Western Europe and the United States are reportedly having a referendum on immigration. They seem to be coming to terms with the fact that they have a lot of people among them who are recent arrivals or descendants of recent arrivals that do not share in their fundamental values. There have been cases of stabbings in Germany and France by middle eastern migrants, to child murder in the UK, to child brides in some communities in the UK. Major cities in the U.S such as New York City, Los Angeles & Chicago were given budgets to house migrants (different from immigrants) who had fallen in through the southern border illegally. In a lot of cases, they were doing this in place of funding actual city programs for citizens that could have used it. This created a discontent among citizens (including immigrant descendants) who felt the money was being issued unfairly at the expense of a populace that was barely hanging on. Where did the West go right and where did they go wrong?

Immigration to the west by people from the global south and east has often been understood as a balancing act to the era of colonisation and economic disenfranchisement the latter has undergone at the hands of western global policy. It has been often looked at as colonial/conquest tax. In truth, immigration from other Western countries though challenging has not always been granted the same level of understanding as is given to those from the global south. Someone from the global south would often need to be a high performer in the field or on the path to becoming a high performer. Someone from another western nation like the UK, Sweden or France would often need to show a more reasons why they need to immigrate to the US to do something they are probably just as capable of doing in their home country due to the social, technological and political standards. Thus, the immigration from one western nation to another is seldom as compromising as it may from a global south nation to a western nation. This is where the question of integration vs assimilation comes in. How much of the immigrant’s culture does the western nation have to integrate and how much of the host nation’s culture is the immigrant willing to assimilate into?

This is the question worth addressing. All comfort and discomfort around this subject has to do with this ratio. When a host nation feels as though they are having to integrate more of the immigrant’s culture than the immigrants are willing to assimilate, there can be a whole host of issues: particularly in areas of religion, family structure, sex, political ideology and economic standards. Deep divides in these areas between a host nation and its immigrants is bound to create a rift. A nation that believes in separation of church and state will have a hard time with a growing number of immigrants who believe Sharia law must follow them wherever they go. A nation that does not believe in polygamy will have a hard time with cultures that do. A nation that allows for same-sex relationships and marriage will not tolerate anti-LGBT slander from cultures that find such a lifestyle offensive. A free market or mixed economy nation will seem quite greedy to someone from a socialist or communist nation.

Freedom of movement was one of the values espoused by the United Nations Charter ever since the end of colonialism of much of the global south by the west. In order to adhere to this virtue a lot of people have sought to move and a lot of people have done their best to accommodate those who risked their lives to move. Truth is generosity in mankind is one of the greatest aspects of our existence but co-existence requires foresight and consideration on both sides. The question always remains; how much does the host nation have to integrate versus how much is the immigrant willing to assimilate?

By Julian Michael Yong