Why the Borders Must Close

The west has the greatest secular and technological society in history…

In the interests of fair disclosure, I have legally lived and worked in America, England, Scotland, Spain, Portugal, Germany, South Africa, and Lesotho. I have also traveled quite extensively. I also have access to live and work legally in 31 countries without requiring permission to do so. That is because of my dual citizenship, and as an EU citizen, I am able to live and work in 30.

I am, therefore, aware of the many cultural differences of many countries, plus I became political aware of the problems and successes in those countries. In every country that I have lived in, there is the problem of illegal immigration, refugees, and ‘asylum seekers.’

Right now, the world is moving towards the right (far right) politically, and with the exception of the USA, that has to do with the influx of people from different cultures.

Culture

During the time I studied anthropology at the University of South Africa, I came to understand what culture meant. It is the collection of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that a people have. Western culture has a culture of tolerance of others — many other cultures do not have that culture of tolerance. So you have a situation where the home culture might think it’s wonderful that the stores are open seven days a week, and then, over a period of time, another group, arriving from another country, in vast numbers, says that all stores must be closed for three days so that they can worship the god of dirty dishwater.

The power of this group has grown to such a level (because there are so many of them) that they are now disrupting the home culture. They have beliefs that stem from their home countries, and those beliefs are incompatible with their host countries. Their host countries are secular countries, separating religion and the state. Their host countries do not allow the revenge murders of children because they married out of their religion. Their host countries do not allow a man to have fourteen wives or to beat their women. Their host countries do not allow a shaman to kill a young boy so that his testicles can be fed to an old man to increase his virility. In short, when a man leaves his country, he does not leave his culture behind.

Personal testimony

I lived in the States for eleven years. I left because I never got used to the culture. I am not competitive. I don’t like living in a country which doesn’t put the welfare of its people ahead of status and ambition. I don’t want to live in a country where medical assistance is only for those who can afford to pay for it. There were many other cultural differences. I just didn’t fit, so I left.

Right now, I have a friend in America who is terminal. He is in his 60s, but he is forced to continue to work because his work pays for medical insurance. Without that medical insurance, his life saving medication would cost upward $30K per month. So he has to chose between working and shortening his lifespan as a result of wearing out what is left of his life, or dying within months of his stopping work. In the UK, if you have a terminal illness, you immediately go onto a welfare system, and your mortgage/rent is paid for by the state, plus you receive a weekly income, plus you receive free medical treatment.

Even in my native South Africa, during the years of apartheid, there were hospitals to provide treatment for those unfairly made second class citizens. When I had my daughter, I had the best treatment available, all at the expense of government. And, yes, that included a mandatory stay of a week after giving birth, so that they could check everything was okay.

Perhaps you scorn me because I am accustomed to a way of life that was implemented by the British Empire so long ago, by the European Union and the European Economic Area, but we call those laws civilized. Germany, for example, despite being a financial powerhouse, is also a welfare state.

Australia’s health system is one of the best in the world. It provides quality, safe and affordable health care for you and your family. It’s a key reason why we enjoy one of the longest life expectancies in the world. Medicare and the public hospital system provide free or low-cost access for all Australians to most of these health care services. Private health insurance gives you choice outside the public system. For private health care both in and out of hospital, you contribute towards the cost of your health care. Medicare is available to Australian and New Zealand citizens, permanent residents in Australia, and people from countries with reciprocal agreements. Source

We pay taxes in order to enable the state to provide collectively for all people.

Tax and organisation

No country is that rich that it can continue to afford to pay for an enormous influx of people. It is also unfair to those citizens who are native to that country, and whose tax money now goes to people who not only don’t share the western secular culture, and who insist on their religious dogma being implemented, but the country must pay for accommodation and living expenses.

I currently live in Ireland. I was also incredibly lucky to find accommodation. There is no housing available, even for citizens. For some reason, the construction of homes stopped decades ago, and in that time, hundreds of thousands of people have relocated to Ireland.

