Africa’s salvation will only be found in Africa
Jul 05, 2009
EDITOR—I am sick and tired of reading in the East African press about denied visa applications to the US and other Western countries. Western embassies are stationed in poor Africa to serve their national interests. It is part and parcel of their brief
EDITOR—I am sick and tired of reading in the East African press about denied visa applications to the US and other Western countries. Western embassies are stationed in poor Africa to serve their national interests. It is part and parcel of their brief to protect their countries from getting inundated by desperate economic immigrants from the corrupt and impoverished sub-Saharan nations.
Africa has a pretty rotten international image and the West is not comfortable with African immigrants. In the aftermath of the recent arrest, prosecution and jailing of 12 Kenyans in the midwestern state of Kansas, on charges of tax fraud and other scams, Kenyans now find themselves equated with Nigerian scammers around here. These and other previous convictions were reported to the State Department, which situation explains why more Kenyan visa applications than ever are increasingly turned down.
ng to the nefarious actions of West African, Kenyan and other immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, Washington has a legitimate concern in feeling most African visa applicants want to travel to the US for the wrong reasons.
Unlike Europeans, a majority of Africans do not have the financial wherewithal to afford purported short visitor-style travel to the US and overseas destinations. They have been determined to be a starving bunch trying to ‘sneak’ in to others’ shamba to harvest and steal ‘bananas’!
As Kwame Nkrumah warned, Africa’s salvation lies within itself. Muammar Gaddafi has it all upside up that Africans must urgently put their house in order now and not tomorrow to earn the respect of the world community and spare themselves the humiliations at Western embassies. A US visa is a privilege and not a right!
Bosire Mosi
United States
Africa has a pretty rotten international image and the West is not comfortable with African immigrants. In the aftermath of the recent arrest, prosecution and jailing of 12 Kenyans in the midwestern state of Kansas, on charges of tax fraud and other scams, Kenyans now find themselves equated with Nigerian scammers around here. These and other previous convictions were reported to the State Department, which situation explains why more Kenyan visa applications than ever are increasingly turned down.
ng to the nefarious actions of West African, Kenyan and other immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, Washington has a legitimate concern in feeling most African visa applicants want to travel to the US for the wrong reasons.
Unlike Europeans, a majority of Africans do not have the financial wherewithal to afford purported short visitor-style travel to the US and overseas destinations. They have been determined to be a starving bunch trying to ‘sneak’ in to others’ shamba to harvest and steal ‘bananas’!
As Kwame Nkrumah warned, Africa’s salvation lies within itself. Muammar Gaddafi has it all upside up that Africans must urgently put their house in order now and not tomorrow to earn the respect of the world community and spare themselves the humiliations at Western embassies. A US visa is a privilege and not a right!
Bosire Mosi
United States