A truly thoughtful piece of writing which deserves a wide audience.
Illustration: Nithya Subramanian
These days, a great many people in the rich countries complain loudly about migration from the poor ones. But the game was rigged: First, the rich countries colonised us and stole our treasure and prevented us from building our industries. After plundering us for centuries, they left, having drawn up maps in ways that ensured permanent strife between our communities. Then they brought us to their countries as “guest workers” – as if they knew what the word “guest” meant in our cultures – but discouraged us from bringing our families.
Having built up their economies with our raw materials and our labour, they asked us to go back and were surprised when we did not. They stole our minerals and corrupted our governments so that their corporations could continue stealing our resources; they fouled the air above us and the waters around us, making our farms barren, our oceans lifeless; and they were aghast when the poorest among us arrived at their borders, not to steal but to work, to clean their shit, and to sleep with their men.
Still, they needed us. They needed us to fix their computers and heal their sick and teach their kids, so they took our best and brightest, those who had been educated at the greatest expense of the struggling states they came from, and seduced us again to work for them. Now, again they ask us not to come, desperate and starving though they have rendered us, because the richest among them need a scapegoat. This is how the game is rigged today.
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