The US DV Visa Lottery Program and the African experience: Cultural mediation or brain drain?

Abstract

This article discusses the pros and cons of the US State Department-sponsored DV Visa lottery Program (DLVP) for the poor countries and its role in shaping perceptions of Black African immigrants in the US territory (the cultural potpourri). Using the brain drain, assimilation and ethnic hegemonic models and sporadic references to historical and cultural experiences of Africans’ immigration to North America, it presents the impact of the exportation of ‘African’ human capital on the capacity for poor African countries to implement their own development agenda for long-term, sustainable development. The article also attempts to show how cultural disparities among Black immigrants living in America through the DVLP could be causing more harm to the African family, while financial success is sporadic and limited to individual immigrants. It then describes conditions under which culture shock and assimilation mitigate the sense of cohesiveness and communal lifestyle germane to the traditional African family life. It proposes approaches for the State Department to collaborate with African states with respect to the DV Visa Program and its subsequent result, burgeoning demand for cheap Africa’s human capital in the US.

Key words: immigration, Black immigrants, assimilation, brain drain, familism, cultural dissonance