AFRICAN IMMIGRANTS

IN THE UNITED

STATES OF AMERICA

SLAVERY, a very sensitive word in all

ramification of life, a word that represents

violence, destruction, brutally, oppression, and

the exploitation of different races either due to the color of their skin or due

to other reasons based on the perspective of the oppressor. Slavery has

been a very important part of the history of mankind in its utmost worst. It

has rare its ugly head in many places, depending on which nation or people

are found to be inferior at that point in time in history. Africa has been

intimately connected with this history, both has a major source for slaves

and as one of the distinct areas where slavery and oppression was prominent

in the ancient civilization.

SLAVERY in short can be explained as a form of exploitation. One of

the main characteristics of slavery is the idea of ownership of human beings

and in turn referring to the prospect of them being a property owned by a

superior being, an inference of a human being as a commodity that can be

bought and sold. This are people who are treated as outsiders, who are

aliens or in fact denied their heritage through judicial or other sanctions.

People stripped off everything that make them identify with one race of

ideology, and this results in a problem of lost heritage or detachments from

anything that make them value themselves as human beings with dignity

and identity. Therefore slavery is essentially a fundamental way of denying a

race or people the rights and privilege of a society so that they can be

exploited for either economic, political or social purposes.

African emigration started during slavery but it was an involuntary kind

of immigration which can also be called FORCED IMMIGRATION which means,

Africans were shipped, sold and bought against their will in the early century.

Black immigration started then and now there is an uptick in African

emigration to various parts of the western world including the UNITED

STATES OF AMERICA.

African immigrants make up a very small portion of the population of

the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, but according to Pew Research Center

analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, their overall numbers are growing and

this number has been doubling every decade since 1970. As stated in Pew

Research Center analysis, there were 2.1 million African immigrants living in

the United States in 2015, up from 881,00 in 2000 and a substantial increase

from 1970 when the U.S. was home to only 80,000 foreign born Africans.

They accounted for 4.8% of the U.S. immigrant population in 2015, up from

0.8% in 1970. According to Monica Anderson from Pew research.org, “the

growth is evident among recently arrived immigrants. When compared with

other major groups who arrived in the U.S. in the past five years, Africans

had the fastest growth rate from 2000 to 2013, increasing by 41% during

that period. (Africans are also a fast-growing segment of the black immigrant

population in the U.S., increasing by 137% from 2000 to 2013.)”

Thousands of enslaved Africans were brought to the U.S. in the 16th

century through the Transatlantic Slave Trade, but the huge voluntary

migration from Africa in this new age is a new trend. Some of the main

culprits of this recent surge can be attributed to the Diversity Visa Program

and Refugee Act of 1980. This act made it a little easier for people fleeing

war riddled areas, like Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, and Democratic Republic of

Congo to resettle in the U.S. The top birthplaces of African immigrants in the

U.S are from NIGERIA, ETHIOPIA, EGYPT, GHANA, and KENYA. According to

Pew Research Center, African immigrants moving to the U.S. are more likely

to settle in the South (39%) or the Northeast (25%), than in the Midwest

(18%) or West (17%), while the largest numbers of African immigrants are

found in Texas, New York, California, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts

and Virginia. Each of these states is home to at least 100,000 foreign-born

Africans. African born immigrants tend to gravitate to the major immigrant

receiving states in the U.S and they also tend to settle in niche and ethnic

enclaves because the ties they derive from the presence of earlier

immigrants often help in their adjustment process into their new

communities.

Some of the reasons for the recent surge in African immigrants all over

the world can be attributed to things like civil unrest, inter and intra ethnic

power struggles, regional tensions, and military coups in countries such as

Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Somalia.

Additionally, natural and man-made disasters created a large number of

refugees, and during this period deterioration in socioeconomic conditions,

unemployment, and related reduction in standard of living heightened the

desire of African immigrants to migrate to places like the United States.

Some of the other reasons are also the professional and educational

opportunities in America, being that the United States of America is

considered to be one of the major centers of higher education and provides a

higher chance of attaining economical liberation.

