#12 The Freedom to Move

And the desire for stability

I’m writing this from a hotel at the Frankfurt airport, where I unexpectedly spent last night after missing my connecting flight to Latvia despite a two-hour connection. There were simply too many people wanting to travel and not enough people wanting to work, and so it took me more than two hours to move through immigration. It was a little annoying, but then I put it into perspective. You know what I did not have to worry about? I didn’t worry about whether they’d let me through. I didn’t even consider whether I needed a visa. In fact, I generally assume that I can travel wherever I want, that I’ll be welcome wherever I go. That is not the experience of my African colleagues, of course, including when we travel together in Africa. It’s not the experience of the vast majority of people when they travel anywhere.

On the flight over, I started watching House of the Dragon, the prequel to Game of Thrones. I couldn’t help myself; the production quality and storytelling are irresistible. Between the soft porn and graphic killing, something stood out for me: There are no borders, no checkpoints, no passports, no one to turn you away (unless you want to peep someone’s castle).

I am genuinely sympathetic to those who are concerned about too much immigration. We throw around the word xenophobia as if it were a slur, but in my view it’s simply human nature. We’re all leery of newcomers who aren’t like us. Americans are leery of Mexican and Central American migrants. But Mexicans are also leery of American migrants, including very progressive Mexican friends of mine who say that American remote workers are ruining the local culture. And while Central Americans experience discrimination in the United States, it pales in comparison to how they are treated in Mexico. (Or, if you think that only white people are xenophobic, go see how black South Africans treat black Nigerians, or how brown Indians treat brown Bangladeshis.)

I’m mindful that there is tension between the freedom of movement and the desire for stability, that there is a limit to how many newcomers a community will receive, that hearing foreign languages at the supermarket can be grating — whether they are loud Americans speaking English in Mexico City or loud Mexicans speaking Spanish in California. Still, I can’t imagine a better time for sensible immigration reform, if only a handful of bipartisan legislators were willing to speak sanely and bring enough of the crazies from each party closer to the middle.

The day before I started hiking the John Muir Trail, I picked up some supplies in the mountain town of Bishop, California. Or, I tried to. Half the stores were closed because they couldn’t find anyone who is willing to work. And every damn store had a “now hiring” sign. Every single one. Where might we find workers to fill these jobs? Or, as a Brookings Institute analysis asks, “who are the 1 million missing workers that could solve America’s labor shortages?“

Last week I was in Washington DC, when Texas’ governor, Greg Abbot, sent two busloads of migrants to the residence of Kamala Harris. Washington DC is a place with a lot of people in suits pecking at computer keyboards and gossiping at happy hour. And then there are the people who look after them: who cook for them, remove the trash, sweep the streets, drive the taxis, care for the patients in the hospital. They are nearly all migrants (or expats or residents or visitors — you choose what you want to call them).

Take a closer look at this photo of a new hipster bakery I discovered with to-die-for pistachio croissants and turkey avo sandwiches. The ones doing the hard work — cooking in the hot kitchen, waking up early to start baking, cleaning up after the customers — they’re all Spanish-speaking migrants. They’re the only ones willing to do the work.

I wasn’t at all surprised when I read the New York Times profile one of the new arrivals on a bus journey paid for by Governor Abbot. Here’s a condensed excerpt:

When Lever Alejos of Venezuela arrived at the southern border penniless in July, he gladly accepted a free bus ride to Washington, D.C., courtesy of the state of Texas. Solidly middle class in Venezuela, he was struggling to keep his machine-repair shop afloat amid the country’s economic collapse. In Venezuela these days, many people make just a few dollars a day. To pay for the odyssey across seven countries, Mr. Alejos sold his repair shop in his hometown of Barquisimeto in northern Venezuela for the miserly sum of $750. “That was my down payment on a new life,” he said.

Within days, Mr. Alejos found work in construction. By the second week, he was sending money home to support his 7-year-old son. Sometimes, he has been asked to work as a bartender, waiter or dishwasher. “I always show initiative, performing extra tasks here and there that my supervisor notices,” he said. “This could lead to something bigger; I’m gaining experience.” What I need now is to achieve financial stability, he said. “Next will come professional growth.” His only regret is that his schedule does not allow him to attend in-person English classes. But he has found a way to teach himself, the Duolingo language-learning app — and then he tries to practice with customers.

