Around the world, people are on the move: contractors moving to another country for a job overseas (the miss-titled ‘expats’ of the British world – really they are migrants too), people everywhere seeking a better life somewhere else – the economic migrants, the students wanting to study abroad (it is amazing how many stay in their country of study), those poor devils escaping from tyrannical regimes (the American ‘pilgrims’ of the 1700s, for example) or war, or strife, or climate change, or poverty.
This movement has been going on forever. After all, our
species began near the southern lakes of Africa and spread worldwide. Migration is part of our nature – to move to other places perceived as somehow
‘better’ – the massive annual migrations that we call ‘holidays’ may be
temporary, but they respond to a deep need within us. For many of us, the
designation ‘global citizen’ is something we carry with pride.
Any yet, and yet, there are groups around the world who are
determined to be selective on who can migrate where. Send us your doctors,
nurses, mathematicians, hi-tech engineers (‘We don’t care that you need them
more than us) but we don’t want the poor, the scared, the desperate (‘We don’t
care that they will become our most grateful, productive citizens). We don’t
want those with a different color than most of us (‘We don’t care that you
didn’t get to choose.’), or those will a different religion than most of us
(‘We don’t care that both they, and we, didn’t really choose the religion, it
was just part of the culture, and is not important anyway.’)
This is not sustainable. There are two solutions. Choose:
1.
Create, or take on, the role of a world
government. Intervene, massively and militarily if necessary, to stop the
stupid wars, to get rid of the tyrants and the thieving autocrats and dictators,
remove the religious fanatics who impose their belief in an imaginary friend
and its invented rules to dominate uneducated people, knock the heads together
of the squabbling little warlords; move the money to eliminate poverty and
hunger, and to create the possibility of work, and all the actions necessary to
create an ordered and safe world where migration becomes an accepted choice not
the urgent necessity that results in the existence of people smugglers and the risking
of crossing dangerous waters in frail craft to reach a ‘promised land’.
2.
Accept that migration is going to happen. Stop
being assholes. Organize for people to move safely; help them to settle into
their new home and give them opportunities. The reward will be that most will
become very loyal, grateful, and productive citizens, and bring a breadth of
perspective to open the minds of the people in the newly settled lands.
