Emigration solves nothing

My attention was drawn to this story in a British tabloid about a Nigerian caught and arrested while attempting an illegal scheme to allow himself to stay in the United Kingdom beyond the expiration of his documents.

He isn't the only one to go the route of arranging a fake marriage with a local to get around immigration rules. Of course, as an outsider you can't really know for sure that what appears to be a "fake" marriage for immigration is in fact that. Maybe it is genuine. Then again, seven years ago one Nigerian international (won't say his name) was three times denied a work permit by the English FA, despite Derby County's strong desire to sign him; the player managed to get his work permit in time to sign for Portsmouth by marrying a Portuguese citizen. Maybe he was really in love. All I know for sure is barely five years later (when he had played in England long enough to merit a work permit without a marriage), this international had divorced his Portuguese wife and remarried, his second wife a Nigerian and the daughter of a prominent Nigerian football coach.

Notice I didn't say his name. If I did, a lot of my countrymen would call me terrible names for trying to pour sand in the man's garri. We Nigerians, and Africans at large, are all so desperate to leave our countries and go "abroad" that we pretty much consider anything and everything to be moral and proper, so long as it gets us out of the country. I am constantly amused by the people who make the most ridiculous claims when they plead for asylum in Britain, Ireland, Canada and even South Africa. Some say witches, wizards and demonic cults will kill them if they return to Nigeria; some say they will suffer genital mutilation if they return; a few say they are homosexuals who will be hunted down if they return to Nigeria. They pay attention to whatever is the current cause celebre is animating European and American liberals at the moment, then cloak themselves in the fad, whatever it is, then get foreign "civil society" activist to cry on their behalf that dark, dangerous, illiberal Nigeria will destroy them if they are not allowed to stay in Europe or America.

We will say or do anything to leave Africa, won't we?

We are not the only ones. If the mass media is right, a seeming majority of Hispanic-Americans do not appear to believe their country's immigration laws are applicable to citizens of Latin America. Whatever a Latin American person does to get to the USA is every bit as fine to them as our own people's shenanigans are to us.

Unlike the Latin Americans, we Africans do not have "easy" access to the United States, or we would risk our very lives to get there as they do. You can tell by the way we risk life and limb and family assets for the incredibly slim chance of making it to the "easier" (from the African perspective) destinations of Europe and the Middle East.

We sell our family's property, invest our families' entire savings, and borrow copiously on top of that to pay people smugglers for a slim-to-nonexistent chance of sneaking into Europe or the Middle East without being robbed, killed, arrested or repatriated. We risk our lives in rickety boats on the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Red Sea (not to mention rickety trucks in the Sahara). Some of us stowaway on ships, and get tossed into the Atlantic; some of us are tossed into the Red Seas off the coast of Yemen. A handful have frozen to death after stowing away in the wheel-well of aircraft, too uneducated to understand that they were committing suicide. Some are just summarily shot by border guards on the frontiers of Egypt or Morocco.

And if we do happen to make it to our final destinations, we are then willing to fight like wounded lions to stay in France, UK or USA. We refuse to let our "human rights" be violated. We call lawyers, campaigners .... we go the distance. An entire industry of "advocacy" institutions have sprung up in Europe and North America to fight respective national governments if they apply their respective immigration laws to illegal immigrants. The same "advocacy" institutions criticize the Middle East because of the treatment of migrant workers from Southeast Asia, South Asia ... and Africa. Frankly, the indigenous "black" population of the Middle East (a legacy of the Slave Trade) are the poorest, most politically, socially and economically marginalized group in the region (which seems to be a theme for people of African descent worldwide).

All that applies to illegal emigrants. Those of us Africans who are "legal" must first go to extraordinary lengths and endure undiplomatic indignities just to convince foreign embassies to give us visas. And if they happen to emigrate to a place like France, they still have to deal with racial profiling by security agencies seeking "les sans papiers" (people without papers), which is what Hispanic-American advocacy groups think the "Arizona law" inflict on legal and illegal Latinos alike.

We would literally go to the ends of the Earth to facilitate our departure from Nigeria/Africa, and put our very lives on the line to do so, risk detention and death (no one seems to be keeping statistics on the number of Nigerians who have died -- been murdered in my view -- in the course of being forcibly repatriated by foreign customs officials).

It is so frustrating.

If we Nigerians/Africans, individually and collectively, took just a microscopic fraction of the courage, effort and sacrifice we exert to emigrate, and invested it in fighting to reform, restructure and transform our countries/continent, we would not have to suffer through the travails and tribulations we are currently putting ourselves through (both in emigrating and in remaining home).

Look, every country has its share of emigrants. But there is a difference between places in the world where emigration is by "choice" and other places where emigration is for "necessity". Indeed, the embassies of "choice" countries treat immigrants from other "choice" countries with respect, and treat we the people of "necessity" countries as though we were dirty vagabonds come to ruin their countries.

I am not saying there would be no migrants from Nigeria/Africa if our homeland was what it should be .... but I am saying that there would be no Africans drowning to death in the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Red Sea.

We Nigerians in particular suffer a sort of simmering, unspoken Naija-phobia, a widespread belief held worldwide that we are all criminals by virtue of being Nigerian. I long for the day the Nigerian citizenry gets fed up with it, and devotes collective energy to achieving our economic potential ... at which point those same foreign countries would probably start begging us to visit them as tourists. But no, we just beg even harder for visas.

I really don't understand my own people sometimes.

We are so animated and active when it comes to fighting for our rights to live and stay in foreign countries ... but become lethargic, apathetic, disbelieving and bereft of hope when the question is how to achieve our just rights in our own country.

Wish I had an emoticon of a sad face.

Living outside Nigeria doesn't change or improve anything in Nigeria. I should know. The impact I have had on Nigeria from outside Nigeria is ZERO.

And so 100 million people continue to live without worthwhile police forces, without worthwhile healthcare systems, without worthwhile education or universities that are globally ranked, without ....

Oh, don't worry.

All of us, all 100 million of us will just emigrate to Canada, Australia, Siberia and Alaska. I've noticed they have plenty of room.