By Chris Wamalwa
USA: While US President Barack Obama was traversing the expansive African continent and trying to ‘save face’ from the burgeoning criticisms that he has turned his back on a continent that gave him his ‘audacity’ story, lawmakers on the Hill past a historic Immigration Reforms Bill in the Senate.
Though very significant, the passage of the Bill in the Senate is by no means a guarantee that it will pass in the House of Representatives dominated by Republicans.
There are all indications that the Republicans in the Lower House would do everything within their powers to either delay the Bill or take it up and chip at it so much so that the main thrust (granting a pathway to citizenship to an estimated 12 million people currently in the country) is completely lost.
These threats notwithstanding, hopes are high that the country will finally deal with the vexing issue of a broken immigration system that doesn’t serve the interests of the country. But, as the reform measures move on steadily and are subjected to numerous amendments, its common knowledge that in this country, different interests take precedent over anything else in the process of making policy.
This is to say that many groups have in the past and will and in fact are now lobbying, cajoling, and threatening all manner of unpleasant consequences just to have special programmes built in the bill to their advantage.
Already, there is mumbling about the discriminatory nature in which the Bill is taking.
While Republicans are collectively united in ditching the ‘Green Card’ Lotto programme that benefits majority of Africans, they are in the same breath supporting a proposal to help immigrants with Irish background.
The so-called Stem programme that emphasises people with backgrounds in science or math is geared toward increasing immigrants from Asia and India.
Each year, 50,000 people are selected at random to immigrate to the US. They don’t need specialised job skills or even a relative in the US. What they need most is some luck and to be from a country with few recent immigrants living in the US.
The Diversity Visa, better known as the “Green Card Lottery,” is a little-known programme inside the US but is played by millions of people worldwide each year.
It was established in 1990 to diversify the immigration population in the US designed, in part, to help more Irish settle in the US.
Over the past two decades though, the ‘complexion’ of lottery winners has become noticeably darker.
Today, about half of visa winners come from Africa. The immigration Bill that just passed the senate would put an end it. That’s why there is so much anger among Africans living in the US as well as the Congressional Black Caucus.
They have argued that the Immigration Bill includes programmes designed to benefit Asians, Latinos and European immigration, such as 10,500 visas annually set aside for Irish immigrants.
But there’s nothing specifically for Africans. They say even though some Africans will qualify for the Stem visa, this programme was not created with Africans in mind.
Some will definitely qualify for the Dream Act, but it was not made with black people in mind. And, by the way, how many Africans qualify for the agriculture visa?
The only visa type that has a high proportion of Africans that come through is the Diversity Visa. Many Africans living here are hoping that President Obama comes out soon and states his stand on this matter.
They are hoping that he actually remembers a time not long ago when very few Africans made it to America, Africans like his own father who made his improbable story plausible.
-chriswamalwa@yahoo.com
