GLOBAL IMMIGRATION AND OTHER NOTES FROM HFX 2024
JOSHUA J. OMOJUWA argues that migration to the West can only be stemmed by attacking the root of the problem
There are some subject matters that I will always return to. One of those is our international airports and what it means to travel through them. I do not intend to focus on this today, but it is important that I share my insights, again, on the anomalies that come with traveling through Nigeria’s international airports, especially the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.
Every government official who now travels with a Diplomatic Passport once travelled with the ordinary one. Most of them, provided they follow the protocol, will return to continue using the ordinary passport. To be in a position, in any airport around the world, where an official of the National Drugs Agency is ransacking your luggage, chances are that you are already in big trouble. In Nigeria, this is the norm. It is another reflection of how dysfunctional our systems are, that every visitor arriving or departing Nigeria is subjected to seeing the NDLEA and Customs ransack their luggage, even when such luggage pass through scanners and don’t trigger a thing. How can we not see how crude this is?
A fellow Nigerian who is now mostly American said that his biggest fear when it comes to visiting Nigeria is the airport. Every time I depart or arrive in Nigeria, I immediately see why. The Nigerian airport experience is the worst I have ever seen, and I have more than enough data to say it is probably the worst there is. Note that this has got nothing to do with facilities or even personnel. It is everything to do with the protocol put in place. It is a relic of our military days, yet we insist on carrying it on like a badge of honour, a wretched and disreputable process that scares people away and screams they are not welcome to our country. That Nigerians aren’t perplexed by this or that they go through with it as normal is part of why it continues to be.
Those were thoughts on my way to Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada to attend the 2024 edition of the Halifax International Security Forum. I enjoyed the several plenary sessions and private events and was a part of them in different ways. There was one that left the room to become a viral video.
During the “Era of Opportunity: Immigrants Excel” panel, I took note of what U.S. Senator Tim Kaine said about the impact of immigrants. He had said that “the (US) economy needs the immigrants’ transfusion”. He also said that “the Health Care System will collapse without foreign born workers”. He was making a case against the increasingly popular call by their citizens for western countries to stem the tide of immigration.
When time came for questions, I suggested that the conversation needed an extra point of view, that of the countries on the receiving end of the benefits mentioned by the Senator. The video was posted to X by @HFXForum and immediately went viral, garnering almost one million views now.
Contrary to some of the attacks by X users who were mostly still miffed by the fact that their intended candidate did not win the 2023 elections, the content took a different hue from the context in which it was generated. What is even funnier is that, without being in the room, just by watching the video, you’d get the point.
My question was not to elicit pity or support for poor countries. You cannot address the global immigration challenge without getting to the root of the matter; the beginning of the journey of the (economic) immigrant. It’s a POV that needs to get into the conversation. Senator Kaine couldn’t have answered the question better. Several for-profit organisations in poor countries set up foundations to attract grants from western countries. Their foundations eventually attract more money than their businesses.
This structure is why there are over 70,000 NGOs in a country I’d rather not name. Or delve into what value they really bring to the people. We need to go from “granting” to business dealing. Senator Kaine said to Rethink Humanitarian Assistance. To invest in Public Health Infrastructure. And these are not favours, because these poor countries mostly subsidise the education of their public health workers that are eventually poached by rich countries, for nothing.
Do not get it twisted. The Global North always know what they are doing. A strategy session was conducted in Nova Scotia recently where they decided that they were no longer going to poach health care workers from other Canadian provinces, with the intention to prevent the collapse of their health care systems. You can search for this on Google. So, when they poach from the Global South or what in plain English, I prefer to call, poor countries, they know exactly what they are doing.
Someone needed to make it clear that by addressing the immigration question from its literal source, you could deploy more robust solutions. Cultivating local agriculture creates a value chain that benefits the local population, sending food over has limited impact, if any. It’s not about asking for more, it’s about saying, “be more strategic in the way you spend what you already spend and be robust in the way you look at the issue, it’s beyond your countries”.
And to those who will ask, “what about the governments in these countries?” Nothing here suggests they don’t have responsibilities. They were neither in this room nor on the panel. Not to mention some things ought to go without saying really. Despite the desperate attempt by some to make it about my local political choices, it was great to see the conversation get layered in the context and point of view of poor countries. How can we address this challenge in a way that acknowledges the fact the world does not revolve around the West and its politics? Why be in a room like that if I can’t ask questions like these?
Omojuwa is chief strategist Alpha Reach/BGX Publishing
