Migratory Nature
The simplest way to put it is that immigration regulations are to humans what cages are to birds.
All throughout human history, the human species has been migrating from one place to another. Migration is inherent to human nature. Creating a barrier in the ocean preventing whales from migrating from one part to the ocean to another, does make any more sense than creating a border between nations preventing people from migrating.
My point here today is that statehood (not to be confused with nationhood) and the subsequent immigration regulations are an aberration to human nature and human rights.
Imagine if we tell people: you shall not speak, you shall not write, you shall not sing, you shall not work, you shall not walk, you shall not run, you shall not travel, you shall not migrate. When I present this thought to people, most of the time they think that I am crazy, naïve, disingenuous, and a dreamer.
I have had the fortune to have access to a good education and to meet people from all over the world. These two elements, I believe, have allowed me to view the human experiment from a privileged perspective.
Even before I studied Anthropology at the Universidad de Costa Rica, I was fascinated by different cultures, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Incas, the Chinese, the Zulus, the Tuaregs, the Russians, Goths, the Visigoths, Europeans, the Americans. We all have something in common; we are people. We are passionate, we love and we mourn, we are inventive and resourceful, we dream and cry, and rejoice and suffer. We all have our moments of greatness, and we are all victims of our passions and our fears, and we are all ethnocentric.
Over the ten years I have been practicing immigration law, I have learned a terrible truth: notwithstanding the fact that we are all humans, we spent an awful lot of time distancing ourselves based on our differences. Over the past century, we humans have been in a campaign to enact regulations focused on limiting migration more so than ever before in history. Immigration regulations are not new, one of the first topics in immigration law courses is the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Act excluded Chinese laborers (skilled and unskilled laborers and Chinese employed in mining) from entering the country for ten years under penalty of imprisonment and deportation. In 1440 England, a tax was imposed on immigrants. This measure affected over 55,000 immigrants between 1440 and 1525. While immigration regulations are relatively new, they are only a spec of sand in the broad history of humans. We have been migrating for at least the last 200,000 years, but we only developed the concept of statehood no more than ten thousand years ago, and the first traces of immigration regulations date to the Roman Empire in the West during the fourth century and the Song Dynasty in China during the 11th century.
Ethnocentricity has had terrible results in human history. First, we believe that different is inferior and therefore susceptible to be conquered and destroyed. Second, that those differences are not entitled to the same privileges than those who we considered the same.
As we continue to develop policies under the premise that one group (whether it is a nationality, ethnic group, religion, so on and so forth) is superior than the other, we will continue down the path of self-destruction.
The current concept of a country is obsolete. The concept of nationality is not any better than being a fanatic of a sports team. Nationality and patriotism prevents us from accepting the truth that other people in this world matter as much as we do. Patriotism is nothing more than an euphemism for outward oppression.
Nationalism tell us that other people are not entitled to the same privileges and protections of the law, that we are only equal as long as you look like me, think like me, and speak like me. Nationalism tells me that I can take away your rights, that I can invade your country and kill your family with no legal repercussion, that I can take away your natural resources, and disrupt your whole way of life and influence your government.
While I see people tearing their robes right and left, I am left with big concern about the direction of the world with the apparent dissolution of the European Union by the tip of the sword departure of the UK, the violation of democracy by the traditional ignorance of the American rabble, and the lack of integration of the Latin America prevented by an aristocracy of scavengers.
I may be called a dreamer, but if there is something that I wish is that I would be out of a job. Immigration laws are obsolete and we should live in a world where anybody is free to go wherever their dreams take them.
Five percent of the world population are immigrants but only one percent are refugees, and less than quarter of a percent want to live in the US or Europe. Most of the world population of immigrants are in neighboring countries, Bolivians living in Argentina, Venezuelans in Colombia, Nicaraguans in Costa Rica, people from Burkina Faso Living in the Ivory Coast, Sri Lankans living in India, Somalis living in Kenia.
I hope people understand that we are bigger than ourselves, that our world extends beyond our borders, that our borders are a fiction created by political demagogy, that migration is human nature, and that a law cannot define the legality of your existence.