Nigerians are one of America's best educated immigrant groups. Trump just banned them.
On Friday, the Trump administration announced a new wave in its blanket bans on people from certain countries. And this time around, it includes one particularly vulnerable group — and one that tends to be very successful once it arrives in the U.S.
President Trump's original travel ban was one of his first acts in office, blocking people from several countries, most of which were majority Muslim, from coming to the U.S. altogether. This newest iteration explicitly bans people from Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania from receiving immigration visas, but doesn't touch those who are just visiting temporarily. That leaves 13 total countries on the travel ban list.
The fact that the ban explicitly targets those who are here to stay is particularly confusing when it comes to Nigeria, seeing as its immigrants are among the most likely immigrants to receive college degrees once they come to the U.S. In fact, an estimated 60 percent of Nigerian immigrants to the U.S. have college degrees, as opposed to 33 percent of Americans who do, Census data has shown. Nigerian immigrants are also much more likely to hold doctorates and master's degrees.
Myanmar also stands out among this new group because, unlike every other banned country, it doesn't have a significant Muslim population. In fact, its Rohingya Muslim people faced severe persecution and rampant genocide that turned survivors into refugees.
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