Over the past few years we’ve seen a lot of anger. We’ve seen a seemingly sane country cut itself off from mainland Europe and we’ve seen a seemingly..
Over the past few years we’ve seen a lot of anger. We’ve seen a seemingly sane country cut itself off from mainland Europe and we’ve seen a seemingly beneficent border police force turn angry. We’ve heard that immigrants steal our jobs, kill our people, and bring in drugs and terror.
This is wrong.
On the pro-side we know that immigrants, as a whole, commit less crime than US born citizens. On the side against immigration we get a few vignettes of terror that pretend to paint a whole picture. Further, we must understand the plight of the worker in America and Britain. Immigrants do take jobs and the white-collar world can’t see the effects. Antonio Garcia-Martinez , author of Chaos Monkeys , said it best when he wrote:
Everyone is right and no one is. High tech is blind to the plight of the migrant worker and depends on the largesse of governments for programmers and outsourced data centers. Everyone, from the guy in a truck at Home Depot to the woman in an Uber on the Golden Gate, must take stock and try to help.
Ultimately immigration is a change agent and a necessity. Populations age. Cultures shift. New technologies will fix old failures. And throughout it all the sane and accepted migration of the skilled and unskilled, refugees and expats, will get us through. To blame our ills on those different from us is a failure of humanity and this failure has repeated itself over and over again since the Dark Ages. We fear – but need – the Other. That fear must be excised.
In the end I can only recommend one or two things to fix this in the short term. First, understand your own roots and your own path and try to help others in your same course.