So there has been outrage at the fact that the locals can’t find a place to live, that prices have shot through the roof, but Ireland was willing to accept 100,000 Ukrainians, some of whom now live in tents.

Interestingly, until this influx of refugees, forced on it through membership of the EU, there was no ‘far right’ in Ireland. There is, now. When the locals begin to vie for resources against those who are newly arrived, it is the locals who begin to show their displeasure.

Tolerance of others

There are now many countries turning to the far right. There are reasons why a people previously liberal will not longer abide by liberal principles. They previously thought that if refugees and asylum seekers sought sanctuary in the west, then there was an innate agreement that they would abide by western values.

They have now come to understand that that is not so. They have realized that tolerance is not always reciprocal.

The best article that I ever read on tolerance was that written by Yonatan Zunger. It was titled ‘Tolerance is not a moral precept.’ It also had close on 14,000 claps.

I quote from his essay:

Tolerance is not a moral absolute; it is a peace treaty. Tolerance is a social norm because it allows different people to live side-by-side without being at each other’s throats. It means that we accept that people may be different from us, in their customs, in their behavior, in their dress, in their sex lives, and that if this doesn’t directly affect our lives, it is none of our business. But the model of a peace treaty differs from the model of a moral precept in one simple way: the protection of a peace treaty only extends to those willing to abide by its terms. It is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide pact.

What Zunger points out is that tolerance does not mean that one has to lose one’s life, or give up what one values, for the sake of those who insist that one does.

I’m going to link some videos here to demonstrate just how far to the right countries in Europe have moved during the past five years.

Tolerance of the influx of non-traditional immigration is no longer accepted

If one legally immigrates to another country, there are many hoops to jump through. Most countries work on a points system. They include some of the following:

• Able to speak the language
• Under 35 years old
• A skill that is in short supply in the country applied to
• A university qualification that is highly desirable
• No criminal record — documentation from police in all countries where one has lived
• No infectious disease

These scores would be weighted. For example, if a country was in building several nuclear power plants, a nuclear engineer unable to speak the local tongue, would be given preference. Also, while younger people are given priority, if someone was rich and famous, or was willing to open a business employing thousands, that person would be given priority. The deciding factors would be whether the person brought value to the host country and did not use their resources.

The benefit of the weighted immigration system is that there is a limit to the number of people who arrive, and government can control those numbers. They can also control who will ‘fit’ and who will not. The EU mandate that European Union and the Economic Area countries must accept all refugees does not have this benefit. It has also opened the door to people who have not been cleared by the police.

There is no doubt that Brexit was driven by the influx of people to the U.K, and the anger that British culture was being lost. There is also anger that all the British welfare services are now unable to afford to provide for those who are native to the island. The same is now happening in France, in Germany, in Greece, and numerous other countries in the EU.

Racism and culture confused

I want to be quite clear that I am speaking about culture here — not race. People in western secular Europe cherish their own cultures. France wants their secular nation to remain secular.

Solutions

Issues are never simple — they are complex, and they have numerous aspects. The most we can do is examine them, understand them, and proceed forwards with the least harm to all.

One solution to the current influx of people from desperate countries is to begin to fix up those countries. I do not mean invest for the sake of profit. That way, far more money is removed from the country than is put in. What I mean is to open secular schools, to build roads and communication systems, and to stop interfering in the business of sovereign states.

It generally takes a generation for people to change their traditions (when actively educated in a western style). However, when cultures are strong, then the home culture dominates what is learnt through the education system.

If you think about it, the reason Africa can never get off its feet is that the west pays it peanuts for its valuable resources. This is unethical, and it does not allow Africa to invest in itself. It’s time the west respected the fact that paying undeveloped nations very little money for their goods is not a long term solution to anything.

I think, if the west does close its borders, it also needs to simultaneously, ensure that less developed countries are being built up to provide for their own citizens.

In any event, we have a problem. I’m not sure what the solutions are. I do see that the world is moving towards far-right governments, and it scares the hell out of me. I don’t know about you, but I do not want to live under a far-right government. I have already spent a great deal of my life in a police state.

What say you?

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