Festus E. Obiakor wrote in his book “There exists a significant yet

unique level and magnitude of problems that immigrants of African descent

have to grapple with in their efforts to settle down into their new American

lives. This fact makes the continuity of the natal culture very difficult”. An

integral and irrefutable part of the fate of the immigrant is the age-long

cargo of dilemmas that often characterizes the new life. For instance,

regardless of the proximity or distance of the new location to the old, some

of the issues the new immigrant must grapple with are cultural conflicts,

culture shock, and intergenerational contestation (Arthur, 2000). In America,

African-American males who attempt to take advantage of opportunities

experience intellectual racism and discrimination. Foreign-born African-

Americans face an added pressure because they have to adjust to a new

environment and face the racism as well as discriminatory generalizations

that African-Americans have been facing for many generations. Negative

assumptions about Africa and Africans often lead to the horrible conclusion

that “if you know one African, you know them all.” This type of mindset often

breeds misconceptions about and stereotypical images of Africans.

Children of immigrants face many more difficulties and hardships in

comparison to children of native-born parents. As indicated earlier, even

though children in immigrant families experience higher poverty and

hardship rates and tend to be disadvantaged in their new American

locations, they find ways to excel in school. Based on Ogbu’s (1978) typology

of “involuntary minorities” or “immigrant minorities,” there are different

reasons or frameworks for surviving despite all odds. Afoláyan (2002) studied

the impact of the United States Diversity Visa Lottery initiative on a critical

mass of elite immigrants from Nigeria. He found that those in this group are

drawn to the United States from high level academic and civil service

positions only to come to the new home and find themselves doing the kind

of jobs meant for unskilled labors. For example, in the first 2 years of settling

down in their new home, which was the focus of this study, some of these

immigrants worked in fast food restaurants, home health services, and other

jobs that would not have remotely crossed their imaginations. Like their

Somali counterparts, it is quite understandable that these immigrants had to

be more preoccupied with the means to survive than in the maintenance and

continuation of their natal culture.

The issue of racialization is also a topic of conversation, as African

immigrants who are ethnically diverse because of the different tribes in

different countries in Africa and the fact that being black in the continent

makes you the racial majority in their home countries, African immigrants on

getting to the United States face a different reality when it comes to issue of

race and color and how to handle the fact that they are now in the minority

in U.S. Janet T. Awokoya wrote “ In the U.S. system of racialization, in which

race is the most salient identifier, their cultural differences are often

overlooked, and they are expected to redefine their identities based on

America’s racial categories (Landale & Oropesa, 2002; Waters, 1999)”. Race

and color is particularly detrimental for Black, as opposed to non-Black,

immigrants because Blackness in the United States is linked to negative

social stigmas (Bryce-Laporte, 1972). Further, because of their phenotype,

many Black immigrants encounter the discrimination and prejudice that

African Americans experience (Rong & Brown, 2002; Waters, 1994).

JANET T. AWOKOYA had an interview with an African immigrant youth

called Tope in her journal talking about her identity experiences saying:

When family friends or children say, “Oh, we don’t believe that you’re

Nigerian,” it hurts me because I might not have the perfect accent, because I

didn’t live there all my life, but I’m still as much Nigerian as they are. I still

know as much as they do, believe it or not, but it kind of hurts me

sometimes. Because they’ll say, “Oh, you’re American.” I’m not going to

deny that I have Western influences, but they want me to act Nigerian, and I

don’t understand what they want me to do to show I’m Nigerian. Later in the

interview, Tope shared another upsetting experience she had with a

schoolmate: I was talking to my classmate the other day and she was like,

“So what do you define as African and what do you define as Black

American?” And before I could answer, she was like, “I see you as purely

African, not even from America at all,” even though I’ve grown up here more

than half my life. And she was like, “I’m Black American. You’re purely

African! You’re African! [sharply] and that’s it.” They won’t let me be part of

any culture. In other interviews conducted by Ashly Nsangou and Lauren

Dundes shows how the intersection of race and ethnicity are compounded to

make Africans feel disconnected from African Americans, especially in

regards to the issue of them compulsorily attending college without. Ashly

Nsangou interviewed Imani who commented that it is difficult for non-

Africans to understand “what it means to be an African girl”. She further

explained:

