African-European Migration and the Ironies of History

There was an interesting feature in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle entitled, "GLOBALIZATION COMES FULL CIRCLE: Illegal immigration from Africa repeats a cycle that began with early humans following their food supply to other continents". The piece puts the most recent waves of immigration from Africa to Europe in a historical context by pointing out that it is only a larger repeat of countless migrations going back 60,000 years. It is instead the degree of income inequality between wage earners in Dhaka, Senegal and Barcelona, Spain (the two cities mentioned in the article) that encourages countless thousands to brave the Atlantic Ocean waters between Senegal and the Canary Islands in hope of a better life. Of curse, one could say the same about those who die suffocating in overheated trucks or dehydrated in the Sonora Desert while crossing our southern border. This week as a heavily muddled immigration "reform" bill died a murky death in the US Senate, it is important to remind ourselves of the plight of the immigrant and of the often brutal hypocrisy that that we in the developed world find ourselves in when debating a subject which at its center is so simple to comprehend both emotionally and economically.