AFTER A DISCUSSION WITH A GREEK FRIEND
Dear Xristinaki,
The current wave of anti-immigration feelings that sweeps Europe is something that not only scares me, but to some extent has affected me. Europe as a continent is the result of immigration. There’s not a single European language or people, maybe with the exception of the Basque (the Celts came from Asia). In the last two hundred years millions of Europeans migrated in search of a better place to live. Argentina, the USA and Australia were the most common destinations, but no the only ones. You can still find very well established German colonies in southern Brazil that speak German dialects lost in Germany a long time ago. My ex-girlfriend Aline is one of their descendants. All those countries only gained from immigration, and so did Europe.
I was also surprised because you come from a country whence millions had to emigrate sometime or other. Greeks were the founders of Naples, Marseille, Odessa and many other cities of the Western Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea coast. Greeks are many of the sailors and seafarers who crowded the harbours of New York, London and Rosario, my hometown. YOU are an immigrant yourself. Would you say that you are “stealing” a place at university from an English student? I don’t think so. Now you can live and work in the UK as you want, but that doesn’t elude the fact that you’re still an alien, legal or illegal, that’s second. What’s wrong with that? Not to forget that your housemates are immigrants and, most important, that I am an immigrant myself.
When I moved to Spain I had to live for a year without a work permit. Then the law changed and I could get a residence permit for five years. You can’t imagine what a difficult year it was, how it brought worries to my soul and sadness to my heart… and how it gave the final cut to my marriage. Most of our marriage brawls during that last year were caused by the anxiety of being a “clandestino”. What saddened me most was that I had chosen to live in a country that had given refuge to millions of Spaniards who fled from starvation, destituteness or political persecution. My country had given them everything and they responded with tough laws and threats of expulsion. Thank you guys! Luckily enough, I’m a whitey, my grandparents were Welsh, as you know, I speak Spanish with an accent that Spaniards love and my ex-wife is an EU citizen, which made things much easier. Try to imagine what other less fortunate people might have gone through.
A friend of mine, who was one of the leaders of the small time lefty group I belonged to when I was a student, always said that we were ethical communists and irredentist internationalists. My mum’s family, who are of traditional conservative Criollo stock (“criollos” are the descendants of the conquistadores), always mocked me for my petit-bourgeois ikonoklastia and treated it as a mental disease that time would eventually heal. Fortunately, my life experience has proven them WRONG.
Now that I have lived through the experience of being an “illegal”, I can say very proudly that I am more communist than ever, which means that:
a. I believe that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” (Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)
b. I believe that a good life is worth living. All human beings have the right to live their lives as they want, provided they don’t harm others.
c. I believe that nobody deserves to live a miserable life of depravation, poverty and hopelessness.
d. I believe that all human beings have the right to choose the country they want to live in. They have the right to move to another country if they find that their fatherland doesn’t satisfy them for whatever reason.
e. I believe that immigration is good for the country that receives the immigrants. A thriving country will attract more immigrants, it will benefit from their workforce and their know-how… and it will become richer, more colourful, varied and interesting. Single-raced countries might be picturesque, but they’re utterly BORING.
f. I believe that immigration is a problem ONLY for those who have problems with immigrants. Not all immigrants are good people. Rogues exist everywhere and there will always be trouble between the newly arrived and the old dwellers. But the troubles brought by immigrants are nothing compared with the sad moments the twat that calls himself your boss can bring to your life. Immigrants aren’t powerful. Immigrants belong to the lowest ranks of society and can cause minor harm in compared to the great havoc big corporations play with your life. And the immigrants’ contributions to the host society far outnumber any minor brawls that you could come across with (most of the times, but not always, provoked by the bigoted racism of the locals).
g. I believe that most people are “homines bonae voluntatis” (men (and women) of good will). They can live in harmony with the new-comers and will stand for each other, no matter their nationality, race or creed, in times of hardship and peril. This faith in the common (wo)man who lives next door (no matter what language (s)he speaks, what god (s)he worships or what country (s)he comes from) is the basis of modern society and democracy. Leaving aside centuries of narrow-minded parochialism and tribal feud is the key to success of all modern democratic societies. There’s no better example of this than the EU, which is based on tolerance towards your neighbour and the disappearance of all the barriers that languages, the abject stupidity of “nazionalists” and the hatred waged by churches have raised. And nothing has brought more support to the EU from the grass roots of society than the legal capability that ALL Europeans have to MIGRATE to the country they would wish.
