More Africans Enter U.S. Than in Days of Slavery (NYT)

[Sgent]

For the first time, more blacks are coming to the United States from Africa than during the slave trade.

Since 1990, according to immigration figures, more have arrived voluntarily than the total who disembarked in chains before the United States outlawed international slave trafficking in 1807. More have been coming here annually - about 50,000 legal immigrants - than in any of the peak years of the middle passage across the Atlantic, and more have migrated here from Africa since 1990 than in nearly the entire preceding two centuries.

<snip>

The influx has other potential implications, from recalibrating the largely monolithic way white America views blacks to raising concerns that American-born blacks will again be left behind.

"Historically, every immigrant group has jumped over American-born blacks," said Eric Foner, the Columbia University historian. "The final irony would be if African immigrants did, too."

NYTimes Article

[Sparkle]

1. Did they count the thousands that were thrown overboard?

[pretzel4gore]

2. nytimes is a criminal run organzation

and they should shut their racist mouths up!
goddam bushevik pigs....

[rayofreason]

3. Surprised?

Not me. I lived in a neighborhood that had many Nigerians and other west Africans. For a while, it seemed that they were all of the cab drivers in town.

The Africans I have met have been very hardworking and industrious. Same with West Indians (Trinidad, Barbados, Jamaica). I am not surprised that more and more would try to come to this country where they have a chance to get ahead, instead of dealing with the situation they find at home - civil and religious wars, mismanaged economies, corruption.

[bemildred]

4. Cool. nt

[Moderator]

5. kick to combine threads

[T_i_B]

6. American dream lures Africans

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/02/23/wafr23.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/02/23/ixportal.html

More Africans have arrived in the United States in the past 15 years than were forcibly shipped across the Atlantic during two centuries of slavery.

The arrivals are changing the structure of America's black population. The Africans, often from states such as Nigeria, Ghana and Liberia, also have little interest in the country's troubled history of race relations. Sylviane Diouf, a historian, told the New York Times that African immigrants were fitting in well. "They are better educated, they're here to work, to prosper, they're more compliant and don't pose a threat."

The best known of the new wave is Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, who has a Kenyan father and an American mother. The Democrat is only the third black person elected to the chamber in 150 years.

Census figures state that the country now has 600,000 African-born citizens, most of whom arrived in the past 15 years. The total does not include those who have arrived illegally.

[Zynx]

7. If I lived in Africa, I would want to come here too.

Even our poor have a higher standard of living than most people in Africa.