Tag: Integrating African immigrants

Asylum

A Congolese banker embraces care-giving in New Hampshire

By Gloria B. Anderson and Julie Zimmer | manchesterinklink.com

Mentoring developmentally disabled youth in New Hampshire may not seem like a logical career step for a former bank manager from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

But for Bienfait, a Congolese immigrant – he declines to use his last name for reasons of personal safety — the job is highly satisfying. 

Now residing in Manchester, Bienfait, an applicant for asylum, considers himself blessed to have a job with Sevita, formerly known as the Mentor Network, a nationwide company that provides services to those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.  

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News

Patrick Lyoya escaped violence and persecution in Congo only to die in Michigan

By Niraj Warikoo | Detroit Free Press

When the Lyoya family arrived in the U.S. in 2014 after facing years of war and persecution in Africa, the refugees thought they had finally made it.

They had escaped earlier from conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo and were living in Malawi when they won asylum to live in the U.S., part of a growing number of refugees from Congo in Michigan.

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Immigration

U.S. Offers Protection to People Who Fled War in Cameroon

By Miriam Jordan | The New York Post

The Biden administration announced on Friday that it would offer temporary protected status to nationals of Cameroon, shielding them from deportation and enabling them to obtain work permits, amid escalating armed conflict that has spawned a humanitarian crisis in the African country.

Some 40,000 nationals of Cameroon, many of whom sought safe haven in the United States in recent years, are expected to be eligible. The largest communities of people from Cameroon are in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and California.

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Communities

Galls’ English classes give Congolese refugees confidence on the job

By Evelyn Schultz | Lex18

Inside a conference room sit 12 employees who collectively speak many languages fluently, including French, Lingala, Swahili, and Portuguese.

Now, they’re adding English to that list through new language classes offered as a partnership with Bluegrass Community and Technical College. The classes, which started in February, run for an hour each week until May, and are funded through a grant from the Kentucky Workforce Development Agency.

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Communities

Africa in the spotlight | Afrohouse is connecting platform for Africans in Springfield, Illinois

By Tiffani Jackson | State Journal-Register

When Olric Manthelot moved to Springfield in 2015, he was a victim of cultural stereotypes. As an African who immigrated from Congo-Brazzaville he said the language barrier and stigmas motivated ignorant assumptions about his people.

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Immigration, News

Young undocumented immigrants in Maryland can’t grow up to be whatever they want. This graduate student is trying to change that.

By Theresa Vargas | The Washington Post

There are glass ceilings that force some people to work harder and longer to reach top jobs within their fields. And then there are steel ceilings, ones that are not penetrable, no matter what skills, education or work ethic a person brings. No amount of striving gets a person past those because they are fortified with laws and policies.
Those are the kind Ewaoluwa Ogundana is telling me about on a recent morning.

Continue reading “Young undocumented immigrants in Maryland can’t grow up to be whatever they want. This graduate student is trying to change that.” →
Immigration, News

Led By Africans, Immigrants Now Make Up 1 of Every 10 Blacks In America

By Nicole Duncan-Smith | Atlanta Black Star

The Black immigrant demographic is growing at lightning speed. Fueled chiefly by an influx of people coming to the continent from Africa, over the past 40 years the number of Black immigrants in the United States has sextupled.

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Immigration

Black immigrants are more likely to be denied US citizenship than White immigrants, study finds

By Giselle Rhoden and Nicole Chavez, CNN

(CNN)Black male immigrants are less likely to be approved for United States citizenship than White immigrants, a new study released this week shows.

Researchers at the University of Southern California analyzed more than 2 million citizenship applications filed by US permanent residents between October 2014 and March 2018, and found racial disparities among those whose applications were approved.

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Immigration

How Two Columbus Nonprofits Help New Americans

Immigrants and refugees from Africa often face a difficult transition, navigating disparate cultures and questions of identity.

