by Hatem Najjar
In 2022, Josep Borell, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, triggered a controversy by saying that Europe was a garden of prosperity and “most of the rest of the world” was a jungle.
“It’s a decision we made in 2018, which I fully stand by,” Macron said Thursday. He added that it was “part of a strategy to allow women and men when they are artists, sportsmen, entrepreneurs, when they make the effort to learn the language, when they create wealth, when they ask for it, to grant them French citizenship. I did it for Mr Durov, who took the trouble to learn French, just as I did it for Spiegel. I think it’s good for our country,” he declared as reported Politico.
At the feet of the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France, these words of Emma Lazarus are inscribed “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” Many point to these words to speak of some American, and by extension Western, ideals: a place that welcomes those who might be poor, sick, oppressed and wanting freedom. They will have a home in the West.
As the bodies of countless poor immigrants washes off the shores of seas and oceans trying to find this home only to find death show, these systems that are in place to “welcome” migrants are any thing but welcoming to the weak, poor, and sick. In fact, before you can set foot in the US as an immigrant, for example, you must go through a battery of tests to make sure that you are healthy, that you will not be a burden on the State upon your arrival, and that you will not bring disease the same way Europeans brought disease to the natives of the Americas. If you are rich, on the other hand, you will have a special line, a special procedure, to enter the garden of prosperity, as the French president explained.
There is an ocean between propaganda and reality. As it happens, the stream of people believing in the propaganda seems to expose the reality. It might help for those who wish to ban migrants to learn that too much propaganda can be bad.