'We Don't Know Where We Stand': Nairobi's Migrant Communities Confront a World Closing Its Doors

The paperwork never ends. For a 34-year-old Congolese hair salon owner who has operated on Biashara Street in Eastleigh for six years, every three-month visit to the Department of Immigration Services on Upper Hill's Nyayo House has become an exercise in controlled anxiety. Her Class G permit expired in March. She is still waiting. "I have staff, I have rent, I have a child in school in Kasarani," she told The Daily Nairobi this week. "But I cannot sign a new lease because I do not know if I will still be here."

Her uncertainty is not unique. Across Nairobi, communities of foreign nationals — Somalis, Ethiopians, South Sudanese, Ugandans, Yemenis, and a significant contingent of South and Southeast Asians working in the city's tech sector along Waiyaki Way — are navigating a thickening bureaucratic fog at exactly the moment when global instability is making their home countries harder to return to. The funeral of Iran's Supreme Leader this week, ongoing Russian pressure on Eastern Europe, and the slow collapse of governance in parts of West Africa have all tightened the vice. Nairobi, long a regional refuge, is feeling the pressure from both ends.

The Queue at Nyayo House Tells the Story

The line outside the Department of Immigration Services at Nyayo House on Kenyatta Avenue regularly forms before 6 a.m. On a Tuesday in late June, there were more than 200 people waiting by the time the gates opened at 8 a.m., according to a community paralegal working with the Refugee Consortium of Kenya. The Consortium, which operates an advice desk on Muranga Road in Pangani, says referrals related to permit renewals and Class M refugee documentation jumped roughly 40 percent in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period last year.

Part of the pressure is systemic. Kenya's IMF austerity programme, which shaped the 2025-26 budget, cut discretionary spending across multiple ministries. The Immigration Department received no new staffing allocation, even as the population it serves has grown. The standard Class G business permit, which costs Ksh 30,000 for an initial two-year issuance, now takes an average of 14 weeks to process — up from roughly six weeks in 2023, according to figures cited by the Kenya Association of Manufacturers in a letter to the Interior Cabinet Secretary dated April 2026.

Meanwhile, the Urban Refugees Network, a Nairobi-based NGO with offices near Jeevanjee Gardens, says its caseload of clients reporting employment disruptions tied to documentation delays has more than doubled since January. Several of those clients work in the Silicon Savannah ecosystem around Ngong Road and Kilimani, where startups have been recruiting East African and diaspora talent aggressively since 2022.

Fear, Calculation, and the Decision to Stay

A South Sudanese software developer who has been contracting for a fintech firm in Westlands since 2023 put the calculation bluntly. "I know people who went back to Juba when things looked calmer. Now they cannot leave," he said. "I will take my chances here, even with the uncertainty, because here I can still work and my children are in a school they know." His work permit, tied to his employer, lapses in September. His employer has begun the renewal process, but he is not confident it will conclude before the deadline.

Community leaders in Eastleigh's Section Three — one of Nairobi's most densely populated migrant commercial hubs — are urging residents to begin renewal applications at least five months before expiry, rather than the standard three. The Eastleigh Business District Association distributed a Swahili and Somali-language advisory to that effect in June. It also recommends applicants retain physical copies of all submissions, after reports of digital records being lost in Nyayo House's online portal, which migrated to a new system in February 2026.

The Refugee Consortium of Kenya holds free legal clinics at its Pangani office every Tuesday and Thursday from 9 a.m. to noon. The Urban Refugees Network runs a WhatsApp helpline — 0700-REFUGE — for clients who cannot travel during working hours. For those already past their expiry date, both organisations advise presenting voluntarily at the Immigration Department rather than waiting to be found, which typically results in a significantly lower administrative fine than a deportation proceeding.