In the Serengeti last month we watched the migration of
wildebeests and zebras, hudreds of thousands of them streaming by. At the Mara crossings the crocs and vultures
waited.
Once out of the bush, in Arusha and then in Cape Town, we could plug into the world once again -- and we watched our species in migration,
perhaps a million seekers, with human vultures preying on them. No, I am not equating these victimized people with beasts. The one is an ingrained part of the process of natural selection; the other, the result of unnatural savagery that man inflicts on man.
I don't know what zebra and wildebeest dads feel
when they watch the carnage in the water,
but you and I ache for these migrants -- the anguish, the horror, the
desperate helplessness of the children caught up in their parents' search for
peaceful sanctuary.
Europe is beset
--under siege from migrants and asylum seekers, torn between
morality and social cost, anguished by doubt about what Europe stands for. The short term view
of this is catastrophe: unaffordable food, housing and healthcare burdens and
social disruption. Hungary wants no part
of it -- just shunt them on to western Europe. Oh, they might take a few -- but only
Christians, please. Poland and Serbia
stand aside. Citizens respond with
charity; Pope Francis calls upon his flock to adopt families; but governments
waffle, seeing only short term crisis.
But in crisis there is opportunity. Perhaps Angela Merkel has the long view. Western Europe needs this infusion of strong,
courageous people determined to make a better life for themselves -- and in
doing so, for the communities in which they settle. Throughout Europe, birth rates have fallen to
below replacement level, meaning stagnation, an aging population to be cared
for by a steadily dwindling worker base.
Merkel understands the opportunity to juice up her economy. Germany, with a population of 82mm, pledges
to take 800,000 refugees this year, 1% of their population, and again next year. (60mm Britain agrees to 20,000, over five
years. Come on....) This isn't the first migration. Perhaps
Merkel has taken a lesson from our history.
In the first decade of the 20thC, a United States of 76mm
took in 8.7 millions! 40% of New York city were immigrant families. They were costly and disruptive. Jane Addams' Settlement House movement forced
into America's consciousness the living conditions, health service and
education needs of these other-worldies who aspired to become us. Teddy Roosevelt as NYC DA and NY Governor
rooted out the political patronage and corruption that ensnared them. Sinclair Lewis and Lincoln Steffens and the McClure
team exposed the dreadful exploitation of their labor. America reformed -- and these new Americans provided the brains
and muscle, and with old Americans' capital, together they created an
industrial powerhouse.
My grandfather, Hallie Waller, pioneered the Americanization of these new
comers, first in the Cambridge, Mass YMCA and later in Akron, Ohio. Ohio was then to the US what Germany is to
Europe -- its manufacturing export engine.
When WWI shut the door to Europe, the second Great Migration began, of
southern blacks fleeing Jim Crow and seeking northern jobs and
opportunity. Sure, there was a backlash;
Ohio had the largest Klu Klux Klan membership in the country in 1921. My Dad remembered being a ten year old
watching a cross burned on the front yard; the Klan forced Granddad out of his YMCA
General Secretary post and his
Presidency of the Akron School Board.
But the migrants struggled, thrived and made the community better. By 1925, the Klan was fading from northern
Ohio.
A few years later, a third great
migration: 2.5 millions out of the Dust Bowl -- Grapes of Wrath, hardship
and conflict -- to create a new California. And in the '60s, a fourth: 1.2 million Cubans were welcomed to these shores.
Inviting the Stranger to contribute is fairly easy;
assimilating with the stranger to create a new society is very hard. But the payoff is huge, in creativity,
energy, vitality. It's time we 320mm
US took a strong stand to accept a large share of this latest migration (not to
mention the thousands of Iraqis who served us in that disaster and deserve
sanctuary here.) Trumpism be damned.
The world must learn to deal with migrations for this won't
be the last and certainly not the largest.
Zebras and wildebeests migrate in response to water. If the global warming forecasts are only half
realized, water issues will be driving huge human migrations, both within and across
borders. Water shortages in China will
drive internal migration of tens of millions.
A surfeit of water in the ocean will drive millions migrating within the US
as coastal areas from Houston around the Gulf, around Florida, and up the east
coast up to Long Island become unlivable.
Elsewhere, tens of millions of Bangladeshis and Indonesians
will be migrating to higher ground.
Conflicts in developed economies as well as in the third world will
flare up over water, arable land, disrupted food supplies, and disaster relief after
storms or forest fires. None will be
exempt; all six continents will be enmeshed in migration (and in Antarctica, even
the penguins are migrating these days.) These human migrations may not be as concentrated in time as the current crisis in
Europe, but even spread out over longer
periods, they will be disruptive -- and will present opportunities.
We are entering an era of continuous migration. We -- all of us -- had better resolve and prepare to
handle these migrations with empathy and kindness, with a willingness to accept
the short term costs, and with a long view of renewal, of energizing, and of
opportunity. Mankind need not be
bestial; the stranger must be invited in.
