in Austria, and my mother's family came from the UK.

So when someone asks where I'm from, I usually pause. Are they asking where I was born? Where I grew up? Where I live now? Or where my roots lie? Do they want the short version or the one that spans continents, cultures, and generat

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