Truth that is in Uncertainty

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The arrival of migrants in your homeland is both an opportunity and a threat.  New migrants present an opportunity because you may learn from them and you may benefit from their skills and energy.  They are a threat because if you let them, they will displace you.  Migrants are not apathetic, and they have not uprooted themselves primarily for your benefit.  They have come to advance themselves and their families while often intent on maintaining their own values and customs.  Significant integration does not usually occur until the second generation. 

An important part of knowing yourself is knowing where you will draw the line on cultural tolerance and compromise.  Respecting diversity and fellow human beings does not mean allowing yourself and your culture to be rolled. 

In fact, to protect cultural diversity at a global level and to counter the globalisation of culture, it is necessary that we each be less tolerant and accepting of other cultures at home, and to be much more insistent that those guests who make themselves at home do so on our terms.

If you do get displaced or marginalised by new arrivals you and your culture deserve it. 

You will be displaced if you are apathetic and unaware, if you are smug and over-confident, if you are too tolerant and have too benevolent a view of human nature, or if you are too meek and weak. 

Make no mistake – the new arrivals will try to displace you, if you let them.  Throughout history cultures and civilisations have been conquered or overrun by others that have been hungrier and more effective.  Every civilisation and world order has its time.  Has yours run its course?  Are you like the fat reclining Roman sucking grapes, blissfully unaware of the gathering Goths? 

If you are worthy you have nothing to fear.  Knowing yourself and being prepared to assert your limits, make your potential enemies your allies, by understanding them, by ensuring they understand you, by inviting them to your table, and by giving them hope. 

Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that:

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. 

2. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

This laudable right is sterile if you have nowhere reasonable to go to.  It is a right that only a small proportion of the global population is able to exercise. 

The right to migrate travels with the obligation to adopt the language, values and customs of your new country.  In private you will be able to maintain your prior ways, but only to a point.   

If you abuse the freedom you have in your new country to agitate against its values and customs, expect to be evicted even if you have managed to gain citizenship.  If you want to continue to insist on arranging marriages for your children to only those of your own ethnicity and social standing, stay in your own country.  If you want to continue circumcising your daughters at puberty, stay in your own country.  If you want to continue wearing your veil, stay in your own country.  If you want to continue to have the right to carry firearms, stay in your own country.  If you don't understand or respect the Rule of Law, stay in your own country.  If you are unwilling or unable to become rapidly fluent in the language of your new country, stay in your country.  If bribery, corruption and intimidation are a normal way of life for you, stay in your own country.  Stay in your country and have the courage to reform from within those aspects of your culture and homeland that are causing you to migrate. 

But for those who are willing to adapt and integrate – to be as the Romans are when in Rome – the world should be open.   

Recognising the right to migrate is a loud and powerful message of inclusion and solidarity.  The right is not just for a select few who can claim refugee status.

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The right to migrate is a generalised right, to be available to any global citizen who sees a greater opportunity to maximise their potential away from home, and who is prepared to abide by the laws and customs of their new home country. 

The flow of migrants would not be an inordinate one, unless the abuses and deprivation being fled from were truly horrific.  The flow will be stemmed if potential migrants are very clear that they will be required to give up some of their cherished customs and values in the process.  In the final analysis a majority of people do not like leaving home or being disloyal; they fear the change, and will put up with a great deal of pain and humiliation before they choose  to exit from their home society. 

Clearly, destination countries need to be able to manage in-bound migration and put regimes in place that will ensure their own cultural and economic integrity is safeguarded – that the new arrivals, wanting to integrate, will be able to integrate. 

Global citizens whenever they can should promote the right to migrate of all the world’s citizens.