Sometimes, I keep feeling sorry for myself during my pre-exam periods. Why the hell do I have to memorise all the stupid points, which I ll never use in my life again? Is there no one who would appreciate my understanding of a certain topic, my ideas, my views and then grade me on that basis? Why do I have to memorise tons of uneccesary information, to get a college degree and then hopefully find a job I find at least a bit interesting and shuffle papers around till the end of my life. What is wrong with the society and especially the educational system to allow such irrationalities? Isn't it unfair for them to make my life so damn hard? Do you feel me?
Then, after my second lunch, I stumbled onto an interesting article when shuffling through the free newspaper we get each friday. It was about illegal imigrants, and the "bad bad people" who are abusing them and charging them up to 8000 euros to get them to The West. My first thought was, wow the black market imigration prices are rising again. But then I started thinking... how much must 8000 euros mean to such a person? Where do they get these kind of money? Where do they come from?
Well the answer is quite obvious. The poor countries, with extremely high levels of unemployement, where there is no real working educational system whatsoever, where all the things we take for granted don't exsist.
And most of these people probably give ( = invest) all they have to someone who "organises" a pilgrimage to the promissed land for them...where most of them will have to work hard on low paid positions, or even on the black market to earn some money to send back to their families. Some of them will succed, but most of them probably won't. But although they are probably aware of the low chances they have to get to the West and even lower of earning a good living, that doesn't stop them from trying ( investing everything they have).
And what did You and I have to invest to get to where I am or will be? Let us be honest, not much really... And we keep on complaining, how hard it is. I don't say that is a bad thing, because that is the only way things will improve, but do we really see all the glorious things we can achieve from our starting point? What promised land can we find if we invest and work as much as illegal imigrants, and stop being so conformative?
Time to get back to work!
5 comments:
I love this post of yours! I like it because you are writing about people I care a lot about and I am happy to hear people thinking about one of the most adverse global problems in the world we live in. And it is great when the story remindes you how lucky you are, having much of that they want so much, but we do not let them have it. But I think it is important you do not stop here. You should not be satisfied with what you have only because you have more than they do. What if they are blinded even more than we are? What if they think they want something that will destroy them as it has maybe even started to destroy us but we just do not notice, being blinded with all the material goals in front of us? Is not the kind of education you are talking about just a good example of the destruction of our values? I think it is right you are suffering when learning all that crap, because it is just a good sign that you have not lost yourself just yet. You still have values, you still believe in "non-material" education, and you are not a borring person :-). Keep on moaning, but do not stop learning. You are right, sometimes we have to do things we do not want to.
V.
I have read a pretty interesting article about this topic quite some time ago in Sobotna priloga and there was something about it in the last Economist. The main problems mentioned are usually the high number of illegal immigrants coming to Europe etc. I believe that this much of a problem indeed, however the way the problem is dealt with, is just inhumane. The EU pays about 30.000.000? to the Morrocan police for protecting their Northern border, meaning they pay them for not letting illegal immigrants get to Spain. So far it is still understandable. But let's take a short look at how the Morrocan police is 'keeping them away'. Immigrants are abused, they become victims of physical violence, many get injured very badly. And they are being sent to the Algerian border and they still keep coming back and get sent back again and they get abused and we are paying for it. That is just one way of dealing with it, one of thousand possible ways, but this particular example makes me be ashamed of being a citizen of the EU.
But then the question remains: why do they keep coming? Even if they get to Spain or any other country they have to hide, they can only work illegaly and the wages they get are low. Besides that they get no health insurance etc. They keep coming because they don't want to tell their families they didn't suceed and because they don't tell them, families think that the West is the paradies on earth and even more keep coming. And what does the promised land do? Sponsor a brutal police to keep these very same people away. I know that the EU probably can't absorb so many immigrants as there are coming every month, but there gotta be better ways of dealing with the problem than just making borders more secure. Because what is happening now after the borders from Morroco to Spain are nearly imposible to pass? The immigrants go to islands like the Canarias, which are nearly 1000 km away from the coast of Senegal for example (I just read that example, so forgive me for not knowing any others). The boats they travel in are small and inappropriate for long journeys, which take them several days. Many of the travellers die on their way. Can this be called solving the problem? I can't think of a way to help them, but I feel so sorry for them. So many disappointed dreams...
P.S. Good luck with your exams.
To V. (from V for Vendetta? :) ):
It is sad to know how many people suffer. The worst part is that most of us are pretty much ignorant of this topic, because we have to fill our brains with other uneccessary information. ( not talking only about german law doctrine here ;) ) Thanks for reminding me I am not boring.
BTW: Well actually we only do things we want, but the problem is that some things come in pacages you have to take as a whole :) .
To Sestrca: I have been in maroco and took a one day bus tour. We ( all turists) were stopped and checked 4 times that day. And the policmen were very unpolite to us, I only wonder what they are doing to "others". And now you tell me that we are paying them for that?
Sad
In my view the problem lies in the inequal developement of the regions. And it is a completely rational that people move from where is little and much negative to what they percieve as positive. But the problem is that we who have plenty, don't want to share that, live with them. So we ( the West take the easiest way out. We build barriers. Instead we should focus our attention to making all regions more equal. How? Removing the subsidies for EU farming, opening our borders to products from these countries ( lowering the costs of them getting here)... instead of leving these countries to exploitations by corporations which are doing what they have been created for: Maxsimising profits and not really caring about anything else. This second way is probably harder, but it is the only way to solve the problem in the long run.
PS: Good luck with your Matura exams.
No, not from V for Vendetta, more likely from the Match Point ;-). Have you seen the movie? It is brilliant on the point I tried to make here.
And yes, I agree with both of you - it is repellent how we treat people who are trying to move in our world, having no chances to prosper in their homeland. Marocco police is shooting at people trying to enter Spain teritory, thousands of corpses are found at the south coast of Spain each year, in near future the big wall is likely to grow on the border between Mexico and USA ... And European Union and its Member States are building "legislative wall" on the EU external borders to prevent unwanted third country nationals entering our sacred land. But the worst part of the whole story is that by that kind of approach we are breaching international refugee law standards. Among illegal immigrants are also people who are running away from their countries owing to fear of persecution. And instead of protecting all the people who really need international protection by reason of political persecution, even for the cost of accepting some of those illegal immigrants who are "only" running away from hunger, we rather assume restrictive approach, turning away as many asylum seekers as possible, even if there are some "genuine" refugees among them. And of course - Slovenia is no angel.
And V. is for Vida, no deep story behind ;-).
Yes V. one of the best movies I have seen recently. BTW, Nice mask :)
Bush sent 6000 troops on mexican border today.
I must addmit I am no expert on the topic, but as I have read the institute of asylium is very often abused. And the legal wall you are talking about is probably "solving" this problem. Infringing human rights is probably only collateral damage...
Perhaps you should create your own blog on this topic, so you could tell us some interesting facts about this problem.
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