Fareed Zakaria, a host on CNN, has conducted an analysis on the recent addition of Nigeria to the US travel ban, a move that has sparked widespread controversy in the past few weeks.
As a reminder, the White House announced that immigrants from Nigeria and five other countries would no longer be eligible for visas allowing them to permanently reside in the US, expanding their contentious travel ban policy. In a presidential proclamation on January 31, Nigeria’s failure to comply with security and information sharing requirements, and its high “terror” risk to the US were cited as the reasons for imposing the restriction.
Zakaria, delving into the development, explored whether the ban was a security measure or an enforcement of President Donald Trump’s stance on immigration. He highlighted that no Nigerian had been responsible for any terror-related attack in America over the past four decades.
The CNN presenter emphasized that if the rationale behind banning immigrant visas from Nigeria held ground, then all visas, including the temporary ones, should have been banned as well.
Zakaria also revealed that Nigerians are the most educated immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa in the US, with 59% of them aged 25 and older holding at least a bachelor’s degree, according to the migration policy institute.
According to him, “According to the Migration Policy Institute, 59% of Nigeria immigrants aged 25 and older hold at least a Bachelor’s degree, that is nearly double the proportion for Americans born in the US. It is also more than the proportion of immigrants from South Korea, China, the United Kingdom and Germany. Nigerian immigrants also get high scale jobs, 54% of them are in largely White-collar positions in management, business, science and the arts than barely just 39% of people born in the US.”
Zakaria referenced a new American Research report which disclosed that Nigerian immigrants in the United States made over $14 billion in 2018 and paid more than $4 billion in taxes in the United States. He also argued that Nigeria is America’s second-largest trade partner, among other things.
Here is the video and some reactions to it below;
…
