The Diary: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Originally published in Financial Times)

Next month, my Nigerian family will gather in the United States for a wedding – or at least those lucky enough to get visas will. My cousin Ogechukwu, who works in a bank in Abuja, went to the American Embassy there a few weeks ago, and came out in tears. The visa interviewer did not once look at the documents she had so carefully assembled. Not once. She was told, “You don’t qualify” in an arbitrary fashion that did not bother to hide its arbitrariness.

As I write this, I have just spoken to my baffled brother, Chuks, our family clown, who is a legal resident of the UK, is married to a British citizen, has two children and owns a business and a home. He had gone to the American Embassy in London to renew his visa and was told he did not qualify because the visa interviewer thought he would stay on permanently in America. He gaped at the visa interviewer and pointed at his two-year American visa, just about to expire, with which he had travelled to Florida, Georgia, Michigan and Connecticut in the past two years. If he had plans of illegally staying in America, he would have done so already. The interviewer said, sharply, “This interview is over!” My brother was certain that the interviewer simply did not like Nigerian passports. Nigerians, after all, have a reputation for being alarmingly adept at different kinds of fraud.

I have many stories of travel on my own Nigerian passport. The immigration official in Copenhagen was convinced I was a prostitute, for example, because there had been a recent influx of Nigerian sex workers into Denmark and I was travelling alone on a Nigerian passport. I have learned to laugh at these stories, and to use them as dinner party anecdotes. Of the people who will potentially interview me at embassies and airports, I always hope that they haven’t fought with their lover that morning, that they don’t have a headache or a bad back or PMS, and that they have never received one of those poorly-spelled bank advance e-mails from a Nigerian pretending to be a government official because in my experience these, even more than whether I have the proper documents, will determine my luck.

Years ago, my mother, who had visited the US in the past, was inexplicably refused an American visa to attend my sister’s wedding; it was not at all likely that the mother of the bride would become a dependant of the American state as she had a good, long-term university job in Nigeria and her daughter worked as a physician in America. Her mouth still tightens whenever she looks at photographs from the wedding.

It is no doubt a difficult job to have to deal with so many visa applicants, some of whom must be obnoxious, but that a person can, by doing their job so poorly, cause the kind of aching sadness that has great emotional significance in people’s lives requires a greater sense of responsibility in some visa interviewers.

In the endless American public debates on how to handle illegal immigration, much has been made – and rightly so – about how important it is for immigrants to apply the right way and “get in line.” Perhaps immigration reform should also involve looking at the realities of that line, and should ensure that visa issues to people from countries on the economic periphery of the world are not based on the caprices of the visa officer but instead follow clear rules. Talk about one way to bolster America’s soft power.

Click here to read more from Adichie's Diary.

Comments

[Bob Bristol]

This issue is very frustrating and needs to be addressed properly. The American embassies generate a lot of income from this nonsense disapproval that often appear illogical in some cases. We cannot undermine the fact that most of the applicants have ulterior motives but there are genuine case like those cited above that no amount WHY can receive any answer from the interviewer. Just imagine the visa application fee of US $ 131 that thousands of Africans pay at the embassies on daily basis.

[problem]

It is an excuse to exercise the kind of behavior that is swiftly punished in America these days. Bad customer service will get you fired from your job. Open displays of racism will invite disgrace and full scale assault by the press, but you can sit behind some window in Africa to exercise all kinds of rudeness daily on people, and get a nice pay check every fortnight.

[Miss M. F.]

We had to go to court to get my parents a settlement visa. My brother and sister were born in the UK and are British citizens.My Parents worked here in the 60s. The Embassy(or consulate) in Ghana said my brother's documents were FAKE...
To cut a long story short, we will always be second class citizens to the west not worthy of respect of any sort. We are beggers to them and should be content with crumbs given to us from their well stocked tables after their heavily pregnant bellies of food has been filled.
It beats me why Cameroon or other African countries do not have vigourous visa systems in place for westerners who also wish to travel to Cameroon, etc

[Che Sunday]

Embassy employees, whether from the western industrialized nations or developing ones are a breed apart. They live in their own world. Those from western nations believe they have a mandate to keep their countries protected from an influx of Africans. Those from African countries have a mandate to keep their own citizens at home. You become a threat to the status quo. It doesn't matter how you slice it, once out of your country of birth, and with the natural identity given to you by pigmentation, you are on your own. Much as I detest the treatment of Africans by Western Embassies, I also question the lack of effort by African diplomats to protect their own kind. I can only recall a single incidence when Guinea had to send French nationals packing after some Guineans have been deported from France. Can Cameroon, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Senegal do same? I don't think so.

[Kinsin]

It will simply be ignorance to think that African leaders care about the interest of their own people. The serve those who do not want us in so there is no way they will defend the interest of their people or payback.
I arrived Zurick from Cameroon and missed my connecting flight to Germany because with just 40 minutes to cheek in, the security guys had to conduct a whole 20 minutes interview once they noticed i was coming from Cameroon. The mbororo man kept calling people and showing my passport in the course of which he was doing other things.
I arrived in Munich and the fellas said they had to scatter all my bag simple because i said i was carrying a bit of dry fish. (Of course it was illegal to carry fish of commercial value)You know how we used to tie our so called Ghana most go. The guys were about to do some work when they decided to get my identity. Of course they thought i would soil their image with such first impression being a reporter so i benefited from that single name as one.
Where did you ever see pigs loving to dine with monkeys on the same table.
Always I ask myself, which is better? A pig or a monkey?