Visa abuse and Trump’s phobia

News emerged last week that the United States government of President Donald Trump has penciled Nigerians among nationals of seven countries marked for visa restriction under a policy scheduled to be unveiled.

According to reports attributing the Wall Street Journal, Nigeria is in unflattering league with Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Sudan, Eritrea and Tanzania being considered for the policy. Not that there would be a blanket ban on affected nationals entering the US, but they would be restricted on business and visitor visas known as the B1/B2 visas.

This decision, the reports said, resulted from many Nigerians visiting the US but who have refused to leave despite the expiration of their visa.

The Wall Street Journal was quoted saying: “The Trump administration plans to add seven countries to a group of nations subject to travel restrictions. They include Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, along with others in Africa and Asia, according to administration officials who have seen the list…The new restrictions would apply to travellers and immigrants from Belarus, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania. These countries wouldn’t necessarily face blanket bans on travel to the US, but could have restrictions placed on specific types of visas such as business or visitor visas, administration officials said.”

When contacted for comments last week, the Nigerian presidency said it would not react until Washington formally rolls out the policy, with its dimensions and implications ascertained.

The number of Nigerians visiting the United States in recent history has been ballooning – rising from 55,581 in 2009 to 143,783 in 2018 according to records of the US embassy in Nigeria cited by the ICIR newsletter. The newsletter also reported that US visa issuance to Nigerians has been the highest in Africa at 179,145 in 2016, compared with Algerians at 16,107, Egyptians (68,639), Ghanaians (12,446), Kenyans (27,079), Moroccans (19,897) and South Africans (61,273). Out of a total of 493,989 visas granted citizens of these seven African countries in 2018, Nigerians got the lion’s share at 143,783 issuances.

As it were, Nigerians’ enthusiasm for going to the United States has brooked no inhibition. In August, last year, the US embassy announced a new tariff for some categories of non-immigrant visas issued to Nigerians, which it said derived from a reciprocity fee necessitated by higher costs of Nigerian visas to US citizens. But whereas the reciprocity fee jolted the Nigerian government out of 18-month dallying into swiftly dipping the cost of Nigerian visas to Americans, the US embassy held on to its reciprocity fee.

Such enthusiasm had much earlier on resulted in this country being excluded from the yearly US Diversity Visa Lottery programme designed by Washington to attract citizens of nations with low rates of immigration to the United States. The US embassy has it on its website that Nigerians are no longer eligible for the programme, implying that the nationals of this country are overrepresented already in the American population.

Meanwhile, President Trump is never known to be enamoured with the presence of immigrants in his country – especially those from nations for which he has in the past betrayed xenophobic hubris. Sometime in January 2018, the American leader was reported by The Washington Post labelling African nations and the southern American states of Haiti and El Salvador “shithole countries” during a parley on immigration at the White House with a bipartisan group of senators. Although he offered tame denials, saying the language he used at the meeting “was tough, but this (‘shithole’) was not the language used,” the remark fitted so well with his character that many preferred to believe he did use those words.

‘If President Trump is a phobic warrior, Nigerians who abuse their visa terms provide him ready ammunition’

A few months earlier, The New York Times had scooped a closet meeting on immigration where the American leader reportedly remonstrated 40,000 visas issued Nigerians because once they have seen the U.S., they would never “go back to their huts” in Africa. At that meeting he also reportedly deplored the 15,000 immigrants from Haiti in 2017, grumbling that they “all have AIDS.” The White House vigorously denied those claims, but credibility deficit weighed heavily on its side. That was more so with many ‘Trumpscript’ narratives before the American leader took office – like when he allegedly said African-Americans were lazy and good at nothing other than gallivanting and making love; and the mythical rally in Wichita, Kansas where he purportedly vowed to get rid of Nigerians to make America great again if he won the presidency. He allegedly said at that rally: “Why can’t they stay in their own country? Why? I’ll tell you why: because they are corrupt. Their governments are so corrupt they rob the people blind and bring it all here to spend. And their people run away and come down here and take our jobs!”

But if President Trump is a phobic warrior, Nigerians who abuse their visa terms provide him ready ammunition. It isn’t just that this country generates the highest traffic from Africa to his homeland – an offensive enough factor for a xenophobe, many of our compatriots discard the set timelines in their visas and hunker down in the United States beyond the expiration of their entry conditions. Recall that this latest policy, as it was reported, owed to the fact that many Nigerians visiting the US have refused to leave despite the expiration of their visas.

If Washington does make good with the new policy as reported, I do not see any appropriate response from the Nigerian presidency other than to dissuade Nigerians from abusing their visa conditions. More importantly though, it is a frontal challenge to Nigerian leaders to make this country attractive enough as to disincentivise its citizens from thronging Trump’s disneyland only to refuse going back to “their huts” in Africa.

The high traffic of Nigerian travellers arguably indexes mass escape from developmental challenges facing the country, and the onus invariably falls on those in power to work at turning this tide. (Well, even the leaders are suspected of their own little ‘escapes.’ Recently when President Muhammadu Buhari visited the United Kingdom, he left Abuja on Friday for a meeting that was not to commence until the following Monday!) It could be counter-argued that the trend rather evidenced material affluence that enables more Nigerians than other Africans to travel abroad, only that this does not answer the question why they refuse to return and would rather become detested illegals in Trumpland.

But while we work at our developmental challenges, travelling Nigerians must learn to safeguard the country’s image by honoring their visa conditions. After all, as they say, you dress as you want to be addressed.

Nigerianised Oxford dictionary

While Mr. Trump is demonising Nigeria and Nigerians, the iconic Oxford English Dictionary last week announced an update of its content with 29 “new additions (that) are either borrowings from Nigerian languages or unique Nigerian coinages.”

According to the dictionary’s World English Editor Danica Salazar, the coinages had become adapted into formal English lexicon over the past half-century. The new entries include ‘agric’ (adj. & n.), ‘barbing salon’ (n.), ‘buka’ (n.) ‘bukateria’ (n.), ‘chop’ (v.), ‘chop-chop’ (n.) ‘danfo’ (n.), ‘to eat money, in eat,(v.) ‘ember months’ (n.) and ‘flag-off’ (n.). Others include ‘to flag off, in flag’ (v.), ‘gist’ (n.), ‘gist’ (v.), ‘gubernatorial’ (adj.), ‘Kannywood’ (n.), ‘K-leg’ (n.), ‘mama put’ (n.), ‘next tomorrow’ (n. & adv’) ‘non-indigene’ (adj. & n.) and ‘okada’ (n.). The rest are ‘to put to bed, in put’ (v.), ‘qualitative’( adj.), ‘to rub minds (together), in rub’ (v.), ‘sef’ (adv.), ‘send-forth’ (n.), ‘severally’ (adv.), ‘tokunbo’ (adj.), ‘zone’ (v.) and ‘zoning’ (n.).

Even as I write this piece, my computer is frantic with red flagging the stated words. And I laugh: ‘it ain’t seen nothing just yet.’ Nigeria has much more to input to the world’s evolution.