Once my beliefs have been stated let’s talk about some FACTS.
a. There’s no relationship between the inflation of retail prices created by the euro and immigration. Prices rise because of many factors. A very important one is the increase of salaries. As immigrants tend to accept lower paid jobs they work as a safety valve AGAINST inflation. The price escalation caused by the euro has more to do with the tough monetarist policies of the European Central Bank. A boosted up currency price and zero deficit policies will result in a general rise of retail prices and de-industrialisation. I know it well because that is what happened in Argentina in the ‘90s. Immigrants are an easy target, but if Europeans are poorer after the euro, it is because of the decisions made by eurobureaucrats and a bunch of bloodthirsty suit-and-tie BANKERS. Know your enemies!!!
b. Despite what it might seem, immigration isn’t as massive as it’s usually portrayed. Less than 10% of European population are immigrants. Nothing compared with the massive movements of people that populated the Americas in the late 19th century. And those were much less wealthy societies than Europe is nowadays. You might argue that those countries were empty and Europe overpopulated. But most of those immigrants stayed in overpopulated cities, as a short visit to New York, São Paulo or Buenos Aires will show you. On the other hand, the US was not that empty and received more immigrants than any other society in the history of mankind (the ratio local:foreigner in 1914 Argentina is even more outstanding). Europe might be very populated, but it’s an ageing continent. Either more young immigrants come to live here or you will never be able to have a good pension and a pleasant retirement.
c. Immigrating is EASY nowadays due to the development of means of travelling. Should you live in Asia, hitch hike, walk, ride a horse or buy a bus ticket. You’ll eventually make it to the European Eden. Are you African? Stow away in a cargo ship and avoid the “pateras,” or get on a camel and travel to Morocco, get to Tanger and ask a lorry driver to take you to Spain on the ferry. Are you from Latin America? There are so many cheap flights today that your family can work hard to save money to buy ONLY ONE ticket, send your cousin to Europe. He will get the job not a single European will ever accept and send you euros to buy another plane ticket for you. I know it’s not that simple, but it’s certainly not as tragic as it sounds in the media. Governments can spend MILLIONS of your taxes trying to stop immigrants from coming. THEY WILL FAIL and your health care will be losing money in favour of a useless border patrol. They’d better use that money to subsidise underpaid jobs and entice the locals to do them. Immigrants will see that there ain’t no jobs up there and will stop coming.
d. Immigrants don’t steal jobs. They do the jobs YOU (not you, the local people) will never think of doing. How many people move to another country to work as a lawyer, a doctor or an engineer? Europe is an affluent society, THANK GOD! and young Europeans don’t want to break their backs doing their parents’ jobs. Keep that in mind when you garnish your salad with olive oil, eat fish, get your rubbish collected or move to a house built in the last fifty years. There’s nothing surprising in that. Southern Europeans did the same before the EU (half a century ago Greeks, Italians and Spaniards came to Britain to do the dirty jobs, nowadays they come to do PhDs). Polish are doing the same now and they’ll keep doing it until Poland becomes a better country to stay. But this is not a one-way trend. The Spanish Mediterranean coast is crowded of either retired or drunk Britons (sometimes it’s one and the same person) and in some towns of the Costa Blanca the TV broadcasts in German.
e. You might ask if they come to do dirty jobs, why do they not stay at home? Sometimes because dirtier jobs are the only ones available down there. Sometimes because the prospect of scratching some quid from a meagre wage, putting it aside and sending it back home (after paying a commission to Western Union or any dodgy company that specialises in making a profit off people’s miseries) is worth all the effort. Mexico’s largest industry is the millions of bucks “la Raza” sends from “the land of opportunities” to their families back home. But don’t think that the host country losses any money. The immigrant labour force is creating wealth. As they tend to be cheaper workers the bosses get bigger profit out of them (Marx said something about it far away and long ago). They also spend the money they earn IN the country they’re living, boosting up the domestic market. Let more immigrants come and you will have more consumers, your country will be richer and you’ll have a better standard of living!!
f. There’s no better way of dealing with immigration than the self-regulation of the labour market. It surprises me that the prophets of laissez faire don’t give PEOPLE, i.e. HUMAN BEINGS, the rights they claim for goods, wares and commodities. Immigrants ain’t no stupid. As soon as the country runs out of jobs, they will stop coming… as it happened in Argentina after 2002-crisis when immigrants from Bolivia decided it was better to put up with the hard life their country had to offer but to be amongst their people.
g. You say that you talk from the point of view of a European. That’s arguable. A lot of Europeans think like me. I belong to a EUROPEAN party that believes in open borders and free immigration and 1.2 million people voted them in the last election IN SPAIN, and this is one case in many. This is an ideological difference and has nothing to do with your place of birth. What scares me (an pisses me off) of the anti-immigration feeling is that it blames all our troubles on the weakest, which is the most abject form of cowardice. Being anti-immigrant is a way of seeing things supported by right-wing lobbies and parties, which stand for a society of mistrust, inequality and social injustice. They have the right to do it, but I think their views contradict reality, are based on racism and are morally despicable.
h. Only countries that ARE NOT attractive to immigrants are in REAL TROUBLE. Who wants to live in the shit? I’d be proud of my country if it one day becomes AGAIN the land so many people from Spain, Italy, Syria, Lebanon, Croatia, the UK, Poland, Germany, Greece, Taiwan, Japan, Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Russia, Iran, Armenia, Chile and “todos los hombres del mundo que quieran habitar sobre suelo argentino” [Constitution of the Argentine Nation, Preamble] used to dream with.
Support immigration, it can only be for the good. And as it was said in 1848:
ARBEITER ALLER LÄNDER, VEREINIG EUCH!
WORKERS OF ALL LANDS, UNITE!
Juan
