Two Nations, One Ignorance

As an immigrant to the United Kingdom, I have a message for the Reform Party: Try me. This applies to any other political party who interprets a few Reform victories around the country as an indicator to shift policy toward an anti-immigration bent. Suit yourselves, but don't pretend it's a risk-free approach. 

During my childhood in the United States of America, I learned to embrace immigrants from around the world. Two little Cambodian boys showed me a hand-clapping game similar to Patty Cake. Only years later did I realize their family had probably fled the murderous regime of Pol Pot. The man who ran the recycling center came from Jamaica. On a visit to Boston, our shuttle driver hailed from Haiti. I attended school with students from West Germany, Brazil, France, Sweden, Mexico. In early adulthood, I worked alongside people from Laos, Niger, Pakistan, Morocco, Kenya, Hungary, Liberia, South Africa, India, Canada, just to name ten. 

We benefit from interactions with other nationalities because it reinforces two contradictory truths: we're all different, and we're all the same. It's a close relative of another confusing pair of facts: you are unique, special, one of a kind, and you're just like everybody else. The earlier in life we confront and accept these realities, the better off we are.

In the UK, as in America--since we are all different and the same--those caught in the shadow of fear and prejudice convince themselves that certain people are too different to coexist with the rest of us. As a white English speaker from another wealthy country, I don't have to deal with the same level of hostility as those with darker skin and different accents, although I have been asked if I'm Australian, Kiwi, Scottish, Irish, South African, etc. Mystifying. However, my appearance sometimes allows me to hide in plain sight, and I witness their masks dropping, and the anti-immigration sentiment spilling out. When I note that I am an immigrant, they say they don't mean me, it's those "others." Others. Always others who are the problem. 

With the Reform victories, the toxicity of xenophobia and racism in my country of birth, and recent experiences that have left a sour taste in my mouth, I have decided to jettison any notion of the humble immigrant. I admire the principle of humility and try to apply it in my daily life, but I refuse to participate in anti-refugee rhetoric, to perpetuate harmful stereotypes, or embrace the false narrative that I am "one of the good ones." I'm not one of the good ones at all! I'm here for your job. I'm here to demonstrate what America and the United Kingdom really could be if they lived up to their own principles: industrious, open-minded, resilient. That's MY culture, the one that accepts the cultures of others, sharing virtues, improving on failures. If you don't like it, Nigel Farage, Stephen Miller, or Andrea Jenkyns, sally forth on back to where you came from, that is, beneath a 19th Century rock. Try me. Try us.