“The food I eat, the clothes I wear, and the way I speak all add to my

identity as an African. I don’t consider myself African American because we

don’t think the same way and we don’t have the same values. For example, I

said earlier I had no option but to attend college but some of my black

friends in high school had parents that gave them the option of either

attending college or doing something else that made them happy.”

Other African who were also interviewed shared the view of the importance

of college education in the African immigrant household:

“My parents said college or I was on my own.”—Leeda

“I brought it up to my dad once that I did not want to attend college

after high school and he almost had a heart attack. Whether to go to college

has never been an option in my household.” —Aisha

“Being raised in an African household, I knew I had to go to college in

order to be somebody in life. So, I only gave myself one option after

graduating high school which was to go to a four-year college.” —Subira

These interviews show a distinct identity crisis among African

immigrant youth that were born here or foreign-born, the issue of which

culture do I fit with and which culture is going to accept me without judging

me or expecting me to act a certain way in a certain kind of gathering or

environment. Based on the conversations I’ve had with friends and family I

can say the main issue between Africans and African-Americans is the issue

of culture, culture is something that separates people even when they are of

the same race. The fact that these two groups from the same race based on

the western identity spectrum have a huge disparity in cultural and social

context in which opportunity and progress are viewed and have been

experienced - an African immigrant might enter into a gathering full of white

people and easily blend along or see an opportunity to show his/her

capabilities to other colleagues as a positive situation, an African-American

might enter into the same room and instead of just being his or herself,

might see race or might feel intimidated because socially, in a western

world, a black man or woman is programmed to feel inferior or feel like they

are being judged because of the color of their skin, whereas an African

immigrant who wasn’t programmed that way sees it differently.

Africans generally see education as a direct pathway to attain

economical elevation, in turn they emphasize the importance of education

and impose that on their kids especially when it comes to African immigrants

in the western world. A report, by the Pew Research Center, found 69

percent of sub-Saharan African immigrants in the United States have some

college education. That number is six percentage points higher than the level

for native-born Americans, and far higher than levels in Europe.  ANN M.

SIMMONS wrote that Batalova's research found that of the 1.4 million who

are 25 and older, 41% have a bachelor's degree, compared with 30% of all

immigrants and 32% of the U.S.-born population. Of the 19,000 U.S.

immigrants from Norway — a country Trump reportedly told lawmakers is a

good source of immigrants — 38% have college educations. Ann M. Simmons

also wrote that the New American Economy study found that 1 in 3 of these

undergraduate degrees were focused on science, technology, engineering

and math — "training heavily in demand by today's employers." That report

also found that African immigrants were significantly more likely to have

graduate degrees. A total of 16% had a master's degree, medical degree,

law degree or a doctorate, compared with 11% of the U.S.-born population,

Lim said.

The issue of brain drain in the continent of Africa is the after effect of

the high rate of emigration to the western world, in recent times and for the

most part, political and economic difficulties often is one of the reasons why

many Africans move away from their home country. Haider (1997), for

example, focused on the brain drain in Somalia and how this brain-drain

problem has led to a massive loss of manpower in this terribly impoverished

developing African country. Migration of well-educated people affects the

various attempts by the African government to develop and maintain a

proper and substantial economic development process. The brain drain

reduces the number of professionals and takes attention away from

problems and goals such as technology, low-cost preventive health care, and

the construction of low-cost housing. Haider noted that between 1960 and

1990, the migration of high-level professional and technical manpower from

developing African countries to the United States, Canada, and United

Kingdom amounted to more than 1 million skilled workers.

