Report: More Africans Entered US in Last Decade than During 300 Years of Slave Trade

More people from Africa have entered the United States in the last decade than were forced to come to America during “more than three centuries of the slave trade.”

According to the New York Times, “between 2000 and 2010, the number of legal black African immigrants in the United States about doubled, to around one million,” and “more black Africans arrived in this country on their own than were imported directly to North America during the more than three centuries of the slave trade.” These large migrations have increased concerns about the entry of African immigrants into the U.S., since the deadly Ebola epidemic has ravaged the western part of the continent.

New York is “home to the largest proportion” of African immigrants and “about a third of black New Yorkers were born abroad, mostly in the Caribbean.” The Times noted that “Africans constitute about 4 percent of the city’s foreign-born population, but as much as 10 percent in the Bronx,” and, “from 2000 to 2011 the African-born population increased 39 percent to 128,000.” But “other estimates suggest that many more are living” in New York and America by having overstayed their visas or entered illegally.

Kim Nichols, an executive director of the African Services Committee, told the Times that African immigrants have “been doubling every 10 years since 1980.”African immigrants have also gone to “California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Texas and Virginia.” 

According to Kevin D. Brown, a law professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law, “many black immigrants do not identify with the historical experiences of discrimination encountered by blacks in the United States.” As a result, protest leaders like Al Sharpton are less likely to influence them.