African Immigrants
By George Kissi

African Immigrants

African immigrantsare perceived by some African Americans as responsible for the fact that their ancestors were sold into slavery. African immigrants currently represent 6 percent of all the immigrants to the US. African immigrants dont have the same stakes as the native population. 

African immigrants need education that addresses their needs while also acknowledging barriers such as language, culture, educational background, and stigma. African immigrants like immigrants from Europe, Asia, Latin America and other parts of the world are raising their families in America. African immigrants, most of whom live in the Washington area, stay in school on average. African immigrants are more likely than other immigrant populations to have a college or graduate degree, and a high proportion of African immigrants in the US--more than one in three--were employed in managerial and professional specialties.According to the US Census Bureau there are now close to one million African immigrants in the United States.

We know also that the number of documented immigrants from Africa arriving annually in the United States rose from under 15,000 in 1980 to over 40,000 by the end of the 90's.  El-Hassan quotes

figures showing that more than 350,000 Africans legally entered the United States in the 1990's. Many others came through family reunification programs and diversity visas, a lottery for people who come from countries with low rates of to the United States.  A recent article in the New York Times newspaper noted that there are currently more Africans who have  arrived in the United States voluntarily than the total of those who were brought in as captives during the slave trade.

The African foreign-born population in the United States is small but growing. According to the US Census Bureau, there were approximately 364,000 African immigrants in 1990, and this population more than doubled to over 881,000 by 2000. The African foreign born make up 3 percent of the total foreign-born population. It is estimated that in 2000, 1 percent or 92,435 of the population of New York City were African-born immigrants, while Montgomery experienced a 15 percent increase to 25,776 in the number of African immigrants in the 1990s.

African Immigrants are highly industreous and business with great entrepreneural skills. In New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Houston and Miami, for example, African immigrants own restaurants, healthcare agencies and specialty stores that cater to the needs of the large African and other immigrant population in these cities.  How are these highly educated and enterprising immigrants population using their education and positions in this country to contribute to building a strong African diaspora in the United States. In recent years, Pennsylvania has come full circle and is once again playing host to a new population arriving directly from the continent of Africa. Harvard University, for example, has estimated that two-thirds of their black population is not comprised of traditional black Americans.