The Irony of Immigration
Over the last 18 months I've had the privilege of calling myself an expat. Living and working in multiple countries was always a seamless process. If I needed a visa, I applied and it was granted. I never once feared it being denied. While I might not have a lot of privileges in this world, being both Black and female, having a US passport is one of them. Just two days ago, I realized at the last minute that I needed a visa for New Zealand, 4 days before my departure. Not one nervous bone in my body, I researched and realized I could just apply online and I got approved in about 10 minutes.
Working with folks from around the globe, I casually shared my experience, mostly laughing at my lack of awareness that I would need a visa for a place like New Zealand, and my colleague chuckled. You know, the chuckle that means “lucky you.” He has an Eastern European passport and for NZ he had to mail his passport in, wait for a response, and then book his flight after his visa was granted. I sat and thought. I wonder if I am missing the magnitude of what it means to enter a foreign land. Despite going through the immigration line as I enter and exit countries, I never once considered myself an immigrant, or even a foreigner, in any of these countries. I used the privilege-filled term, expat.
I’m going to take you on a bit of my own travel journey discussing three very similar countries:
South Africa. The first country I’ve ever visited.
Australia. The country I am currently working in now.
And the United States of America. The country I was born and raised in.
The history in all 3 involve Europeans, settling and colonizing the land. In Australia, the brutal genocide of the indigenous people was irrily similar to what happened in the United States towards the Native Americans. The apartheid policies in South Africa have the remnants of Jim Crow. And the migration of Europeans to these three countries came with open immigration policies for themselves, while decades later, closing the door to others who too wanted movement.
When I describe myself as an expat, It doesn't come with the negative stigma that is plaguing the world today with many policies exhibiting xenophobia- the dislike or prejudice of people from other countries. For the most part, in many places where Africans are immigrating, initially people think I am in the country contributing to its rise in population because of refugees. It is not until they ask and hear my accent that I am suddenly in a different, accepted category. The treatment towards those who are expats versus those who are immigrants is vastly different. It is almost like they are proud that I chose their country to work in, but also fighting for closed borders for those “other folks”. As an immigrant or a foreigner, I am privileged to be able to visit these countries. In many countries that I occupy, so many only dream of visiting the USA. A dream that is usually met by a denial outcome for their visa.
Immigrants decide to migrate for many reasons. Reasons that shouldn't matter. As a Black American, whose ancestors were shipped to the US, we were forced to migrate. Because of post colonization on the continent of Africa, the instability forces families to look elsewhere, and other times people flee the safety and political instability in their nations. But again, when immigration was a popular thing for Europeans, it was seen as a sign of strength to leave your country and start a new life in a place with opportunities. When people with power and privilege controlled the narrative, it was accepted. Now decades later, the same descendents of those who immigrated to many places are now forbidding it for others. We have new terms like expats that will separate us from the likes of others. But at the end of the day, I stood in the immigration line. I am an immigrant in the countries I move to in order to work. No longer will I use expat. I will join my brothers and sisters across the globe who somehow are held up at borders and scolded for their decision to start fresh. I am no different, and no better than those who come under other circumstances and me using the term, gives other people license to separate who I am from who they are. And at the end of the day we are both foreigners in this place we now call home.
