Lampedusa, Migration und die Konnotationen. (Article) - 4/4/2014 6:38:02 AM
A well written and informative article. It's been a long time since I traveled the world, but I do recall some special privileges that I received on my budget trip without tour guide or anyone to front for me. For some reason, I was whisked to the front of the line while others waited for hours. I recall on my only trip to Africa befriending a young man from Sierra Leone who was a rice farmer and had just received his degree from Florida A&M. I was traveling with a brilliant friend from Thailand who had only learned English in his 60s, but knew that the American dollar talked for him.
I just read an article describing migration in terms of entropy. The higher always seeks the lower. Hence, those with means (like me on my meager salary) can travel to countries with very poor conditions and live like kings. Vice versa, from movies, people from poor countries look at America as some kind of free utopia with streets paved with gold. What most immigrants to this country find, is not the American dream, just like so many apartment dwellers that bought homes during the mortgage bubble, they find themselves struggling and working 24/7 without family support just to make ends meet. Immigrants study harder, work harder, and take more business risks, so quite often, if they don't return to their original country right away, within one generation become very well-established middle-class or wealthy class citizens.
I agree that particularly, Americans, are very ignorant of other countries in spite of many ways that they could learn. They tend to categorize rather than understanding that every country has a range of people with varying intelligence, education, and wealth. The United States has a wealth of ignorant people, along with the rest of the world.
Ron
