The Transcript

Today’s episode on CulturallyOurs is inspired by an audio article that I listened to on NPR. And for those who don’t know what NPR is, it is the National Public Radio channel here in the States that often shares amazing stories and narratives on topics and issues from around the world as well as interviews with incredible people. I was listening to an opinion piece on Weekend Edition Saturday called ‘How Will We Remember Migrants Who Suffer, Strive And Risk Their Lives?’ by Scott Simon and I will link to the article in the show notes. Scott talks about the perils that people are going through in order to escape or leave places of conflict to get to places that they deem are places of opportunity.

And sometimes people are successful. But more often people are not and they pay with the price of their life. Some of the questions that he asked were so pointed and it just got me to stop and think about the harshness of life. I was heading out to the gym and I literally pulled over on the side of the road and listened to him. Perhaps what made it even more intriguing and thought provoking was the fact that here I was doing something that a more privileged person would be doing while at that very moment, there was perhaps someone somewhere in the world risking life and limb to get into a truck or a train or even a storage container to try and make it out of a horrible situation for a better life.

So today on this episode of CulturallyOurs, I want to share with you the human side of this somewhat dangerous journey of migration.

Just last week, thirty-nine people (thirty-one men, and eight women) were found dead in a trailer in Essex, in the United Kingdom. They were discovered in a sealed, refrigerated container. The kind that typically transports fruits, vegetables or frozen food. Authorities are having a hard time figuring out who they are and where they came from. They didn’t die with passports in their pockets, because they didn’t want to be sent back to the places they were trying to flee.

Their deaths are a sad but continuing story of the reality of our times – people who suffer and face incredible hardships everyday strive and risk their lives to try to escape – often to the other side of the world – a journey of many thousands of miles.

The news stories about the dangers of migration are quite grim. Scott shares some numbers on his opinion piece. In June of 2000, the bodies of 58 Chinese people were found in a truck in the port of Dover. In 2014, 35 Afghans including more than a dozen children were found in a shipping container on docks in Essex. In 2015, 71 migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria were discovered dead in the back of a truck in Austria. One was an infant. In 2017, 39 people from Mexico and Central America were found packed into a trailer in a Walmart parking lot in San Antonio. Ten people had already died in that trailer.

To put this in perspective, the Missing Migrant Project records almost 36k people have gone missing or feared dead since 2014 along the main migrant corridor routes around the world. Almost every year, migrants are found in shipping containers, trucks, and on rafts and fishing boats in open, perilous waters. Many of them don’t even know how to swim. Some perish from heat or cold, trying to cross borders in mountains or through harsh deserts.

In Southern Mexico, hundreds of migrants board a train known as the “The Beast” hoping that it will transport to the U.S. border quicker. They sit on top of the train, hang from the sides and often fall off even before the journey is over. To get to the train they have to cross harsh terrain and even walk for days without food or water.

There are many different and opposing views on migration among the developed countries around the world. It is hard to say which side is right and which side is wrong. The picture painted by those against migration shows a horde of relatively unskilled refugees raising social-welfare costs and lowering wages by undercutting higher-paid nationals within the labor force, and taking away higher paying jobs. But studies in the U.S. and U.K. show that migrants don’t undercut local labor because they tend to do jobs at the very bottom of the economic ladder. This allows natives to take on higher-level work allowing for a natural progress of wealth and prosperity.

At the end of the day, the free movement of people, along with goods and capital, is the very definition of globalization, is it not? Something that has been going on for centuries and that broadly speaking, increases prosperity at an international level.

But we are not here to argue on which side is right and which side is wrong. Scott Simon did not talk about the pro or cons of migraton. In fact, I think he challenged us to think about migration from a completely different angle – a human angle.

He asked questions like

• Who are these people?
• What do they think about when they knowingly decide to risk life, limb, or even deaths to just escape where they are?
• What did they dream of?
• What do they hope for?
• Who did they leave behind?
• Who will miss them?
• And perhaps the most important question in my mind is how will we remember them?

Would you do it? Wouldn’t you want to be in a life that you are happy in? Wouldn’t you want to be in a job that makes you satisfied? Wouldn’t you like to own a whole lot of money? Wouldn’t you like to go to bed every night thinking I am content, I have everything that I need. And if you don’t then how far would you go to achieve that?

Maybe not every one of us will get into a shipping container and try to find a better life. But I feel we do it in our own way. Sure, our ‘shipping containers’ might look very different like networking with somebody who we know has a better opportunity for a job, going on a blind date to find your forever person, filling out adoption papers to adopt because you want to adopt kids.

Shipping containers might mean the literal thing for some people and might be figurative for others, but if Culturally Ours has taught me anything, it is that we all have the same goals and aspirations.

If you’ve not listened to some of the other episodes, I encourage you to please go back and listen to these episodes. Like Ella Lea from Season 01 who escaped communist Azerbaijan because she wanted a better life for herself and her creative spirit. Or Dr. Wendy Pearlman from Season 03 who talks about her experience connecting with people who experience conflict in the Arab world. Because I think the more you listen to these people from all around the world who are sharing their stories with us, you will understand that at the end of the day we are all the same. We have the same goals. We have the same hopes and we have the same dreams. Just because we live in a place that is different doesn’t make us different.

So make an effort to get to know people around you, celebrate them as much as you would celebrate yourself, because people deserve compassion. People deserve empathy. People deserve understanding because together we are so much more powerful. We can correct so many things that are wrong in this world if we just band together, if we connect with each other, and if we share a common cause. And the only way you can share a common cause is if you get to know the other person and understand where they’re coming from, right?. Having different opinions, perspectives and ideas does not mean one side is wrong or one side is right. But understanding these different perspectives can lead to a more sustainable solution when you get everyone to collaborate.

So I encourage you again to listen to people around you. Make an effort to have a conversation. It can simply begin with a hello. Use Scott’s questions as a way to guide you to ask questions and get educated about the whole truth about any situation. People especially migrants deserve our understanding.