Immigration is now the most important political and cultural issue of the 21st Century. It shouldn’t be; there are far more important problems and opportunities. But for most people the arrival of large groups of perceived outsiders and how to respond to them is their dominant concern, the primal drives for food and sex excepted of course. In the next few weeks we will be running a series of posts on the matter: for it must finally be understood and resolved.
Has human migration always occurred ,or is it new? Whom does it benefit, and why? Does it always occur in the same ways? Can it, or should it, be controlled? Above all, what causes it?
We will argue that humans migrate from a poor life to a better one. Like ions in an electric field migrating from negative conditions (usually economic and political) to positive ones. That attempts to control this using things like walls and resettlement schemes can only have a marginal effect. And that the solution is to massively improve the economic conditions of people in poorer countries, thereby vitiating the motive to migrate. And that a sustained effort to do this would result in an infinitely more prosperous and settled world, able at last to confront real threats like climate change and antibiotic resistance, and to take advantage of the new opportunities offered in disciplines such as biology and space exploration.
We hope you will join us with open minds, and contribute with your own thoughts and opinions. For too long rationalists and centrists have left this issue to charlatans of the far left and far right. It won’t go away, and most people aren’t going to be nice and reasonable about it. Time for a solution.
#migration #immigration #emigration #identity politics #culture wars #globalisation
Learning, Science and Society 