WHAT IF THEY DON’T IMMIGRATE? I teach English to Muslims every day and have done so for nearly seven years. I have taught 6000 of them and am friends with many of them.

Now and then one of them writes me that he thinks he will go to Europe as an illegal immigrant. Everyone in the Middle East can claim refugee status and fear for his life.

I ask them “Do you have an apartment/house to live in? Do you have neighbors you know and relatives nearby? Do you wear decent clothes and do you have good meals on your table every day? Are your children in school? Do you have a decent job?” They always answer yes, but say they can have a better life somewhere else.

I tell them, “You will end up in a country where you will be competing with the local people for a job, and it is likely that, even if you have a PhD, you will end up with something menial or with no job at all. With no job, you will have to go on welfare and live in an immigration camp. You think you will be safer there, but it will be full of other frustrated men with nothing to do but walk around and think about how badly things turned out.

You will end up with no familiar neighbors, no family, no apartment or house, no job, handouts for food and clothing, and you will lose all the dignity you have right now and have always had.”

Upon hearing that, they always tell me they guess they will stay where they are.

(P.S. I think we are just a little bit arrogant to claim living in our country is much better than living in someone else’s country. Yes, ISIS kills.  But so do street gangs and other dangerous people in the western world. I have Muslims students in the Middle East who invite me to come to their country all the time.)

#Immigration, #Borders, #Walls, #Muslims, #Middle East