“Once Nigeria improves her data intelligence, such that it would be easy to investigate any immigrant wishing to visit the United States and meet information-sharing systems, the ban could be reviewed”
“I think I need to clarify something for you here. The immigrant visa ban does not affect people who are currently resident in the US. It does not cancel the status of anyone currently in the US. “What Secretary Pompey said was something that was meant to be temporary. And it is about problems with information sharing which are investigable, achievable and resolvable and we look forward to Nigeria in a very short while being able to meet those information-sharing goals so that the decision can be reviewed. “Students’ visas are not affected by the current visa ban”.
“I think for Nigeria, you have an interesting story about the diversification of your economy and the prosperity of your economy and its people. You know Nigerians are so well known at home and abroad for their industriousness. “You know you hear about much of the activity in the informal sector. So I wonder how you think about capturing that entrepreneurial spirit and bring it into the formal sector in service and to enhance employment. “I am happy you raised it, we talk to you on what we are doing about it. We are trying to make Nigerians have their skills so that we can even export those skills, so they will be formalized when they go out, they will not be illegal immigrants.
“We want to go out as formalized persons, whether they are carpenters, electricians, welders. So we have our schools here. We have skills acquisition centres and we are upgrading all of them so that the certificates that come out of our skills departments will be generally accepted. So we want to Internationalize, we are upgrading so that they can even become entrepreneurs”. These are words of Mary Beth Leonard, US Ambassador to Nigeria.
By Angel James, News/comments, February 20, 2020.
ABUJA-As Nigerian government make efforts to ensure that the Visa ban by the United State government is reviewed and lifted, the US government also restated its commitment to hold on to its earlier decision given during the ban, stressing that if need be for a review on Nigeria, it will , provided certain criterion are meant.The US government therefore restated that Nigeria is yet to meet security code standard by improving her country’s data intelligence, in a way that can make US easily ascertain any immigrant wishing to visit the country and meet information-sharing systems. And if Nigeria is serious, there might be need to review the ban. This was according to Mary Beth Leonard, US Ambassador to Nigeria, when she paid a courtesy call to Senator Chris Ngige, Minister of Labour and Employment at the ministry’s head office, Abuja. Leonard however clarified that citizens of those countries will be allowed for a visit or tourism while the immigration policy does not affect non-American citizens already living in the country. It could be noted that US government recently placed strict restriction to citizens of six countries because of the inability of those countries to have control over security, which Nigeria, Eritrea, Sudan, Tanzania, Kyrgyzstan and Myanmar were among
Meanwhile, the Senator Ngige has expressed satisfaction over the visit of US Ambassador, and used the medium to appeal for the lifting of the ban and help the country to stride for development. His words, “We call on the US to help us build schools in those areas where child labour is endemic. You can also help in setting up clinics and empowerment programmes in those localities”.
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