The other face of immigration from Mexico is African

When we think of our immigration legal or illegal along our southern border, we often imagine a poor Latino family, led by a coyote across the Rio Grande under the cover of night in a desperate attempt to reach America.

America’s collective vision of immigration from its southern border is brown, not black.

However, Mexican authorities, and those who closely study immigration patterns are beginning to tell a different story along the U.S.-Mexico border. 

African immigrants, are arriving daily in Mexico on 20-day transit visas, and paying upwards of $2,200 to be shuttled into America from Mexico to border towns like El Paso in Texas and Calexico and San Ysidro in California.

{mosads}Exploiting a tiny loophole in Mexican travel regulations they have created a new path for African immigrants to arrive in the U.S. The 20-day window is just long enough for African immigrants to travel from Chiapas in southern Mexico to the border. Unvetted and, these immigrants arrive, live and work in the U.S. illegally.

This may all change with the election of Donald Trump, who has vowed to harden the border and bolster the ranks of agents working the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump has also promised to deport as many as 3 million undocumented immigrants, which has sent chills through communities where undocumented African immigrants live. 

“I arrived United States here in 2014 through the Mexican border after I paid a Mexican immigration official the sum of $2,200 for a Mexican transit visas to U.S. He was the one who crossed me over through El Paso. Initially, securing job was difficult since I have no document. I had to come here to Houston where there are millions of African community to seek any form of job for survival. I have been working now for 12 months. But many of us are scared of President Trump’s plan to deport two to three million undocumented migrants,” said Clem, a 25-year-old undocumented immigrant from Congo, working as a Cleaner in Houston. He spoke on the condition that he would only give his first name, fearing any further disclosure could make him an easy target for deportation.  

Like the Dreamers, protected under President Obama’s administration, many of the undocumented African immigrants arrived as children.

“I was brought here on a B1/B2 visas from Nigeria just two years ago by my aunt who returned back to Nigeria after spending three days here in U.S. I was issued a 10-day duration stay by the Customs and Border Control, CBC on arrival at the airport, but my aunt told me not to go back to Nigeria since the suffering at home was too much. I had no place to stay, I had to be squatting with several Africans at least for survival. I am praying that Donald Trump should legalize my stay here in America,” said Olajide, an 18-year-old Nigerian in Dallas working at a Car-wash recount his own story. 

Hailing from different ethnic groups and speaking a wide range of languages, these Africans are hiding in the shadows of American life and the nation’s economy. Their quest was for a better life. But will they find it in Trump’s America. That’s the question that lingers more than a month after his election. 

“Donald Trump has come with his fearful deportation policy which is making my heart to cut. This fear is too much to stomach,” said Kubalo is a 50 year old man from Morocco living illegally in Austin.

George Elijah Otumu is an award winning journalist whose work has appeared in publications in Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, United Arab Emirates (UAE); United Kingdom and the United States.

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