Meditation of Immigration

 A NY Times article today Europe May Be Headed for Something Unthinkable stimulated thoughts about the immigration problem.  I present as a given that human instinct for survival is perhaps the strongest of psychological motivations.  Unless your culture requires you to accept the fate as dictated by your surrounding conditions, people will seek first to survive and then to thrive.  As basic resources diminish and threaten existence, people will move or seek to move.

In the U.S., border policy changes have forced dangerous and often fatal treks across the southern border.  One can only shudder about the immigration challenges as climate change shrinks livable locations on the planet.  

In my utopia, immigration challenges would be actively monitored, something like the monitoring that occurred in the Covid pandemic.  Changes in the 'supply' of immigrants and in the 'capacity to host immigrants' would be tracked.  Ministries of immigration in all countries would meet regularly to discuss actions to address the dynamics.  The reality of immigration and emigration pressures would be acknowledged and addressed in the context of the rest of the political and sociological considerations.  Rather like the climate change crisis, immigration would be recognized as a global issue needing analysis and action everywhere.  

Thinking somewhat locally on the immigration crisis at the U.S. southern border, we observe millions of refugees and other displaced people seeking asylum in the U.S.  Most who are fleeing for their safety or for wont of a means of support are willing to abandon the home of their birthplace, relatives, and their culture to have even a chance to survive.  If given the choice, many would be happy to join others of their kind wherever they are in the U.S., but many others would be happy to assimilate into a culture that asks nothing of them except a willingness to work and to respect the rights of others.  

Like many other crises, immigration is an issue of distribution of limited resources.  The pressure on global resources will be high no matter how immigration is handled in any particular area, but the risks of war will depend on whether immigration is treated as a shared problem or a problem for others to solve.