Normally when I think of Cape Verde, I tend to think of Césaria Évora, the morna singer, the fact that it is one of eight nations with Portuguese as its official language, a certain disc by Horace Silver, a place where planes refuel flying from South Africa to North America and the soul group, Tavares.
While I was aware of the emigrant past of this island nation off the west coast of Africa, this article in Sunday's New York Times brings it back poignantly:
If Cape Verde is the Galapagos of migration, Jorgen Carling, a
Norwegian geographer, is its Darwin. A rising star on the academic
circuit, Dr. Carling, 32, visited Cape Verde 10 years ago, taught
himself Kriole, the local language, and has been returning ever since.
“Cape
Verde is a showcase of the contradictions and frictions of global
migration,” he said. “It is in a quite dramatic transition — from being
so dependent on migration to trying to cope with a world in which
borders are closing.”
The tensions he cites abound. Migration
reduces poverty. But it increases inequality between migrants and
others back home. Migration can express family devotion. It can also
strain family bonds.
And while migration may be at record levels,
so is the frustration of people who want to migrate but cannot. That is
because as migration grows, the desire to experience its economic
rewards grows even faster.
“Migration is probably more important
to more people than it has ever been,” said Dr. Carling of the
International Peace Research Institute, a nonprofit group in Oslo. “But
what characterizes the world today is also the feeling of involuntary
immobility.”
I recommend that you read the entire article along with the online multimedia features that it came with here, and here . Full disclosure: my biological father (who died when I was five) was an immigrant as is my wife. I tend to believe that anyone willing to work, learn the language and contribute should be welcome. I'm not one of those who supports the notion that this has an adverse impact our culture. Our nation is wildly diverse without the immigrants. Imagine the differences between those who have been living for several generations in the South, the Midwest, New England and the West Coast and you get the idea.
I am troubled by this, however:
More broadly, however, development experts are split on the effects
of migration. Remittances feed and shelter the poor, and migrants
sometimes return with new business contacts and ideas. But migration
can also drain countries of talent and promote dependency, among
individuals and governments. No country has climbed out of poverty
through migration alone. Despite the economic progress here, the
unemployment rate hovers above 20 percent and the fastest-growing
industry, tourism, is dominated by low-wage jobs.
While Dr.
Carling admires Cape Verde’s ability to invent itself as a nation
beyond borders, he also sees problems with the constant emphasis on
departures. It can weaken relationships, he said, leave marriages
short-lived and promote indifference among students and workers. “The
possibility of relying on remittances — and the prospect of going
abroad one day — can alienate you from the environment here,” he said.
One aspect of Andrés Manuel López Óbrador's failed campaign for president of Mexico was his recognition of the failure of his nation in not making their country more hospitable to its poorest citizens. While remittances are vital and important, as the article notes, they are not a solution.
I'm very ambivalent about guest worker programs. Germany brought in numerous Turks as guest workers from 1961 to 1973, but largely treated them as a fungible asset rather than human beings. Precious little was done to integrate them and it wasn't until 1999 that those born in Germany automatically received German citizenship. How absurd was this? In the 2002 World Cup, three players from Turkey's starting eleven were born in Germany, but ineligible to become German citizens, whereas Miroslav Klose and his parents were born in Poland, but his paternal grandfather was of German ancestry and Oliver Neuville, born in Switzerland to a German-Swiss father and Italian-Swiss mother and speaks Italian much better than German, had no problem gaining German citizenship.
I worry less about the impact immigration has on the US and far more about the effect it is having on those left behind,
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