Alejos’ story is the story of every migrant worker I’ve ever met. Why on earth would you ever turn these people away when we need them so badly? Because we don’t know them. Because we are scared of what we don’t know.

You know who else would have been a talented, passionate migrant worker? Anne Frank. But we turned her away too, as I learned last week from a new Ken Burns documentary on PBS about America’s response to the Holocaust.

I refuse to feel guilty that I have the freedom to move and travel and live and work pretty much where I want. Damn straight I’m going to travel to Latvia. To move without fear is the most wonderful freedom, and I wish it for all.

It’s not just that the United States is a nation of immigrants. Every place is a site of migration. If you go back far enough, none of our ancestors were born where we were born. They did not speak the language that we speak. The same will surely be true of our descendants. At some point they will migrate somewhere new. I hope they are welcome.

We came so close to common-sense, bipartisan reform on immigration in 2007 and 2013. Matt Yglesias reminds us what common sense looks like:

The idea of creating a way for the majority of the undocumented population to pay a fine, pay back taxes, and receive legal status still makes sense. Removing every worker here illegally would hurt the economy, while regularizing their status so they can get bank accounts and loans would improve the economy.

The concern that amnesty would attract more illegal immigration is perfectly reasonable, so pairing this with stepped-up enforcement makes sense. And then we should create more and better paths for legal migration to the country. Some of that should be focused on green cards for people with skills. But some of it should be focused on areas like agriculture. Given that local conditions differ, we should create systems for more local voices in terms of who opts in and who opts out of receiving foreign-born workers.

These were all banal ideas in 2007 and 2013, and they were also good ones. Today, they've become unfashionable, but they’re still good.

As if the politics of getting to common sense on immigration reform weren’t difficult enough nearing the midterm elections, there’s another hurdle that is just as difficult: housing. “Progressives have welcomed migrants. Now they need to house them,” writes Bryan Walsh in a smart piece at Vox:

In Martha’s Vineyard, the affordable housing problem is so acute that the island’s only emergency-room-equipped hospital has been operating with a quarter of its staff jobs unfilled, according to the Washington Post. When the hospital’s CEO offered 19 jobs to health care workers in January, every one of them was turned down, in large part because even doctors couldn’t afford to find a year-round place to live.

Or take New York City, which I call home and where you can often see “Refugees Are Welcome” signs in the windows of nice brownstones, side by side with fliers decrying a new development. Between 2000 and 2020, New York expanded by more than 800,000 residents, yet fewer than 450,000 new apartment units and single-family homes were built during that time. Not surprisingly, in May the median rent in Manhattan reached a record $4,000 — though if you’re willing to make do in Brooklyn, you could get by with $3,250.

A useful tool

While standing in the interminable line to rebook my Lufthansa flight, I was standing next to an American retiree who was trying to get to Italy and was completely engrossed in his phone trying to learn basic Italian with Duolingo. I wanted to learn more about his trip to Italy, but he only wanted to talk about Duolingo. “Whoever invented this app is a genius,” he said and told me that if it had been around when he was my age, he would know how to speak at least 10 languages by now. I told him that Google Translate is so good now that my phone speaks 133 languages for me to which he frowned. I also told him that the genius who invented Duolingo was an immigrant from Central America. He didn’t believe me until I pulled up the search results.

If you’re interested in learning more about Duolingo, its Guatemalan founder Luis Von Ahn, and the difficulties of using artificial intelligence to teach people how to speak a language fluently, I highly recommend this interview from Jacob Goldstein’s What’s Your Problem? podcast.

Mark your calendar: technology & nostalgia

We have our next Twitter Spaces conversation lined up for Thursday October 6 at 9 am PT. I’m mega-excited for the conversation. We’ll be speaking with Sara Marie Watson and Grafton Tanner about nostalgia for old tools and technologies. Here’s an excerpt from Grafton’s book, The Hours Have Lost Their Clock: The Politics of Nostalgia:

Through memory’s prism we may see a distorted image of the past, like looking through a kaleidoscope. We might be tempted to believe that things were better back then, especially if life in the present is so chaotic. Nostalgia isn’t merely an emotion of remembrance; it’s also an emotion of control. We feel nostalgic when we sense a loss of control, when things seem totally out of control. Nostalgia can help us regain a sense of control by reminiscing on the things that once kept us grounded — even if those things never really existed in the first place.

Sara has written many pieces about the intersection of time, tech, and nostalgia. I love her poem “On Algorithmic Time.”

Have a great week!

David