The hope of prospective immigrants from Nigeria to the United States of America has been dashed as President, Donald Trump has restricted the country’s visas to Nigerian immigrants.
Aside from Nigeria, other countries affected in the travel ban include Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Sudan and Tanzania.
Officials of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and State Department cited National Security concerns as the reason for the restrictions.
“Because we have higher confidence that these six countries will be able to make improvements in their system in a reasonable period of time, we did not feel it would be proportionate to impose restrictions on all immigrant and non-immigration visas…”These countries, for the most part, want to be helpful but for a variety of different reasons simply failed to meet those minimum requirements that we laid out,” acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf told reporters on Friday.
According to official statements, the restriction is expected to take effect on February 22, 2020.
The new development is coming barely a week after the United States Government gave visa officers more power to block pregnant women from Nigeria and other countries from visiting the country.
Under a new rule, the US Department of State directed visa officers to stop “birth tourism”, the trips designed to obtain citizenship for children of pregnant women to the country.
“Birth tourism poses risks to national security,” Carl C. Risch, Assistant Secretary for Consular Affairs at the State Department, wrote in the final rule. “The birth tourism industry is also rife with criminal activity, including international criminal schemes.”
The Stats
According to the United States Homeland Security, about 8,000 immigration visas were issued to Nigerian Citizens in the year 2018 alone.
However, the President’s Trump tough stance on immigration has led to the upsurge of Nigerian immigrants heading to Canada.
Between June 2017 and May 2018, Canadian authorities intercepted more than 7,600 Nigerian asylum seekers, with 81% of them having valid U.S. non-immigrant visas in their possession.
The 2017 report of United States Foreign Service showed that Nigeria accounted for 32.78 percent of the visas issued to 54 countries on the continent.
According to the report, a total of 168,980 non-immigrant visas were issued to Nigerians in 2017. The USA embassy charges $160, translating to N57,600 as visa fees at both its offices in Lagos and Abuja. This means that those whose applications for immigrant visa were approved jointly paid N9.733 billion as visa fees.
In the 2015 report of the Migration Policy Institute, approximately 376,000 Nigerian immigrants and their children live in the United States.
Nigerian immigrants also account for about 0.6 percent of the United States overall foreign-born population.
Atiku Reacts
Former Vice President and Presidential Candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2019 Presidential election, Atiku Abubakar has urged the United States to punish the APC led government and not the ‘innocent’ Nigerians.
Atiku in a statement issued on Saturday said while he understood the “reasons given by the Trump administration (the failure of the Muhammadu Buhari led administration to share information and to address issues of terrorism), the ban does not take into account the pro-American sentiments of the Nigerian public and the solidarity previous Nigerian administrations have had with the United States.
“I urge the government of President Donald Trump to consider the history of US-Nigerian relationships. Nigeria was one of the few African nations that joined the US led coalition during Operation Desert Storm in 1990-1991, when the United States championed the liberation of Kuwait.
“The Trump administration may also consider the pivotal role Nigeria, in partnership with the US, played in bringing peace to Liberia, an American sphere of influence, that now enjoys democracy because Nigerian blood and money paved the way for peace in that nation.
“Nigeria has also consistently voted in support of the United States and her allies at the United Nations and other multi-lateral world bodies. This is even as we are perhaps the biggest trading partner that the United States has in Africa, even where we had alternatives.
“Nigerians love the United States and have been a major force for the positive development of that great nation: 77 per cent of all Black doctors in the United States are Nigerians. Nigerians are also the most educated immigrant community in America BAR NONE. Surely, the US stands to benefit if it allows open borders with a country like Nigeria that is able to provide skilled, hardworking and dedicated personnel in a two-way traffic.
“The current Nigerian administration may have its deficiencies and deep faults, but the Nigeria people ought not to be punished for their inefficiencies.
“Once again, I call on President Trump to consider adopting measures that individually target those in government who have failed in their duties, rather than target the entire Nigerian population” The statement read.
