'America -Love It Or Leave It' used to be the saying. Now it's something else. 'Protect it. Save it. Guard it. Keep interlopers out'.
Were I to fancy the idea of immigrating I would think first of going to a different state, as I have done many times. The times when I 'immigrated' to other states there weren't any guards at the state line, ever, but once inside the boundaries of some states I got a little pushback, not much, but the sort of pushback that gets the point across to you that "We do things a little different roun' heah'".
Got it!
Later, I did a little traveling internationally and found out just how danged lucky I was to be livin' in the ol' USA.
Traveling outside of our great land, you carry a thing called a passport, which is your national identity card, so to speak. It tells the people at whatever border you are crossing what nation you hail from (which they may or may not be good friends with) but more importantly it tells those people where you are eventually going to go back to because, sooner or later, the understanding is, you're going to be going back.
Some countries I entered gave me six months to visit, some three months, some thirty days, and one only ten days. Stay any later than that and there are ramifications. (fines, usually).
Aziz Acharki- Unsplash.com
Now it never occurred to me to even think about crashing the party, that is, coming across a less-guarded part of the border, entering uninvited, and then making myself at home. Not that coming in the front door was much easier, mind you. Let's take England, for example. In England I could hardly understand some of the people that were talking 'english' to me! I stuck out like a sore thumb, missed soooo many of their linguistic nuances, gave myself away as an outsider every time I had to speak, and fumbled about as I discovered, over and over, their unique ways of doing things. I calculated that it would take me YEARS to fit in, if ever, and even after that I would always be an outsider because I wasn't born there and didn't grow up there, all of that not-part-of-the-local-tribe stuff I had experienced living in different states. I was quite surprised to experience this level of disorientation in a country where most people looked like me and where the culture was so similar to my own. I thought I knew these guys. Hey, I watched the BBC!
Also, the border officials hadn't been exactly welcoming when I arrived. I got the distinct impression that they were under orders to look for and keep out any potential job seekers. I wasn't looking for work but I must have fit their profile. Upon entry my passort was stamped 'No recourse to public funds allowed' or something like that. I found out once inside the country that lots of Eastern European people were trying to get into England to work because of the value of the English pound and that the country was losing many of its entry level jobs to foreigners.
Everywhere I went after England was more or less the same story. The welcome mat was out if you had tourist dollars but if you wanted to live there the governments preferred that you fit their 'qualifications', those being that either you were young, independently wealthy, highly skilled (and that they needed people with those skills), or that your were a businessman seeking to set up shop and employ their workers. The door was never open for layabouts. If you were a marginal person it was "Sorry, go elsewhere. ANYWHERE else!". Universal was the lack of any government having the desire to take on a financial burden. But, if you were a refugee from somewhere and were reluctantly granted residency, the government that let you in was highly desirous that you get off the dole and be a productive member of society As Soon As Possible.
Philippe Verheyden- Unsplash.com
For most people, the door to immigration isn't really open very wide anywhere in the world, and this is especially true in the western countries. You'd BETTER love the USA because this is probably going to be your home for life (a life sentence!) was the message I got, from customs agents around the world. And I DO like it here. I understand the culture, can relate to what's going on around me, and there's lots of room to move about, compared to places like Thailand. The internet works real good, and the power is almost always on!
I also know what those people knocking on the door at the border are experiencing, more or less. An incredibly daunting attempt to make it here, if allowed. And not only here but any other country that will take them in.
Whether they are good people or bad people, I don't know. What I do know is that governments around the world don't like taking on other country's problems and because I have a golden ticket, my passport, I am able to leave and then then get let back into my home, a particularly desirous one, the US of A.
'Love It or....? ....Nah, black and white like that really doesn't apply to an issue that's more akin to a fuzzy gray area.