Topic of the day: A world of immigrants
We see a lot of discussions happening all around the world about immigrants. It is indeed a complex topic that cannot be defined easily due to several variables involved. This topic has raised protests both pro and against it, and it is increasing over time. Then I invite you to reflect on it:
What is your opinion about immigration?
How would you define yourself, pro or against it? Or does it depend? If it does depend for you, what are these dependencies?
Actually, humans have been immigrating all around the world for millennia. Of course, in the past, these movements would take much longer than nowadays with modern transportation. Nevertheless, immigrating is apparently a natural human behaviour. Otherwise, why would homo sapiens leave Africa and populate the whole world?
Probably the main reasons in the past were to look for better conditions of living regarding food, water, and safety, or even to escape conflicts between tribes. Looking at these reasons from today’s perspective, they have not changed so much over time. We still see people immigrating looking for a better life including better job opportunities, for safety and to escape from wars.
Now we could analyse immigration from two perspectives: from the immigrant point of view and from the society where this immigrant goes. From the immigrant perspective, moving to a new place is not an easy task. They left a lot of things behind, including family and friends, and maybe arrived alone or with a few relatives. Think about the challenge of learning a new language, absorbing a new culture, learning about the work environment and dealing with the amount of bureaucracy. When someone immigrates, there is probably a very good reason behind it.
If you look from the society perspective, they might have to tolerate new habits, help this immigrant to integrate and in many cases provide support in various ways. If you have met an immigrant (or if you are one of them), you know that there are many needs. A common complaint about immigration is that they take jobs from locals. I saw a comment in an article one day that if a local person is afraid of losing their job to an immigrant, they should be more worried about their own qualifications. Imagine how much advantages regarding language, culture, and support from friends that a local person has in comparison to an immigrant.
We should also decide for ourselves who are really the immigrants because depending on how long people are living in a place, we might all be immigrants from a certain generation. Look at the colonization that happened between the 1400s and 1700s. Several nations set sail and invaded other areas all around the world, changing completely the global landscape. And this was also a constant not only among Europeans but also among local tribes and nations in Asia, Africa or the Americas. And if we look at a local scale, maybe our ancestors from a few generations before us came as immigrants from other parts of our country or even from abroad.
Maybe the local migration is the most common type of immigration because it is way easier to move around when you can keep the language and culture. The urban explosion all around the world in the past decades is a good example of this. And we still have local migrants coming from other cities, states or provinces, who are a rather common type. Nevertheless, they might have slightly different cultures and habits which confront our common habits.
There will always be arguments pro and against immigration, which are very dependent on various factors, such as:
· Social background: from which social class the person comes from, and how the family raised them regarding diversity.
· Level of education: it is common that countries are more willing to receive high skilled immigrants, for example.
· Influence of media and others: that is very much dependant on what the government wants and how much the society is willing to embrace the newcomers (therefore the media get more attention if it’s a hot topic).
The discussions regarding immigration is indeed a complex topic, but a rather interesting and challenging one. I hope this short article makes you think about this subject and reflect on the global integration that the world is passing right now. We have more and more people moving around and globalization is unstoppable. We are dependent and connected in many ways. Several technological innovations that are appearing all around the world are happening because of this melting pot we live in.
Have a second thought about it.
