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12 AFRICANS ABROAD: COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES ON AMERICA’S POSTCOLONIAL WEST AFRICANS Baffour K. Takyi In the past thirty years, the United States (America) has witnessed a surge in immigration unseen since the turn of the last century. The Census Bureau has reported that the foreign-born population (documented and undocumented) has been growing rapidly, from 9.6 million people in 1970 to 14.1 million by 1980. This number increased further to 19.8 million in 1990 and 31.1 million around the end of the century (Gibson and Jung). As a result of the growth, immigrants now constitute over 10 percent of America’s population. In contrast to previous waves of immigration to America, the majority of these new immigrants are from non-Western societies, including Africa (Massey, “Economic Development”). Students of postcolonial African social history may have also noticed some new developments in recent international migration of Africans. Because European powers had colonized the Africa region, Europe had traditionally been the destination of African emigrants. These earlier African migrants, especially of the preindependence period, saw their trip or stay as “temporary.” Among those who left Africa for Europe in those early days were the intelligentsia or the few educated elites from their countries. In contrast, the destinations and composition of postcolonial African emigrants have become quite diverse. Unlike the historically developed patterns—America, Canada, Australia—the Middle East and other non-Western regions have increasingly become major destinations for African emigrants. In addition, these new emigrants include the highly educated, those with no or limited education, as well as those with highly demanded skills and those without these skills. More importantly, it seems that these migrants are increasingly becoming permanent fixtures in their new destinations . Thanks to contemporary advances in communications technology , African migrants have become more transnational, with many 236 Africans Abroad 237 shuttling regularly between their countries and their new homes in the “diaspora.” In the case of America, its appeal as a destination for African migrants is a recent phenomenon. Researchers attribute this change to a number of factors,1 including the country’s shift to a worldwide immigration quota in the mid-1960s that abolished the previous country-oforigin quota put in place in the 1920s. Even though the true impact of these policy changes has become a subject of debate in some quarters, some scholars have pointed to the abolition of the previous restrictions as a cause of the recent surge in Third World immigration to America (Massey, “The New Immigration,” “Economic Development”; Portes and Rumbaut). Beginning in the 1990s, and due in large part to the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) and the Immigration Reform Act of 1990, there has also been a steady and gradual increase in the number of Africans who have been arriving in the cities and towns of America. Indeed , it has been pointed out that Africa has benefited immensely as a result of the diversity provisions in the 1990 immigration reforms (KonaduAgyeman , Takyi, and Arthur).2 Besides these policy changes, Africans have been drawn in large numbers to America by its many educational institutions that offer professional and other higher-level degrees, not to mention the availability of jobs for those with skills, especially in academic and medical institutions (Zeleza; Takyi; Dodoo and Takyi, “Race and Earnings”). Although hard numbers on Africans who now call America home are difficult to come by, and the African flow to America is still low compared to immigrant waves from other world regions such as Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, some researchers have noted significant inflows from Africa in recent years. Accounting for less than 1 percent of America’s total foreign-born population for most of the twentieth century, Africa’s share of America’s foreign-born people had increased to about 3 percent in 2000, and 4 percent as of 2004. Rumbaut has estimated that of all the world regions, Asia and Africa accounted for the fastest growth rates in immigration to America during the 1980s. According to Parillo, Africa has averaged about 43,000 legal immigrants per year since the 1990s. Logan and Deane have also pointed out that between 1980 and 1990, the number of Africans in America increased by 6 percent per year.3 Furthermore , they have argued that the number of black Americans with recent roots in sub-Saharan Africa nearly tripled during the 1990s.4 Analyzing data from the 2000 U.S. decennial census, Takyi has also observed that the growth...

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