No nation has extra to lose from President Donald Trump’s choice to expand the travel ban than Nigeria. Beginning February 22, Nigerians will no
No nation has extra to lose from President Donald Trump’s choice to expand the travel ban than Nigeria.
Beginning February 22, Nigerians will not have the ability to acquire visas permitting them to immigrate to the US completely. They will nonetheless journey to the US on momentary visas, equivalent to these for international staff, vacationers, and college students. However for the big Nigerian diaspora within the US, the coverage might erode their deep household and cultural ties to their house nation, Africa’s most populous nation and certainly one of its financial powerhouses.
Nigerians make up by far the most important inhabitants of African immigrants dwelling within the US, numbering about 327,000. Cities with thriving Nigerian communities can be notably laborious hit, together with Dallas, Chicago, Baltimore, Atlanta, Phoenix and Houston, the latter of which has the most important Nigerian inhabitants exterior Brazil and Africa.
Much more Nigerians have been selecting to settle right here completely in recent times: In 2018, the US granted Nigerians virtually 14,000 inexperienced playing cards. By comparability, residents from different international locations included within the expanded journey ban had been granted a mixed whole of fewer than 6,000 inexperienced playing cards. It’s additionally one of many high sending international locations for international college students, with almost 13,000 Nigerians college students coming to the US final yr.
However now, the Trump administration is stopping additional authorized immigration from Nigeria, citing considerations in regards to the nation’s safety requirements, in addition to heightened terrorist threats. The administration desires to see Nigeria enhance their information-sharing with US authorities and Interpol to assist establish criminals and terrorists.
The scenario has left many Nigerians questioning why they particularly have been focused, when many different international locations would possibly pose comparable safety threats. Amaha Kassa, the chief Director of African Communities Together, which advocates for African immigrants and their households, instructed reporters Friday that, on the group’s newest assembly in New York Metropolis, dozens of Nigerians had been asking one query: “Why single us out?”
Immigrant advocates say it’s based mostly on discriminatory motivations.
“African immigrants typically and Nigerian immigrants particularly are among the many most educated and profitable immigrants in the US,” Frank Sharry, the chief director of the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice, mentioned in a press release. “However the success and contributions of African communities is inappropriate for this administration. It’s not a coverage announcement based mostly on info – it’s based mostly on Trump’s need to make America white once more.”
The Trump administration was already concentrating on Nigerian immigrants
The Trump administration has been seeking to lower immigration from Nigeria for a very long time, relationship again to a now-infamous assembly within the Oval Workplace in June 2017. Trump instructed his advisers on the time that Nigerians who set foot within the US would by no means “return to their huts” in Africa, the New York Times reported.
His administration has been proscribing Nigerian immigration within the years since, clamping down on customer visas.
Most Nigerians come to the US with employment-based visas or B visas, that are supplied to short-term guests, together with vacationers, enterprise vacationers, and other people looking for pressing medical care. However the Trump administration has been denying Nigerians’ purposes for B visas at excessive charges during the last two years.
In 2018, the latest yr for which knowledge is obtainable, about 57 percent of B visa purposes from Nigeria had been denied, placing it among the many international locations with the best denial charges. That is likely to be as a result of Nigerians had the highest numbers of visa overstays of any African nation in 2018, in addition to one of many highest charges of visa overstays of any nation. The administration additionally increased fees for Nigerians related to sure momentary visa purposes final yr, imposing a possible monetary barrier.
The administration has focused African migration extra broadly. The administration has tried to intestine the variety visa lottery, underneath which 50,000 candidates from international locations with low ranges of immigration are chosen at random to be granted inexperienced playing cards. For a lot of Africans, it’s the one approach that they will immigrate to the US.
It’s additionally stripped residents of Sudan and Liberia of Momentary Protected Standing, a safety permitting them to legally reside and work within the US usually supplied to residents of nations affected by pure disasters or armed battle.
And advocates are calling the newly expanded ban an “African ban” since about 4 in 5 of these affected are from African nations. It’s a callback to the primary model of the ban, unveiled in January 2017, which they referred to as a “Muslim ban” because it initially focused Muslim-majority international locations.
“It’s not a pivot within the administration’s coverage — it’s an escalation,” Kassa mentioned.
Nigeria’s safety scenario
Trump’s proclamation instituting the expanded ban says that Nigeria fails to satisfy the US’s safety requirements in two methods: it doesn’t “adequately share public-safety and terrorism-related info” and presents a “excessive danger, relative to different international locations on this planet, of terrorist journey” to the US.
It’s true that Nigeria has lengthy been combating homegrown terrorism. Boko Haram, certainly one of Africa’s largest Islamic militant teams, has killed almost 38,000 people since 2011 and displaced one other 2.5 million. The violence has subsided since its peak from 2014 to 2015 after the Nigerian navy, backed by neighboring African international locations, pushed Boko Haram into the north of the nation. However the group continues to terrorize some communities in different provinces, kidnapping girls and youngsters and interesting in suicide bombings.
However Toyin Falola, a Nigerian historian and professor on the College of Texas at Austin, mentioned that few migrants from northern Nigeria, Boko Haram’s stronghold, come to the US. Furthermore, Nigeria has been working with the US in its counterterrorism efforts and to construct up its border safety — Trump even acknowledges Nigeria as an “vital strategic accomplice within the world struggle in opposition to terrorism” within the proclamation.
Nonetheless, Trump says it isn’t sufficient: “These investments haven’t but resulted in adequate enhancements in Nigeria’s info sharing with the US for border and immigration screening and vetting,” he writes. He has consequently barred all everlasting immigration to the US from Nigeria, besides for many who are eligible for particular immigrant visas based mostly on offering help to the US authorities.
Nonetheless, if maintaining out Nigeria’s terrorists is without doubt one of the major functions of the ban, it’s not clear why the Trump administration has chosen solely to bar immigrants looking for to settle within the US completely. A terrorist might simply as nicely enter on a vacationer visa, which calls into query whether or not the nationwide safety rationale behind the ban is reliable.
Houston’s Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, co-chair of the Congressional Nigeria Caucus, instructed reporters on Friday that the ban could have little profit for the US’s struggle in opposition to terrorism in Nigeria.
“Our efforts ought to be centered extra on how we interact and assist them [with the] inner and reckless actions by Boko Haram,” she mentioned.