I spend a lot of time in a peaceful West African country and a lot of the teens and young adults there would do ANYTHING to get to the West. Mixed in with a lot of the people fleeing war are people who have livelihoods in their own countries and just want something better. And the problem is that the people who do make it, when they come to visit, compulsively need to make themselves look rich.

Two anectodes:

I know a guy who faked a marriage to get to America. As soon as the restrictions were taken off his green card, he was gone. He doesn't do any kind of legitimate work but was able to afford to rent pretty nice apartments and have a car. I assume he was doing something shady under the table. Whenever he goes home to visit, he maxes out every form of credit he has to buy cell phones and cameras to distribute like candy, so people think he's a "big man" Then he spends months paying that stuff down and saving up for his next trip home, just to do it again. He is now on his second fake marriage to a woman in another North American country, since he didn't like America.

So imagine yourself a relatively naive 16 year old boy who is around when this guy shows up. What kinds of messages are you getting?

I know another guy who I was giving good employment to, and one of my managers liked him and was arranging for him to get long-term, full-time work elsewhere. He used the pay from one of our projects to go to South Africa because "a friend" told him "it's good there." He got there, was not allowed to work legally, had no friends, had to hide from antagonist locals, and made zero money. He made contact with me, and I offered to fly him home and start working on my next project and pay his overstay fees to South African immigration which he would get charged on his way out. He would have literally walked directly into legal, well-paying jobs and my manager was still willing to arrange stuff for him, in his home country where he has friends, knows the food, and speaks the language. He told me he'd message me once he found a way to get to the airport. Haven't heard from him since.

Our mutual friends say he's embarrassed to come back because it looks like failure. So he's persisting in a miserable existence in another country out of pride when he had an all-expenses paid chance to undo his mistake and walk directly into a very well paying job in his home country.