Why visa rejections do not halt Nigerian migrants

In our series of letters from African journalists, novelist
and writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani considers why
Nigerians put their lives at risk and opt for dangerous
routes to Europe when they fail to get visas.
Even the official route for Africans wishing to visit the
West is paved with indignity.
I still have vivid memories of my first visit to the British
High Commission in Lagos a little over a decade ago.
The swarm of sweaty applicants in the unending queue,
many of whom had arrived as early as 04:00.
The battalion of whispering men who besieged me as
soon as I arrived, offering to manufacture whatever
document I required, be it bank statements or medical
reports. The fiery brouhaha that ensued from time-to-time over
a newcomer's attempt to sneak into the front of the line.
Sometimes, it was simply an enterprising tout giving
room to the person who had hired him to save a place.
Not every Nigerian was cut out for the strain of standing
in the open for several hours.
Lashed with whips
Finally, at noon, a pot-bellied security man relieved us of
our misery and opened the doors to the visa-processing
section. "No rushing," he barked.
Those behind kept elbowing those in front. The strong
continued pushing the weak aside.
Seeing their superior so blatantly ignored, the scrawnier
security men lashed out with their short whips without
caring which of us might be pregnant or too frail for that
kind of physical abuse.
Yelps, wails, screams erupted from the crowd.
And yet, we continued to push our way in for a chance to
get interviewed for a visa.
It did not matter whether you only wanted to visit the UK
or if you intended to settle. The torturous process was
the same.
All this was nothing compared to the commotion at the
American Embassy just down the road, which had
probably quadruple the number of applicants the British
did.
But oh the joy when someone succeeded in getting a
visa to Europe or America. Oh the outbursts of
exhilaration in families.
Sometimes, successful applicants stood in front of their
congregations during "testimony time" at church, to
declare God's miraculous goodness in granting them a
visa.
"The devil tried to stand in my way but I kept trusting
that the same God who parted the Red Sea would do it
for me," they said.
Inspired shouts of "Praise the Lord!" sprang up from the
congregation.
Many of these people had not been granted an
immigrant visa, only a visitor's visa that would expire in
months. Yet they had no plans of returning anytime
soon.
'Andrew, Don't Check Out'
In the 1980s, the Nigerian government tried, through a
series of adverts on national television, to discourage its
citizens from abandoning their country as the economy
steadily got worse.
The "Andrew, Don't Check Out" adverts became quite
popular, but I do not know that they helped to forestall
Nigerians checking out in droves.
As we say in Nigeria, "Who no like better thing?"
People have come to believe that living in the West has
the ability to radically transform the quality and status
of one's life, family and community. To many who fail to
get visas, it is still worth every danger to emulate this.
They have seen migrants' relatives riding sleek cars and
erecting mansions.
Family homes getting a constructed borehole in the
backyard with neighbours allowed from time-to-time to
come in with containers and fetch drinking water.
Those who stayed home have struggled to complete
their first degrees in Nigerian universities where strikes
by the lecturers often ground education to a halt, while
their former classmates - the visa migrants - amass
advanced degrees from foreign schools.
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani:
"Those who queued up at embassies usually felt
reasonably qualified to meet the stringent visa
requirements"
And whenever these exceedingly educated migrants
finally amass the courage to return to Nigeria, they are
accorded greater respect and position than those with a
local education.
Risk takers
Those who queued up at embassies usually felt
reasonably qualified to meet the stringent visa
requirements.
But there were those who would never be able to meet
these conditions, yet who desperately desired to, like
others, graze where the grass was greener - and
someone would tell them about a route through Libya.
For every applicant who fails to hoodwink embassy staff
with tall tales and fake documents, there are others who
succeed.
For every boat that sinks in the Mediterranean, there are
those that make it across.
These success stories continue to motivate aspiring
immigrants.
Of course, there are those stories of migrants who end
up making a living from wiping bottoms in old people's
homes.
But the folks back home do not really care as long as the
foreign exchange continues to arrive - currencies
superlatively muscular against the increasingly weak
Nigerian naira.
Many embassies in Nigeria, unable to cope directly with
the influx at their gates, now contract out the collection
of visa application documents.
African governments did not care when their people were
being whipped into order at embassies right on their
own soil.
Now they are not pretending to care about those
drowning in the deep, blue Mediterranean. Source: bbc africa