THE PROBLEM OF IMMIGRATION


There is a “crisis” in many western countries today over immigration. The most recent example being
the 2006 demonstrations in the US about the right to cross the border from Mexico.

To take the US as an example: If, for instance, impoverished Arkansans (assuming there are
impoverished Arkansans or just people unhappy with life in that state) were told they could not leave
their state and seek a better life in California, most people would accuse the Californians of
discrimination. How dare they claim that by an accident of birth Arkansans are denied the right to
move to California? California would be widely denounced and its discriminatory policies challenged
and defeated in the US Supreme Court. It is centuries since we held to the belief that your rights must
be circumscribed by the status of your birth, the Californian policy would be rejected as a return to
the most odious and primitive forms of discrimination.

But if we convert Arkansas and California into Mexico and the US people suddenly become blind to
the common humanity of those involved and start to believe that birth is indeed destiny and people’s
birth status should define where they will be permitted to travel in later life. Even the more civilized
of people feel it acceptable to express fear that “living standards” will be “lowered” by allowing the
lesser breeds to arrive.

Why is freedom of movement a human right in the first scenario and a “threat to America (or insert
your own Country’s name here)” in the second scenario? There is no difference. Freedom of
movement is an equally valid right in both instances. The people trying to move are human beings
with the natural needs and desires of human beings in both instances. To deny them the right to move
is to deny their human rights. A more practical question is why are we blind to the similarity of the
two cases?

The answer is complex but boils down to us living in the age of nationalism. Nationalism as a political
movement only came into existence in the last four hundred years. Yet today it has so colored our
thinking that we see nothing wrong with someone moving from Arkansas to California but if someone
makes the much shorter trip from North Mexico to Southern Texas (not just shorter in distance terms,
but almost certainly far shorter in cultural terms if we compare it with a trip inside America from
Little Rock Arkansas to San Francisco California) we demand all sorts of proof that such a trip is not a
“threat to America”. Nationalism blinds us to our common humanity.

Elsewhere on this website we talk about the “civil war of humanity”. One aspect of this civil war is
how it encourages us to treat all issues from the perspective of our identity as national citizens rather
than human beings. This allows us to view immigrants as the “other” and to fear their arrival rather
than see them as human beings who have need like ourselves. In the 20th century Europe moved
from a situation of national conflict and tight border controls to building a European Union which now
follows an open border policy amongst its members. This has not led to the destruction of Europe but
its enrichment. Building a Human Union will have the same effect for humanity. The problem of
immigration will progressively disappear.

Build a Human Union will take time so there must be steady reforms and progress leading up to a
situation of true freedom of movement for humanity. But the point the Human Union Movement makes
is that the problem is not “how do we protect our Country from (illegal) immigrants?” but (how do
we get away from the current unjust system whereby people are denied their human right to freedom
of movement just because they were born in a different place?”
The Human Union Movement

Putting human identity before national or religious identity
And bringing an end to the civil war of humanity
The Human Union Movement

Bringing an end to the civil war of humanity ...
Putting human identity before national or religious identity