By Chris Gaitten | Columbus Monthly

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Opinion

Black immigration’s success story

By George Fishman | Newsday

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott’s inspiring rebuttal to President Biden’s address to Congress last month was controversial because as an African American he proclaimed that “America is not a racist country,” but “the greatest country on Earth.” Yet, despite widespread reporting of our racial strife, Black immigrants continue to come to America in ever-increasing numbers. Once here, their belief in American greatness remains intact.

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Immigration

Fund honors Sudanese woman, helps immigrants seeking citizenship

ROBERT PORE | The Grand Island Independent

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP) — Sometimes an immigrant to this country, seeking citizenship, can teach us or make us realize that not only is the United States a country of immigrants, but also how important and a privilege being an American really is. Recently, the Greater Grand Island Community Foundation and the Multicultural Coalition joined forces to create The Khadija Abdudaim Citizenship Assistance Fund.

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Immigration

Relief among Africans as Biden signs order to end Trump’s travel ban

By Ted Hesson, Mica Rosenberg, Mimi Dwyer, Kristina Cooke | Reuters

WASHINGTON U.S. President Joe Biden signed half a dozen executive orders on Wednesday to reverse several hardline immigration policies put in place by former President Donald Trump. The executive actions, signed at a ceremony at the White House, included immediately lifting a travel ban on 13 mostly Muslim-majority and African countries, halting construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall and reversing a Trump order preventing migrants who are in the United States illegally from being counted for congressional districts.

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American Odessey

James Magot| Lancaster City man commemorates 20th anniversary arriving in America from Sudan with children’s book about multi-cultural identity

By Jermaine Rowley | fox43

LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. — An active leader in Lancaster refugee communities is taking a creative approach to inform children and their parents about multi-cultural identity. James Magot, 40, a former South-Sudanese “Lost Boy” refugee is developing his first children’s storybook with the help of illustrator Tess Feiler and a few other local collaborators in honor of his 20th anniversary of arriving in America.

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Opinion

Let us now celebrate immigrants of color to Kentucky

BY ANGENE WILSON | Lexington Herald Leader

On Jan. 20, 2021 Kamala Harris, the daughter of an Asian-American mother and father from Jamaica, will take the oath of office as the Vice President of the United States. Let us now celebrate immigrants of color. In 2013, we began to interview immigrants from African countries for what we titled “African Immigrants in the Bluegrass,” an oral history project at University of Kentucky’s Nunn Center for Oral History. We completed almost 50 interviews in 2017, just before President Trump’s infamous comment in 2018 about immigrants from “s—hole countries.”

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Religion

Often, faith and work collide for African immigrants in the U.S.

By ANTHONY AKAEZE  | Baptist News Global

In November 2016, when he set out on a trip to the United States from his country of Nigeria, Ferdinand Okeke took with him a Bible. It represented more than an item for him; it was an article of faith. As a member of the Deeper Life Ministry, Alaba Market branch, in Lagos, Okeke was a devout church member who regularly attended church. The Bible was an indispensable part of his life in a country widely considered to be deeply religious, with Christianity and Islam as the dominant religions. His trip to America, he said, was ordained by God.

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Opinion

America Voted in Favor of Refugees and Immigrants

By Ethiopian Community Development Council | Connection Newspapers

America has decidedly voted in favor of refugees and immigrants in this 2020 election, showing their support with the victory of President-Elect Joe Biden, and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris, who ran on campaign promises to restore the asylum system, increase the annual cap of refugee arrivals to 125,000, and end the discriminatory travel bans.

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Opinion

Black Immigrants in the United States Have Been Targeted by Trump

BY RUTH ETIESIT SAMUEL | Teen Vogue

In the final presidential debate, in what felt like the midnight hour of an endless campaign, just six minutes and three seconds were allotted to a dialogue that shaped Donald Trump’s entire ascent to politics. Each debate felt like a perpetual will-they-or-won’t-they dance, waiting for the candidates to discuss it. Along with other immigrants and children of immigrants across the country, I listened to Trump lie about children being brought in “through cartels, through coyotes, and through gangs” and pat himself on the back for his policies, deflecting responsibility for the 545 children his administration separated from their parents at the border.

