For the past couple months, I’ve been roaming around Accra and various outlying communities speaking with a variety of Ghanaians. Everyone I’ve spoken to are informed and up-to-date on the autrocities of tRump and his administration. Probably more current than most, at least white, u.s.ofa. peeps.
In general, folks are baffled as to why tRump is limiting Ghanaian visas to 3 months. For the only reason recited over and over again by the people I meet here when I ask them why they are considering leaving Ghana for the u.s. is the dual combination of the lack of jobs here in Ghana and the promise of work in the u.s.ofa.
Faces light up, words come out faster, smiles brighten the already sunny day, as one after another, men talk about finding a job in the u.s., the ability to send money home to support their struggling family members, the opportunities of work, any work. Everyone wants to work.
When these men – and some womyn – realize the implications of the three month limit on visas also limits their ability to find and keep a job, the confused and hurt “but why?” spreads consistently over these open and puzzled faces.
Many talk about the desire to migrate to the u.s. legally, to work legally, to be in the u.s. legally. No one asks me to show them the illegal ways they can enter. I don’t know if they totally believe me but I do know they totally do NOT want to believe me when I tell them, first of all, there are so few legal ways for Black or even brown people to enter the u.s. legally; and second of all, even if they do find a ‘legal’ way, they will not be welcomed by at least most white u.s. people and not even by a lot of Black or brown people already living in the u.s.
As you might already know, as a white person walking and riding and exploring in the three African nations I’ve been able to enter due to my daughter’s hard work, I have been immediately greeted by nothing but brilliantly smiled “welcomes” from total strangers, almost every person who has caught my eye: a “welcome” I feel is not just undeserved but totally unexpected, and understandably given the centuries of white people’s looting, exploitation and genocide inflicted here, if not offered and even if hostility were to be directed my way.
I know that should any of these Africans make it to the u.s., most of my fellow countrymen would not be even an iota as welcoming of them as I am here. And hostility or worse even, would even be extended, if they were to make it to the u.s.ofa.
