Thread by @DoubleEph

Some (more) thoughts on #Shithole - specifically the narrative that African immigrants are highly educated. American politics is colouring the argument in ways that stop a useful debate

A simple question to ask is this - how is it that immigrants from a poor continent and countries with overall terrible education systems are sending highly educated people to America? It’s worth a ponder

Important to note - unlike Australia or Canada, America’s immigration system does NOT select for skills or education per se. 70% of immigration to America is ‘family reunion’. They don’t have a points based system (Trump wants this)

The answer is simple - African countries are doing the discrimination work themselves without America needing to do it. There is a ‘points based system’ if you want to leave Africa for America. The points are money and education, things which 80% of Nigerians don’t have

Logically you can see how this plays out. The Africans who don’t ‘score enough points’ to leave by themselves are the ones you see going through Libya or all sorts of places in Latin America uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa…

The number of highly educated Nigerians in America is only going to increase in fact. A not insignificant number of Nigerians are having kids in America (“anchor babies”). To score enough ‘points’ for this you need at least $10k - 90% of Nigerians disqualified already

It’s a bit like Justin Trudeau declaring visa free travel to Canada for Mexicans in 2016. Nothing to worry about - since Canada doesn’t have a land border with Mexico, you have already screened out the Mexicans who are too poor to get on a ✈️

Now before anyone calls me a hypocrite - I’m an immigrant myself. Moving to Britain is the single best thing that has happened to me in terms of personal development. I highly recommend it and will never discourage anyone from doing so

We weren’t rich when I moved here but my uncle gave me a letter to the High Commission and they gave me a visa without even opening the envelope with all my documents inside it.

I just wish there was a way to select talented immigrants out of Africa sans money and education

So simply repeating that African immigrants are highly educated and so Trump is something something a racist white supremacist is just blowing gas. And this is why I hate using ‘racist’ like some kind of lightsaber in arguments.

Rant over