We Are All Strangers......
This summer has seen something unprecedented in many people's lives - the UK was invited to vote in a referendum to determine whether or not we as a nation should leave the European Union.
Whatever reasons people had as individuals, collectively there was a lot of fear and even hatred in the air - about immigration, and it seems that even some of this was under the misconception that leaving the EU would end all immigration and send all immigrants home. Some people seem to have been surprised to learn that this would not be the case, and indeed that Syria is not an EU country anyway. They also failed to take into account the possibility of a returning tide of ex pats (for the brits abroad are not immigrants but ex-pats) who might well get sent back as a result of us sticking two fingers up to our nearest neighbours. There are an awful lot of those and the majority are elderly and inevitably likely to overload the NHS. Well anticipated, Brexiters.
But I digress, which is not uncommon as regular readers will know, and this particular rant is not about Brexit per se.
Now I like to think I've always been fair minded and compassionate, or at least I've tried hard to be, and I've been aware of it when I fall prey to even the tiniest tinge of bias or national stereotyping. We're all human. But what it takes to get it entirely sorted in one's own head, I suspect, is to become an immigrant and try the life for size. Almost six years has elapsed since I set off in search of a better life in Spain and I'd like to share some of the insights it has given me.
In search of a better life.......
Everyone who goes voluntarily to live abroad thinks it will be to their advantage somehow, or they wouldn't go - whether it's for the weather, a nicer environment, a more affordable lifestyle, better job prospects, a safer life, or even something as ignoble as a tax haven, nobody goes by choice unless there is something in it for them. Isn't that what the immigrants coming or wanting to come to the UK are also chasing?
Try living for any length of time longer than a holiday where you can't understand the language to some degree, anything between not understanding a word to only getting the main bits. It's hard work and no wonder if there is anything important going on you might want to be accompanied or assisted by someone who can translate - in case you miss something really important. Even if you are learning a language there will be times when you really need to make sure you have understood.
The English have the advantage with their own language and it's made us as a nation complacent and lazy. The rest of the world, to their credit and my personal amazement, have a healthy interest in and motivation towards learning it and practising it at every opportunity. It's become the norm to be able to go abroad safe in the knowledge that if you can't speak their language, they or someone else will speak yours, and you WILL get by. Many ex-pats/UK immigrants in Spain don't bother to even try to learn Spanish because they can get by in English (or think they can until they need a hospital, or the police, or something official which needs to be translated absolutely accurately) and mostly only mix with other English speakers anyway. But try being Spanish in the UK and expecting any person on the street to be able to help you. Or French, or German, and those three are the most widely taught as a second language in schools.
Who do we think we are anyway, the inhabitants of a little island surrounded by sea, with big ideas and a not unblameworthy history of forays in other people's countries which has a lot to do with English being a universal language. We expect to be welcomed - and fortunately we frequently are - in other countries and have come to think it our right to go where we please in search of our own better lives, a choice which we don't want to afford anyone who we perceive as a threat to our own territory, in case they want a piece of it. Somehow we don't condemn our own migrants as scroungers or chancers in someone else's country, the people who go with a plan and those who just take off and wing it. It might be different, but the principle is a bit similar somehow..........we're inherently and immediately suspicious of anyone who looks like their visit might be open-ended in the UK.
To Integrate or not to Integrate......(the question is in English of course....)
Immigrants collect and form their own communities which in the UK we see as a threat and a disinclination to integrate. They should not be allowed in if they can't speak English. They should have a job to come to. Why should they have an interpreter? They want our jobs and our houses. They only come for the benefits. But never, never have they come in search of the same better life that we crave in our total inability to see the truth - what we want to better is already more desirable for them.
Come to Spain and observe the ex pat/immigrant communities with their urbanisations, their English shops and their English bars, their insistence on Sunday dinners, fish and chips, UK tv and newspapers and the rest.....plenty of people came here to look for work, to start a business, to travel around and a very great many arrived with little knowledge of the country apart from its climate and scenery along with a distinct absence of language skills. I'm really not sure how that is different at all unless you fall back on the one point of difference, the safety net of benefits in the UK which is notably absent here. Hence a lot of the young people who arrive with optimism and no particular plans can be found on the streets begging, some by choice and others of necessity, and amongst the homeless and destitute will be a small number of UK immigrants whose dreams of a better life went spectacularly awry.
Again, I'm in danger of digressing, this is not about the abominable habits of ex pat/immigrants in Spain. My intention is to demonstrate first hand that immigrants the world over seek the same things and resort to the same comforts and that the British critics should look first at their own compatriots before criticising others.
It's natural to want things which are familiar when you are in a strange environment especially if it happens to be a bit )or a lot) daunting. It's easy to feel lost, bewildered or alone when you are in unfamiliar surroundings dealing with problems which don't exist back home, and in a language you don't understand or can speak with full competence. The problem lies in distinguishing between a natural level of reassurance and support and comfort against a disinclination or even refusal to attempt to integrate. Very few people pursue complete integration to the absolute limit, and most find it a relief to be able to lapse back into their own culture, habits, food, and most particularly language. Unless they have no choice of course, but then we are speaking of people who choose to go elsewhere.
Having chosen where we would like to pursue our better lives, we hope to be at least tolerated if not welcome and we don't expect to be regulated too far in retaining the ability to choose or prevented from enjoying those very familiar things which were mentioned in that last paragraph. But we really don't seem, as a nation, to be able to see the hypocrisy, the fear and suspicion which attaches to the inevitable ethnic communities which spring up in the UK, we resent the appearance of specialist food shops unless they sell something we both recognise and want, we bridle at the sound of foreign tongues around us, but go abroad as tourists or immigrants without expecting a similar reaction from the locals wherever we turn up. Who do we think we are anyway, the inhabitants of a little island surrounded by sea, with big ideas and a not unblameworthy history of forays in other people's countries, that we should go with impunity where others have to ask to tread?
It's the sheer double standards and ignorance and self deception of it all which annoy me, the denial that we are all capable, to some degree, of exporting our own lifestyles along with ourselves in the total anticipation that this is acceptable let alone will be allowed despite our resistance to people who merely hope for the same treatment at our hands in the UK. I think we deceive ourselves by justifying it on grounds of space (small island) and economics(can't afford to support them) and jobs (there are not enough already) which allows us to avoid confronting those deep seated prejudices which even pop up uninvited let alone take over if allowed to do so.
You have to be abroad and find it bewildering or even scary at times, to know that however well you are treated or welcomed or tolerated, you will never actually belong absolutely, to be at a disadvantage in terms of the language and the everyday knowledge of the society into which you have arrived, to occasionally feel in need of the comfort of the familiar as well as the stimulus of new things, to be able to express yourself completely in your own language because it's easier...........we're all human and we are all strangers in foreign lands.
As Bob Dylan once said, I pity the poor immigrant (unless he is British of course, then it will all be ok).