Kenyans embroiled in new US crackdown on immigrants

• New law to control flow of low- skilled foreigners to guard jobs for Americans

He says a significant number of those who leave the US don’t do so permanently.

Long vacations

“They take advantage of the economic downturn to take long vacations and attend to matters in their native country that they have neglected over the years.”

And despite the global crisis, he says, more Kenyans are flying in every day as others leave.

“Just last weekend, I was invited to a welcome-to-America party for a man and his three children who had arrived the week before. The husband’s wife has been living here alone for six years.”

He says a younger man also arrived the same week to attend the graduation of a relative and plans to stay in the US.

Foreign Affairs assistant minister Richard Onyonka says five of his relatives had come back home from the US in recent weeks and many of them left everything there.

And they are not alone on this return journey.

Millions of expatriate factory and construction workers, bankers, household servants from China, India, South Korea, African countries such as Ghana, Nigeria Ghana are also on the road back to their home countries.

Mr Ogeto acknowledges that there are illegal immigrants from Kenya who don’t want to return home because they know they will not return to the US.

Some are stuck in the US for the fear of returning empty-handed to villages that expect a lot from them and the prospect of joblessness in Kenya.