Immigrants - by Darylynn Starr Rank
April, 2006

I’ve been wanting to write a column about living in a new world, immigrating to a new country, how difficult it is, and how important it is for those of us who already live here to think about and/or remember how much help we all need settling into a new home. Whether that new home is a new country, new province, new city, even simply a new neighborhood.

It’s hard to uproot your life and learn about a new place.  Hard to change schools, or jobs, or cultures. It’s difficult and unsettling to meet new people, make new friends, learn the ropes of a new system of any kind.

Two weeks ago my niece (who lives on the east coast in the States) got a media job with a non-profit relief agency which works in Latin America. Immigration news has been all over the US lately with their Congress looking at passing new legislation about their ‘immigration problems’. What to do about ‘enforcement’, and ‘what steps to take’ about the people who are living and working there illegally. So my niece has been talking about the topic non-stop.

Then our news here for the last few weeks has been filled with the people who were caught crossing the borders into the U.S. illegally. And news about our border security in terms of who we let in and who we don’t. How good our screening process is. And rings of people smugglers.

So I’ve been thinking about immigration a lot lately. 

With everything that’s happened in the last few years, starting with 911, the whole topic about borders and immigrants has shifted drastically. Painfully. It’s filled with fears about security, safety, terrorism. It has become a debate about human rights  vs. human rights (ours vs their’s – whoever ‘they’ are…). As if the question now is, ‘whose rights do we think about?’

So writing a column about caring for and being human to the new people in town has suddenly become questionnable.  Is even perceived by some as naïve in the context of today’s world..  And this makes me dreadfully sad. 

To be thought of as naïve for being human is unacceptable.

I grew up in the States, partly New York, where pretty much the single most important symbol of my country stood on a small island off Manhattan holding a torch and welcoming people from all over the planet to come to her shores. (I’m speaking of the Statue of Liberty.) 

She’s not naïve.

Welcoming strangers to your home, making them feel comfortable, safe, warm and accepted is not naïve. It’s being a human being. Whether it’s your child’s new friend, or your new next door neighbour, or a whole new culture.

The world is more complicated for sure. It’s going in directions that are frightening and sad, complex as can be. 

But we have to hold on to the place where being human, where being welcoming to new neighbours, is still simple.

Take care, all.

Darylynn Starr Rank (psychologist/writer) works part-time for Family Services of Greater Vancouver as a group facilitator. Her articles appear bi-weekly in The Record (New Westminster) and the Richmond Review.

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