The brain drain phenomenon from many African nations is connected

with the political instability and the poor economic conditions of those

nations. In settling down in the foreign Western world, the first preoccupation

of African immigrants is forging the survival instinct and, when possible,

providing economic support for family members left back in their homeland.

Indeed, it is common practice for many African immigrants to be sole

financiers of relatives left behind in Obiakor, Afoláyan / AFRICAN IMMIGRANT

FAMILIES.

Logan published data on U.S. immigration showing that a larger

proportion of Africa's total migrant pool is made up of professionals

compared with the rest of the world and that generally the growth rate of the

professional migrant flow from Africa is higher. The Economic Commission for

Africa and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimated that

between 1960 and 1975, 25,000 high-level Africans left the continent for the

West. Between 1975 and 1984 this number increased to about 40,000. By

1987 the number had almost doubled to about 80,000. A report by the

Pollution Research Group at the University of Natal in South Africa shows that

Africa has lost one-third of its skilled professionals in recent decades, and it

costs the continent about US$4 billion a year to fill up the capacity gaps

created. The report contends that about 60,000 middle- and high-level

managers were lost between 1985 and 1990, and about 23,000 qualified

academics emigrated each year in search of better working conditions the

drain of the high skilled doctors from Africa is the most staggering.

The information provided by the United Nations Development

Program's (UNDP's) "Human Development Re- port" (1993) states that, more

than 21,000 Nigerian doctors are practicing in the United States; at the same

time Nigeria's healthcare system suffers a severe depletion of qualified

medical practitioners. Of Ghanaian doctors, 60 percent of those who trained

locally in the 1980s had left the country by the end of 2000. In Sudan, by

1978 the figure was about 17 percent. Human capital flight has reached

huge proportions in Zimbabwe, with the worst-hit sector being the health

professions; doctors and nurses have migrated to countries such as Britain,

the United States, Canada, and South Africa. South Africa has also been hit

by the brain drain. The departure of skilled professionals since the end of the

apartheid era has been spurred by crime, low salaries, limited prospects for

career advancement, and deteriorating medical facilities.

In Conclusion, as African immigrants are increasing in the UNITED

STATES there are a lot of issues that are they are facing or having to go

through to attain any type of success or economic stability. Race, culture,

identity, poverty, discrimination, this are some of the issues they are hit with

when they arrive in a country like U.S. where they suddenly transform from

being the majority race or skin tone to the minority. Moving from a culture

that didn’t see race or skin tone as way to judge ones intellectual ability or a

way to treat someone to one that does at a considerably higher rate. Some

Africans will tell you I’m not black or African American I’m African, they don’t

say this because they suddenly don’t think they have a black skin tone but

they say this because they have a completely different culture or perspective

on how to about attaining success or economic growth compared to their

African- American counterparts. Identity crisis of recognizing me as African

and not just labelling me as black because have black feature. Its two

completely different point of view that needs to be put into consideration.

The African immigrant are going to keep on increasing at the years go by

and the world becomes more globalized but hopefully in years to come

they’ll be recognized as Africans not just blacks.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Anderson, Monica. “African Immigrant Population in U.S. Steadily

Climbs.” Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 14 Feb. 2017,

www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/14/african-immigrant-

population-in-u-s-steadily-climbs/.

2. Zong, Jie, et al. “Sub-Saharan African Immigrants in the United

States.” Migrationpolicy.org, 3 Oct. 2018,

www.migrationpolicy.org/article/sub-saharan-african-immigrants-

united-states

3. Simmons, Ann M. “African Immigrants Are More Educated than Most -

Including People Born in U.S.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times,

12 Jan. 2018, www.latimes.com/world/africa/la-fg-global-african-

immigrants-explainer-20180112-story.html.

