Going to America

The other day I was talking with a friend/co-worker here and we got onto the topic of going to America. He’s been to the US three times and has returned each time, to the surprise of everyone he knows – whether that be friends, family, or co-workers. There is an expectation here that if you get a chance to go to the UK or the US (especially the US) that you’ll skip visa and stay. The thought being that any life that you could have in the US will be better than life here. His family here was angry with him for not doing so because there is the further expectation that you will be sending money home.

The thing is, a good “starting out” job here pays $2/day in the city. Many jobs pay significantly less. The average income is somewhere around $1/day, and since that is the average you know that many people make well less than $1/day. For instance the average starting teacher is paid somewhere around $0.50/day. I’m currently making $5.50/day, which places you somewhere in the middle class in this country, the thing is the middle class is very small. At any rate, all of these numbers have a point, and that is that a person who gets the most awful job in America can still send home what would be seen here as significant money, so the pressure to do so is pretty large. So large in fact that in parts of the Gambia more than half of all income comes from foreign countries (don’t just think the West, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc., hire significant numbers of foreign nationals). This is a pretty common; many countries even specialize and support such activities (all of this makes GDP an often useless figure when calculating real purchasing power).

But what my friend here noticed when he got to America was that every Gambian he met – whether there legally or not – was working as a security guard, janitor, or some other job like that. It didn’t matter whether they had a (developing world) PhD, they still were working janitorial jobs 9 times out of 10 because they didn’t have the language skills, or cultural skills, or connections, or any number of other reasons. Often when you get to the US you have to pay for costly retraining before you qualify for jobs, and competition if fierce for good paying jobs, so the slightest thing can make you unable to qualify.

My friend works in computers with me, for Gambia his computer skills are significant and get noticed very easily. But in America he’d be one of many people with similar skills, and probably has no greater computer skills than the one or two kids in high school you knew who were great with computers. Put on top of that a lack of connections, accent, and no formal degree (recognized in America at least) and he would pretty much be insured as a job as a security guard (in which he has experience). The difference between him and many people who go to America was that he saw all of those things, did the math, and decided that his job in Gambia was the better bet. He’d still like to move elsewhere, but he wants to enroll in a degree program and get recognizable employable skills in America before he does so.

More than anything else though his decision was influenced by one thing: he hates being a security guard. If he liked that job the move would be a no-brainer, as it is for most Gambians.