America in the Grip of Xenophobia and the Plight of Citizen Tijani.
By Oladimeji Abitogun
America is battling a scourge of illegal immigrants tried as the right wing media and politicians have, Americans are still reluctant to turn illegal immigration to a topical issue during political campaigns.One can be sure that Fox Network’s Billy O’ Reilly and CNN’s Lou Dobbs would stoke the anger of the electorates in the name of a so-called “culture war” and make illegal immigration a big deal. I am one of those who predictably, would not lose any sleep over such prejudicial and often misleading debates. I am a legal alien in the United States.
Nevertheless, I am aware that many immigrants in the United States usually have it tough in order to regularize their status; the law on immigration makes it almost impossible for a rational track to becoming legal in this Country.
The “illegal immigrant” are the whipping boys for all the present economic ills in the U.S. high walls are being built to shut them out, especially the ones from Latin America and the ones to the immediate South of America, Mexicans, Africans immigrants, do not usually come in without Visas.
Some of us are sometimes, although over-staying the time approved at the point of entry. At times too we do the unimaginable; it costs little to ask for extension of stay on reasonable grounds. Whichever fault we have in bringing about the problem of being here illegally, those high walls and the parochial minute men blood hounds are not for us, African immigrants. We are not irrational or unreasonable to the extent of getting so desperate that we would swim through open wide seas or dig several miles of tunnels or take the deadly option of near suffocation in the back of haulage trucks to come into the U.S.
In the course of journalistic odyssey in the U.S, some people tell me the ugly truth, Americans love to find different times and desperations to play the blame game. Nothing is sure now, so the immigrant who works very hard is being sacrificed.
When the so-called illegal Immigrants work, they contributes to the social security fund, which they cannot by law ever claim upon retirement, they pay sales tax and other sundry levies, yet they are the ones who are made to take the crap even when many Americans, for no racial distinction, would not even work if given a job. I am told that Whoopi Goldberg, (The Oscar Winning Actress) said it succinctly the other day, she said that Jews were once blamed for the problems of America, the Italians were also persecuted before, most of all, Blacks, people of African descent were persecuted, lynched and hung on trees because of prejudice.
Who knows where the present wave of hatred for immigrant could lead. The last time a railing maniac seized the instrument of power in Germany, I mean Adolf Hitler, he started by branding Jewish people as the ultimate problem that must be tacked, thereafter he got so extremely loony and ended up exterminating six million Human beings.
I fear for the possible fall-out of the extreme against immigrant at this time. When they are done scape-goating the illegal and the solutions does not come overnight, yet would remember us, legal immigrants.
John Toland, Hitler’s Biographer, one of the many people that have chronicled the life of Hitler, detailed how the formal German Counselor started the program and ultimate Holocaust against Jews by first declaring “Jewry” as the problem of the world. Next he moved from the realm of imagining and Jew bashing to concretely taking action by using the murderous agents in the S.S to actualize the agenda of killing every Jew.
Somebody told me the other day that Hitler’s skewed and silly prejudice against people of Africa descent would have encouraged him to extend his policy of mass killing to Africa if Germany had won the Second World War.
There is nothing as deadly as unprocessed ideology. Passion is good but deployed as a weapon of nation building, it could endanger innocent lives. Hitler and pretentions ideologues who repent national party and turn their nose against God for the beauty of diversity, have no logical grouse in saying that the removal of a class or race would usher in untold prosperity and other good things of life.
The Plight of Citizen Najeem Adekunle Tijani
I first met this brilliant Nigerian in 1996. He was then in the Vanguard of the struggle to dislodge the military from power in Nigeria. He was a student activist from the Polytechnic Ibadan, African largest indigenous city critical birthplace of several fights against oppressive tendencies and characters.
I met him at the Bodija home of late Chief Bola Ige, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, whose killers, Police in Nigeria still can’t tell us. Najeem was a young Nigerian, but his thick Saki tribal marks, made him conspicuous.
In the thick of pro-democracy struggles, he was a young willing foot soldier for a greater Nigeria. At some points he feared for his life and came to the United States. I do not know what he did or did not do. But I was told that he presently sits in the holding cell of Citizenship and Immigration Service,(CIS). My plea is that he should not be deported to Nigeria.
Our nascent democracy is not yet strong enough to have the funny feeling that nothing would happen to Najeem if he goes back to Nigeria at this time.
Those who pretended that everything was ok and lured Chief Ige to participate in the crooked power arrangement; I know, are crazy enough to want to harm his surviving lieutenants. CIS should not deport Najeem Adekunle Tijani to premature death.