4. Cohen, Herman J. “African Immigration Is America's Gain, Africa's

Loss.” TheHill, 19 Jan. 2018, thehill.com/opinion/immigration/369498-

african-immigration-is-americas-gain-africas-loss

5. Solomon, Salem. “Study Finds Africans Among Best Educated US

Immigrants.” VOA, VOA, 24 July 2018, www.voanews.com/a/african-

immigrants-in-us-increasingly-more-educated-employed/4362609.html

6. Invisible Sojourners: African Immigrant Diaspora in

the ... www.amazon.com/Invisible-Sojourners-African-Immigrant-

Diaspora/dp/027596759X

7. Bogan, Vicki, and William Darity. “Culture and Entrepreneurship?

African American and Immigrant Self-Employment in the United

States.” The Journal of Socio-Economics, vol. 37, no. 5, 2008,

8. Kao, Grace, and Marta Tienda. “Educational Aspirations of Minority

Youth.” American Journal of Education, vol. 106, no. 3, 1998.

9. Rong, Xue Lan, and Frank Brown. “The Effects of Immigrant Generation

and Ethnicity on Educational Attainment among Young African and

Caribbean Blacks in the United States.” Harvard Educational Review,

vol. 71, no. 3, 2001.

10. Kent, Mary Mederios. Immigration and Americas Black

Population. 2007.

11. Knight, Michelle G., et al. “My American Dream.” Education and

Urban Society, vol. 48, no. 9, 2016.

12. Obiakor, Festus E., and Michael O. Afoláyan. “African Immigrant

Families in the United States: Surviving the Sociocultural Tide.” The

Family Journal, vol. 15, no. 3, 2007.

13. Mohan, Giles, and A B Zack‐Williams. “Globalisation from below:

Conceptualising the Role of the African Diasporas in Africas

Development.” Review of African Political Economy, vol. 29, no. 92,

2002.

14. Dryden-Peterson, Sarah. “Family–School Relationships in

Immigrant Children’s Well-Being: the Intersection of Demographics and

School Culture in the Experiences of Black African Immigrants in the

United States.” Race Ethnicity and Education, vol. 21, no. 4, 2017, pp.

486–502., doi:10.1080/13613324.2017.1294562

15. Mwangi, Chrystal A. George, and Shelvia English. “Being Black

(and) Immigrant Students: When Race, Ethnicity, and Nativity

Collide.” International Journal of Multicultural Education, vol. 19, no. 2,

2017, p. 100., doi:10.18251/ijme.v19i2.1317.

16. Nsangou, Ashly, and Lauren Dundes. “Parsing the Gulf between

Africans and African Americans.” Social Sciences, vol. 7, no. 2, July

2018, p. 24., doi:10.3390/socsci7020024.

17. Shaw-Taylor, Yoku, and Steven A. Tuch. The Other African

Americans: Contemporary African and Caribbean Immigrants in the

United States. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007

18. Okpewho, Isidore. The New African Diaspora. Indiana Univ. Press,

2009.

19. Awokoya, Janet. “Identity Constructions and Negotiations Among

1.5- and Second-Generation Nigerians: The Impact of Family, School,

and Peer Contexts.” Harvard Educational Review, vol. 82, no. 2, 2012,

pp. 255–281., doi:10.17763/haer.82.2.9v77p329367116vj.

20. Nesbitt, F. Njubi. “African Intellectuals in the Belly of the Beast:

Migration, Identity, and the Politics of Exile.” African Issues, vol. 30, no.

1, 2002, p. 70., doi:10.2307/1167095.

21. Ezeobele, I., et al. “Depression and Nigerian-Born Immigrant

Women in the United States: a Phenomenological Study.” Journal of

Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, vol. 17, no. 3, 2010,

doi:10.1111/j.1365-2850.2009.01519.x

22. Jensen, Leif. “The Demographic Diversity of Immigrants and Their

Children.” EthnicitiesChildren of Immigrants in America, Sept. 2001,

pp. 20–56., doi:10.1525/california/9780520230118.003.0002.

23. Konadu-Agyemang, Kwadwo, et al. The New African Diaspora in

North America: Trends, Community Building, and Adaptation.

Lexington Books, 2006

24. Lovejoy, Paul E. “Africa and Slavery.” Transformations in Slavery,

pp. 1–23., doi:10.1017/cbo9781139014946.005