Migration isn’t just for the birds

In the United States, President Bush has sent the National Guard to patrol the border with Mexico to keep out unwanted immigrants, while pundits warn that Hispanic immigration risks splitting America in two. The government tries to juggle its desire to attract talented foreign students and workers with heightened fears about national security since 9-11. As record numbers of Africans risk death on flimsy boats to reach its shores, Spain erects ever higher walls - six metres high at the last count - around its enclaves in North Africa to try to close off Europe’s southern gateway.

France’s largely immigrant suburbs erupt into riots to protest at poverty and discrimination, while rioters in Sydney launch violent attacks on Lebanese immigrants.

John Howard comes from behind in the polls to win Australia’s general election in 2001 by declaring that “we will decide, and nobody else, who comes to this country” and turns back a boat laden with Afghan refugees.

Do the new arrivals pose a threat to everything we cherish - jobs, the welfare state, our national identity and way of life, even our freedom and security - or does their diversity in fact enrich and invigorate the economy, culture and society of their adopted homes?

Could we put a stop to immigration if we wanted to, or is it an inevitable consequence of a globalising world riven between rich and poor?

And what should we do to help the immigrants and people of foreign descent who are already living among us fit in better?

These questions are not only about Them, and their possible merits and faults, but also about Us - what kind of place, country and world we want to live in; how far our sense of solidarity and justice extends beyond national borders; how much we value diversity and to what extent we fear it clashes with other values we hold dear; and ultimately whether our concept of Us is broad and flexible enough to embrace Them too.

Whenever people talk in the abstract about the pros and cons of immigration, one should not forget that immigrants are individual human beings whose lives happen not to fit neatly within national borders - and that like all human beings, they are all different.

How different, though? Different better, or different worse?

Such basic questions underlie whether people are willing to accept outsiders in their midst. Are the newcomers perceived to be honest, hard-working people keen to fit in to their new country, or feckless, scrounging layabouts who make no effort to adapt to their adopted society - and might even harbour bad intentions towards it?

Perceptions - or prejudice - matter more than reality, since foreigners are strangers and therefore largely unknown. The truth, of course, is that immigrants may be good, bad, or probably a mixture of both.

Generally, though, I believe they have two big qualities: they are typically hard-working and enterprising. Why? Because every immigrant is also an emigrant, and it takes courage and enterprise to uproot yourself to a foreign land.