On his book Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped Our World and Will Define Our Future
Cover Interview of May 31, 2011
Lastly
Migrants are exceptional people because they make difficult choices and sacrifices in order to secure a better life for their communities, families and themselves. They play an exceptional role in the societies they enter. Too often they are regarded as “others,” not part of the host society.
Current policies are too often counterproductive. A more effective and humane migration regime is urgently needed. Such regime needs to recognize not only that we all can trace our heritage and achievements to migration, but also that migrants produce enormous benefits and are the source of our future prosperity.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
Lastly
Migrants are exceptional people because they make difficult choices and sacrifices in order to secure a better life for their communities, families and themselves. They play an exceptional role in the societies they enter. Too often they are regarded as “others,” not part of the host society.
Current policies are too often counterproductive. A more effective and humane migration regime is urgently needed. Such regime needs to recognize not only that we all can trace our heritage and achievements to migration, but also that migrants produce enormous benefits and are the source of our future prosperity.
© 2011 Ian Goldin