No country has more to lose from President Donald Trump’s
decision to expand the travel ban than Nigeria.
Starting February 22, Nigerians will no longer be able to
obtain visas allowing them to immigrate to the US permanently. They can still
travel to the US on temporary visas, such as those for foreign workers,
tourists, and students. But for the large Nigerian diaspora in the US, the
policy could erode their deep family and cultural ties to their home country,
Africa’s most populous nation and one of its economic powerhouses.
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Nigerians make up by far the largest population of African
immigrants living in the US, numbering about 327,000. Cities with thriving
Nigerian communities will be particularly hard hit, including Dallas, Chicago,
Baltimore, Atlanta, Phoenix and Houston, the latter of which has the largest
Nigerian population outside Brazil and Africa.
Even more Nigerians have been choosing to settle here
permanently in recent years: In 2018, the US granted Nigerians almost 14,000
green cards. By comparison, citizens from other countries included in the
expanded travel ban were granted a combined total of fewer than 6,000 green
cards. It’s also one of the top sending countries for foreign students, with
almost 13,000 Nigerians students coming to the US last year.
But now, the Trump administration is preventing further
legal immigration from Nigeria, citing concerns about the country’s security
standards, as well as heightened terrorist threats. The administration wants to
see Nigeria improve their information-sharing with US authorities and Interpol
to help identify criminals and terrorists.
The situation has left many Nigerians wondering why they
specifically have been targeted, when many other countries might pose similar
security threats. Amaha Kassa, the executive Director of African Communities
Together, which advocates for African immigrants and their families, told
reporters Friday that, at the group’s latest meeting in New York City, dozens
of Nigerians were asking one question: “Why single us out?”
Immigrant advocates say it’s based on discriminatory
motivations.
“African immigrants in general and Nigerian immigrants in
particular are among the most educated and successful immigrants in the United
States,” Frank Sharry, the executive director of the immigration advocacy group
America’s Voice, said in a statement. “But the success and contributions of
African communities is beside the point for this administration. It’s not a
policy announcement based on facts – it’s based on Trump’s desire to make
America white again.”
The Trump administration was already targeting Nigerian immigrants
The Trump administration has been looking to decrease
immigration from Nigeria for a long time, dating back to a now-infamous meeting
in the Oval Office in June 2017. Trump told his advisers at the time that
Nigerians who set foot in the US would never “go back to their huts” in Africa,
the New York Times reported.
His administration has been restricting Nigerian immigration
in the years since, clamping down on visitor visas.
Most Nigerians come to the US with employment-based visas or
B visas, which are offered to short-term visitors, including tourists, business
travelers, and people seeking urgent medical care. But the Trump administration
has been denying Nigerians’ applications for B visas at high rates over the
last two years.
In 2018, the most recent year for which data is available,
about 57 percent of B visa applications from Nigeria were denied, putting it
among the countries with the highest denial rates. That might be because
Nigerians had the highest numbers of visa overstays of any African country in
2018, as well as one of the highest rates of visa overstays of any country. The
administration also increased fees for Nigerians associated with certain
temporary visa applications last year, imposing a potential financial barrier.
The administration has targeted African migration more
broadly. The administration has attempted to gut the diversity visa lottery,
under which 50,000 applicants from countries with low levels of immigration are
selected at random to be granted green cards. For many Africans, it’s the only
way that they can immigrate to the US.
It’s also stripped citizens of Sudan and Liberia of
Temporary Protected Status, a protection allowing them to legally live and work
in the US typically offered to citizens of countries suffering from natural
disasters or armed conflict.
And advocates are calling the newly expanded ban an “African
ban” since about four in five of those affected are from African nations. It’s
a callback to the first version of the ban, unveiled in January 2017, which
they called a “Muslim ban” since it initially targeted Muslim-majority
countries.
“It’s not a pivot in the administration’s policy — it’s an
escalation,” Kassa said.
Nigeria’s security situation
Trump’s proclamation instituting the expanded ban says that
Nigeria fails to meet the US’s security standards in two ways: it doesn’t
“adequately share public-safety and terrorism-related information” and presents
a “high risk, relative to other countries in the world, of terrorist travel” to
the US.
It’s true that Nigeria has long been fighting homegrown
terrorism. Boko Haram, one of Africa’s largest Islamic militant groups, has
killed almost 38,000 people since 2011 and displaced another 2.5 million. The
violence has subsided since its peak from 2014 to 2015 after the Nigerian
military, backed by neighboring African countries, pushed Boko Haram into the
north of the country. But the group continues to terrorize some communities in
other provinces, kidnapping women and children and engaging in suicide
bombings.
But Toyin Falola, a Nigerian historian and professor at the University
of Texas at Austin, said that few migrants from northern Nigeria, Boko Haram’s
stronghold, come to the US. Moreover, Nigeria has been working with the US in
its counterterrorism efforts and to build up its border security — Trump even
acknowledges Nigeria as an “important strategic partner in the global fight
against terrorism” in the proclamation.
Still, Trump says it isn’t enough: “These investments have
not yet resulted in sufficient improvements in Nigeria’s information sharing
with the United States for border and immigration screening and vetting,” he
writes. He has consequently barred all permanent immigration to the US from
Nigeria, except for those who are eligible for special immigrant visas based on
providing assistance to the US government.
Still, if keeping out Nigeria’s terrorists is one of the
primary purposes of the ban, it’s not clear why the Trump administration has
chosen only to bar immigrants seeking to settle in the US permanently. A
terrorist could just as well enter on a tourist visa, which calls into question
whether the national security rationale behind the ban is legitimate.
Houston’s Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, co-chair of the
Congressional Nigeria Caucus, told reporters on Friday that the ban will have
little benefit for the US’s fight against terrorism in Nigeria.
“Our efforts should be focused more on how we engage and
help them [with the] internal and reckless actions by Boko Haram,” she said.
(Vox)