Sometimes I think about how being an immigrant anywhere is about hedging your future against some unknowable future.
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Sometimes I think about how being an immigrant anywhere is about hedging your present choices against some unknowable future. To be a cog in a macro environment where you literally control nothing, but any small micro changes outside your control can mean you have to go, tomorrow.
Immigrants with privilege have a better shot, but it still holds. In some cases you have to win the literal lottery (most people have to win a H-1B lottery, to get a U.S. work visa, *even if* they have a job offer.
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The age of ‘the world is run by cruel people’ introduces even more chaos. 45 says, early pandemic, almost all international students have to leave. Tomorrow. Many will not return. The richest man in the world takes over your company. You can’t leave but everyone else has. You’ve been slogging at a major co for years and the manager who says they’ll sponsor your green card is fired. And no one in the company remembers this promise.
Just a few very difficult things. There’s more.
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Why would anyone choose to live like that? Some people, like me, have a choice, but many do not. It’s this unknowable chaos, and lack of control, or just immensely difficult things back home. Like war. Or there’s no home. Because the country you moved to helped destroy it. And there isn’t really anywhere else to go. Or you know you won’t exist at all ‘back home’ because you’re too gay or too trans or too blasphemous. So maybe a difficult life is better than none.
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And part of the survivor bias is people who have a choice at all, who made it somewhere else, think they can’t complain they have so much more than everyone else they know, so why does it feel so awful? Probably not surprising that depression is so rampant among all immigrants worldwide.
So don’t do that thing where you’re trying to be helpful and go, ‘how do you love it here?’ Even if they love it, it’s a hard, hard conversation.
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And that’s the ‘lucky ones’, the ones who got papers. But millions of people will never qualify to go to any country in the world.
So what we are seeing now at the border isn’t ‘omg illegals’, but we *are* going to see even more migration like this in the future. Especially in an age of climate change.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/world-changed-wechat-snakeheads-era-120000641.html
There has been an 11x increase in Chinese people doing this dangerous journey. For the most part, they’re middle class. They still don’t qualify.
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*you* reading this, probably don’t qualify to go to another country in the world either. Go ahead, look it up. Even if you are educated, have skills.
So I wish we can all have a little more compassion. If I’ve learned anything from being an immigrant and also from volunteering with charity, it’s that everyone literally wants the same things. Home. Safety. Opportunities. Other people put us into boxes and try to make you hate others.
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The way people talk about immigrants, feels like there are parallels with the way people talk about the poor. ‘Poor people should X, Y, Z’
Guess what? Poor people know exactly what they should do. They make bad choices because they’re the least bad of all of their shitty ones.
It’s the same with immigrants. I had someone ask me ‘why dont people move to Australia or Europe where it’s better?’ That tells me you have zero idea how immigration works, or how to be a person of color in the world.
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@skinnylatte That being said, I do feel that some, if not many, immigrants aren't told that America fails miserably in living up to her promises. Even though the USA is the only place I've ever lived, I wonder if there are other countries that have much more to offer immigrants.
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@skinnylatte thanks for this. As an immigrant and naturalized citizen of the US, this all rings very true
It’s also heartbreaking and horrifying that I and my family will likely become immigrants again (and refugees. AGAIN) depending on the outcomes of the next US election cycle.
That’s not hyperbole. Local candidates of one of the two main parties have specifically said that they want to round up and execute people like me. National ones are saying & doing equally vile things
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@knbrindle yep. What’s happening to trans people is awful.
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@skinnylatte in fact I do! Israel doesn’t seem like the greatest option at the moment, though…
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@skinnylatte Agreed. I'm thinking mostly about healthcare. Universal healthcare would definitely be better than our broken system. At least our migrating brothers and sisters could get that in places like Canada, UK, etc. But I know proximity is a factor too.
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@skinnylatte @Ponygirl not just that, but the healthcare on offer is generally not available to immigrants easily, unless they’re coming with money already.
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@ShiitakeToast @skinnylatte Anecdotally, my nephew required emergency room treatment in France and the charges we're equivalent to $10 or so. This was in the early 2000s. It may have changed since then but could you imagine such affordable healthcare? I literally get glassy eyed and sigh at the thought
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@Ponygirl @skinnylatte my daughter twisted her ankle on a trip France a few years ago. The bill for the hospital was supposed to be €50, but they didn’t actually have any means of contemporaneously generating a bill or accepting payment, and couldn’t send the bill to our US address. ️
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@ShiitakeToast @Ponygirl my wife gets MYR 1 (US$0.30) emergency room treatments