In Europe, nations are paying countries in Africa to hold back immigrants. To not let them pass.
And still they pass.
Here in America they get through. Not all but a good number.
But the newcomers are often seen as a source of distress.
Trump said the other day that they were ‘polluting’ America’s blood.
And yet, his current wife and mother of his youngest son is an immigrant.
He left that out.
In fact, his first wife and mother of his first three children was an immigrant also.
He didn’t forget that, he just didn’t think it was necessary to mention.
Of course, there are different classes of immigrants.
I’m reminded of a statement made by a white man from one of our northern states who said, ‘Why can’t we get immigrants from Scandinavia?’ or something like that.
So, yes, there’s a clearly racial issue that complicates the matter of immigration. Here and in Europe. Anywhere.
As Trump implied, it has to do with racial purity.
If you’re dark you’re impure.
That didn’t stop the boards of Google, Microsoft and Adobe, huge multinational companies, from appointing immigrants to lead them. Dark ones, too.
And it didn’t because they found value beneath the skin of those folks.
And those folks had to have a lot of value to get those jobs, because there surely were a lot of lily white people lining up to get the gig.
On the other hand, I can definitely see how a settled community does not want to see itself disrupted by having to accommodate a newcomer. But a country like Italy, which pays Libya money to keep immigrants from getting in boats to cross the Mediterranean, could use a little disruption in their ways of thinking because they’re not doing that well.
Yesterday, I saw a photo of a line of Italians waiting to get a taxi ride and they put up with it. Here in the US you just call Uber or Lyft. So something is wrong in Italy that they’re coming up short of ideas to generate economic opportunity.
Maybe some of the dark colored people trying to get in may have a clue as to how to improve things. You just never know where good ideas may come from.
I believe that something gets ossified and stunted when a nation becomes obsessed with keeping people of different colors and shapes from coming into the country.
And just like disruption is important to rejuvenate an economy, by bringing in new ways of doing things, socially, the disruption of letting in other people opens new ways to relate to each other.
In America, the South, which relied heavily on slave labor, lost the productivity war against the North in the years leading up to the Civil War. Industry was far more developed in northern states. They still had racism, but they were more open. And that made the difference.
Countries that have lots of their people leaving them are failed states in one way or another.
So it makes sense to try and help them out so they can keep their population. But adventurous folks will always try to go beyond their borders to see what they can do.
Not all immigrants will be a plus to the receiving country. But the majority will.
And the world will keep changing as it must.
To avoid rigidities.
To keep challenging ourselves.
To open our minds.
To grow.
When countries don’t do that they get leaders with limited imagination.
They get people like Viktor Orban in Hungary, or Trump here in America.
Or Putin in Russia.
Oscar Valdes 