A few Nigerian Diasporas may be sending out wrong signals of criminal tendencies but credible data show that Nigerians top the list of high earning immigrants in the United States of America.
Nigerians are some of the most educated immigrants in the US, according to the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute. Fifty-nine percent of Nigerians – aged 25 years or older – in the US hold at least a bachelor’s degree.
That nearly doubles the proportion of Americans born in the US at 33 percent. It is also more than the proportion for immigrants from South Korea – 56 percent; China – 51 percent; Britain – 50 percent, and Germany – 38 percent.
Nigerian immigrants tend to work high skilled jobs, 54 percent of them are in largely white-collar positions of management, business, science and the arts, compared to 39 percent of people born in the US. This means they have significant spending power.
According to a report by the New American Economy Research Fund, in 2018, Nigerian immigrants made more than $14 billion and paid more than $4 billion in taxes. The Nigerian diaspora sent back almost $24 billion remittances in 2018 to a Nigerian economy that is more dynamic than many people, including Donald Trump, president of US realise. Services account for more than 50 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), technology is 10 percent, according to the Centre for Global Development.
Over the years, it has been widely established that the officially recorded remittances into the country are much lower than the actual remittances that take place through unofficial channels. This means a larger chunk of Nigeria’s remittances flow through the unofficial channels.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a multinational professional services network, estimates that migrant remittances to Nigeria could grow to $25.5 billion, $29.8 billion and $34.8 billion in 2019, 2021 and 2023, respectively. Over 15 years, PwC expects total remittance flows to Nigeria to grow by almost double in size from $18.37 billion in 2009 to $34.89 billion in 2023.
This is why many have criticised President Trump’s inclusion of Nigeria on his list of travel ban earlier this year based on national security concerns. In a February 20, 2020, video, Fareed Zakaria, CNN’s journalist, argued based on data from the Pew Research Centre that including Nigeria, Myanmar, Tanzania and Eritrea based on gaps in their security protocols that expose the US to terror threats was senseless.
“No one born in Nigeria, Myanmar, Tanzania, Eritrea, has been responsible for a single terror-related death on American soil from 1975 – 2017,” Zakaria said. “If the administration was worried about security from these countries, it would ban all visas but it is only targeting permanent visas, leaving temporary visas from those countries untouched, which suggests that something else is going on.”
Last year when Trump unveiled the new immigration plan, the White House told the Washington Post that Trump wanted high skilled English speaking educated immigrants that assimilate easily and give back to the country. This is reasonable but if Trump cared to know, Nigerian immigrants who make up the largest number of sub-Saharan immigrants in the US, qualify more.
Back in Nigeria, there is a growing middle class increasingly educated and aspirational. Nigeria is America’s Africa’s second-largest trading partner. John Kemble, former US ambassador to Nigeria, said Nigeria’s undoing was policy inconsistencies. Politics in Nigeria presents a dark logic.
Trump is not acting based on data, some have argued. He once told the New York Times in 2017, that Africans in general and Nigerians in particular, once they have seen the US, would refuse to return to their huts in Africa. He wants more immigrants from Norway, fewer from Haiti and African nations. Mexicans Trump sees as criminals, and Muslims look like terrorists.