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Politics

African Diaspora Looks to Flex Political Muscle in US Elections

By Salem Solomon| Voice of America

WASHINGTON – The African diaspora in the United States is mobilizing voter drives, as organizers believe 2020 is a time for these voters to flex their political muscle as never before. 

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Immigration

Ghanaian, Boukinabe, Ivorien among immigrants sworn in as newest U.S. citizens at Berkshire, Massachusetts
  • By Heather Bellow | The Berkshire Eagle

Their faces as hopeful as the sun and the shimmering Berkshire hills behind them, a dozen new Americans took the oath that means they now belong. At a coronavirus pandemic-adjusted naturalization ceremony in the Chinese garden at Naumkeag on Wednesday, 12 people from nine countries became U.S. citizens.

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Immigration

Protests grow over pending deportations to Cameroon, amid abuse allegations

“We ran from our countries to be protected here. Now, when they are deporting us, our lives will be at risk.”

By Dianne Solis | The Dallas Morning News

A national protest is widening over the pending deportations of dozens of Cameroon-born immigrants who lawyers and other advocates say were abused in U.S. detention centers and could face death if sent back to their homeland.

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Immigration

The United States Must Not Deport People to Cameroon

By Amnesty International

Amnesty International USA calls upon the Trump administration to refrain from deporting people to Cameroon, as the administration schedules deportations this week from Alexandria Airport in Louisiana. The organization is also concerned about the threat of imminent deportation of Cameroonians now being held at the Prairieland detention center in Texas.

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Opinion

When are we going to have an honest conversation on African migration?

In this article, International journalist, migrant activist and TED Fellow Yasin Kakande, author of a new book on the historical and contemporary reasons for African immigration, ‘Why We Are Coming’, traces the intersection between Black Lives Matter and African Migrations in the Covid-19 Pandemic.

by Keith Asante | The London Economic

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Immigration

Stories of Welcome: Congolese refugees are embraced by their new community in Boise, Idaho

By International Rescue Committee

Jacqueline Uwumeremyi fled from the Democratic Republic of Congo to South Africa because of violence. After facing constant xenophobia because of her refugee status, she and her five children were finally resettled in Boise, Idaho, in 2018.

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Opinion

Immigrants Don’t Just Change Voting Patterns

By Peter Beinart | The Atlantic

Of the many questions at stake in this fall’s election, one of the less obvious is this: Will the United States remain a country where someone like Barack Obama or Kamala Harris—a person of color with immigrant parents—is likely to be born? The answer depends, in part, on whether America’s universities retain their global appeal. If Donald Trump wins reelection, they may not.

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People

Nigerian family finds local area welcoming as they seek new opportunities in Canada

by Jamie Morris | Lindsay Advocate

From Lagos to Lindsay. From a city in Nigeria five times the size of Toronto to a town of some 21,000 souls. Quite a leap to jump an ocean and a continent, but Tobi and Francis Ogunnowo did so — and found welcoming arms.

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Immigration

Why restrictive immigration may be bad for U.S. entrepreneurship

by Meredith Somers | MIT Sloan

A new study shows that, relative to their population, immigrant-founded businesses create 42% more jobs in America than ones started by U.S.-born entrepreneurs.Share 

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Opinion

My Family Escaped From Togo To America As Refugees, Now Trump Is Trying To Kill The Program That Saved My Life

By Marius Kothor | The New Times

The sea-washed, sunset gates of the United States are being closed to the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. President Trump and his administration have slashed the Refugee Resettlement Program, which allows people fleeing war, persecution and famine to legally move to the United States.

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Immigration

Where to find free or low-cost immigration law services

By ALLAN WERNICK | NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Q. Are there free resources available to help me become a U.S. citizen? Or is there an inexpensive and fair lawyer you can recommend? I am currently out of work.

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