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Give Me Your Sick, Your Brains With Your Money By Farouk Martins, Omo Aresa
America is now the biggest debtor with about 9 trillion dollars national debt but more money keeps on pouring in from rich and poor countries all over the world. They must be investing that money wisely for secured returns while providing jobs for Americans and rejecting the jobs they dislike for the kinsmen of the investors. If you do not like it, attract others and invest that money in your country to provide the same type of jobs there.
It is not only America’s Statue of Liberty that used to welcome immigrants, most of the western world does these days as long as you come with your money. They have the investors program, the highly skilled, and the hospital program that welcomes those with medical problems as minor as headache. These programs sucked in some of us, rejected as invalids at home who could not learn the ropes like others. Some of us vamoosed through the border because of the government of the day. At home or abroad, individuals struggled back and forth at will, not by forced slave ships of yester centuries. They yearn for home acknowledgement of their success abroad, to disprove the nay-Sayers.
Many of the immigrants create jobs through small businesses employing others who are new in the country, though at minimum wage. The working condition hardly comfortable either. In US, New Bedford, MA was jolted by babies’ cry torn from deported mothers. Some farmers become short of workers while prisoners are taunted as replacement. Some cities’ busy stops have become ghost centers and the immigrants’ employers have lost their businesses. This is a repetition of cycles that had been tolerated once amongst Irish immigrants of Boston, Italian immigrants of New York, Jewish or Chinese businesses, Indian small convenient stores all over the place. Oh, the Spanish want their land back!
There is some fear though, that certain inflow must be screened for law of repercussions. Whatever; the money part can be blessed and reinvested wisely as in Swiss banks. The Asians bring in money to build humongous houses to the dismay of NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) in Vancouver, Canada. The Japanese bought Rockefeller Center in New York at the peak of real estate and sold it at a bust. The Nigerians have the best real estate locations in Europe and America with heavy local taxes they will never pay at home.
Out of these foreign investments in America, a tiny percentage is given back as foreign aid. But more generous are individuals who have made enough money in their fields and devoted their money to charities in poor areas of the world. So their national deficit may not be all that bad since they have the highest numbers of individual billionaires they can tax in case of emergencies like: sudden end to inflow of money or war tax.
Missing from the latest Forbes’ list are Nigerian billionaires who in the kindness of their hearts, can not find any cause to devote their loots to in Africa but made good use of it in some universities in the US in exchange for twisted honoraria. If you entrust your asserts, medical history, births and life to foreign countries, ask to be blessed as President, they have the right to tame you. Otherwise you loose it all. Don’t bite the finger that fed you!
However, many foreign businessmen claim that Nigeria is the best place to do business and get the highest returns on their money. Price of commodities hardly falls, real estate booms, and natural resources beaucoup. Many are willing to risk their lives to work with the oil companies. We are the ones running away from the land which is flowing with milk and honey. I met some foreign wives married to Nigerians and some brothers at a party once. I had to remind them that life is good for them in Nigeria compared to the ghettos we knew over there. They politely told me they never swore to die in misery.
The difference or net benefit lies in how much Africans make outside compared to how much foreigners make in western world. By my own observation or rough estimate, it seems that no foreigner would work for money in Africa if he or she would not make tons of dollars. In other words, one foreigner would probably make about the same amount of money 20 or more Africans would make outside. A friend of mine who worked at a car plant in Ibadan and became an activist against foreign bosses who paid Africans starving wages with poor living quarters compared to the opulent ways the foreigners lived, regretted it all and moved back to where he had studied in the western world.
Indeed, many of the car plants in Nigeria folded up because they could not compete with foreign cars and parts. Their market was not even secured at home. During one of the big events in Abuja, domestic car assembly plant lost business to foreign importers of BMW. Before the Japanese and the Europeans started locating their plants in American cities, many see foreign car buyers as unpatriotic. If you work for one of the Big Three car manufacturers in America, you dare not drive a foreign car then.
The whole economy is based on confidence in spite of the enormous US deficit. If the stock market tumbles because the Japanese refused to buy treasury bills, the head of the Federal Reserve Board would be on television telling us they have no where else to invest their money safely. After all, a dive in stock market is nothing more than a correction and a good opportunity to buy more stocks. If the housing construction fell or people are not buying houses because they carry too much debts, it is an opportunity for foreclosure sale to allow professionals to hold on, until another wave of immigrants come in and buy.
The baby boomers are about to retire en mass without enough younger generation to support them with health care workers, social security payers and other services they will need in comfort and luxury. Immigrants will come in at the appropriate time in their youths, with their money and skills to fill the vacuum. Never mind all the blames on immigrants for crimes, taking jobs away from natives and imposing their way of life from their home countries. We blame the Ghanaians in Nigeria for the same thing. Africans all over blame Nigerians for the same thing. Crime has not gone down in Nigeria or South Africa after all the deportations.
Do we really think good roads, electricity, clean water and democracy is the main attraction? What about motivation to make our Country produce each of those comforts for all instead of providing it on individual basis? The rich have these services in their homes in satellite towns. Israel is not that attractive yet people are dying to go there. Nigeria is not that attractive, some foreigners are dying to go there. Foreigners who were deported from Nigeria for fraud, stayed in Ghana temporarily and fought in Court to get back. |