President Donald Trump |
Kenyan immigrants working in the United States have been ranked the third most industrious foreigners.
Kenyan
workers scored 73.4 per cent to emerge third in the list of the hardest
and most skilled immigrant groups in the US, according a 2018 report by
Bloomberg.
The research ranks Ghanaians and Bulgarians at positions one and two, with 75.2 per cent and 74.2 per cent, respectively.
Other African countries that feature in the report's top 10 are Ethiopia (4th), Egypt (5th), Nigeria (8th) and Liberia (9th).
This
makes Africans in general the most productive immigrants in the US
ahead of those from Mexico and Central America, who constitute more than
70 per cent of foreign nationals in that country.
“If
we want more highly skilled and hardworking English-speaking immigrant
obviously the place to go for them is Africa,” Bloomberg journalist
Justin Fox, who came up with the report, said.
The
report, developed from the 2016 US Census Bureau American Community
Survey, also indicates that Kenya is among the African countries with
the highest number of immigrants studying and working in the US.
According
to the report, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria and Nepal have the highest number
of citizens pursuing higher education in the US after Saudi Arabia.
The report put the number of Kenyans who legally live and work in the US at 120,000.`
The
Bloomberg report came three months after a survey by the Central Bank
of Kenya indicated that Kenyans living and working abroad remitted a
record Ksh64.5 billion ($645 million) between January and March 2018.
This
is almost a 50-per-cent rise from the Ksh43.4 billion ($434 million)
that the diaspora community sent home in the same period in 2017.
Deportations
But
ironically, the report comes on the backdrop of President Donald Trump
administration’s continued crackdown on illegal immigrants, including
Kenyans.
Last year more than 100 Kenyans were deported from US— a sharp increase since Trump assumed power on January 20, 2017.
The rise— from 63 in 2016 to 103 last year— reflects an overall increase in deportation of Africans.
A
relative of Devolution Cabinet Secretary Eugene Wamalwa is one of the
Kenyans who was to be deported from the US in April after his appeal for
political asylum was denied.
Dr
Mzenga Aggrey Wanyama, who has been teaching at Augsburg University in
Minneapolis, Minnesota, and his wife Mary Namalwa Mzenga, had attracted
huge support as they faced deportation from a country they have lived in
for 25 years.
“Well, what can I do? If they want me to buy my own ticket, I will do that,” he told the Minneapolis-based StarTribune newspaper in March this year.
Dr Wanyama told the publication that he had resigned to the deportation as ordered by the Trump administration.
His expulsion was later suspended by authorities after he lodged an appeal.
Dr Wanyama first entered the US in 1992 as a non-immigrant exchange visitor.
-The EastAfrican
No comments:
Post a Comment
Disclaimer: Comment expressed do not reflect the opinion of African Parliamentary News