“Home”
by Warsan Shire
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilet
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back
you have to understand
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
mean something more than a journey
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one’s skin would be tough enough
the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off
or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces
i want to go home
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hungry
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave
run away from me now
i don’t know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here
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Throughout human history, climate change, war and economic collapse have been the largest drivers of mass human migrations. There is evidence that we left our ‘natural’ home in the tropical rainforests due to massive fires caused by devastating cosmic radiation, about six million years ago, when we had barely emerged as a separate species from bonobos and chimps. And that during the most recent ice age as many as 25-30% of all humans migrated long distances southward to find land suitable for human life.
Economic refugees fleeing abject poverty and starvation have been recorded from the earliest times of human civilizations.
We are now well down the road toward both global economic collapse and global ecological collapse, and massive migrations and permanent displacements of humans have again become commonplace.
In the US, at least 3.6M people now ‘attempt’ to enter the US each year (ie have ‘encounters’ with border officials). Net immigration is about 1.2M people per year, accounting for about 80% of total population growth, which is a rate of about 0.5% per year. About 6M people apply annually for permanent residence (“green cards”) from outside the country alone; about 70% of actual green cards issued are issued to people inside the country, mostly due to having spouses and family members who are already permanent residents.
By contrast, in Canada, net immigration is about 1.0M people per year, accounting for about 96% of population growth, which is a rate of about 2.7% per year. The difference is partly due to Canada’s much more generous immigration policies, especially for temporary workers and students, which account for 60% of the annual Canadian increase. And it’s partly due to the US, thanks largely to the Hollywood myths, being perceived as the most desirable country in the world in which to live a comfortable or affluent life. And it’s partly due to the fact that the US is just closer geographically to a lot of countries facing early-stage collapse.
If the US were to allow the same proportion of new immigrants as Canada, its immigrant (and total) population would be growing by about 10M people per year.
In fact, it’s likely that actual immigration to the US, including ‘unauthorized’ immigration, is vastly higher than the official reported numbers, mostly for political reasons. A recent study suggests that the latest (Trump) US census omitted 2.3% of American residents, about eight million people, almost entirely “non-citizens”, many of them living in unlisted accommodations or afraid of harassment and expulsion by the immigration cops.
Given the bleak prospects for curtailing climate collapse, and with the additional burden of global economic collapse which is already spreading to much of the Global South, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the same 25% proportion of humans uprooted after the last climate collapse, will soon be forced to emigrate, mostly northwards, long distances in search of a habitable human climate and functioning economy.
That would be two billion people. Historically the US and Canada have been the sanctuary countries for 20% and 4% respectively of emigrants — that’s 400M additional Americans (10M/year every year over the next four decades) and 80M additional Canadians (2M/year every year over the next four decades). That’s a doubling of the US population and a tripling of the Canadian population.
And the numbers for the ‘Old World’ are comparable. Large parts of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East will be utterly devastated by climate change. Economic collapse there is accelerating. An exodus of 1.4B people from those regions to Europe would almost triple Europe’s population.
Those massive population increases will be occurring at the same time significant swaths of North America (much of the central and western US states and parts of the south) and of Europe (most of the Mediterranean lands) will also become uninhabitable due to climate collapse, and their citizens will likewise be moving north.
Of course, we don’t want to think about this. There is a large and growing racist and xenophobic anti-immigrant sentiment in much of North America and Europe, and it’s not limited to right-wingers. Biden has restarted the construction of Trump’s wall, has retained most of the anti-immigrant laws and policies of his predecessor, and is about to face a huge surge in asylum claims when Trump’s draconian CoVid-19 Title 42 refugee restrictions (which the US Supreme Court blocked Biden from revoking) expire this Thursday (May 11th). Over 2M asylum applicants have been rejected each year under Title 42 since it came into effect. Biden has called in the army to “help maintain order” at the border on Thursday. And he has proposed a new rule which essentially reinstates Title 42.
These millions, the first trickle of hundreds of millions, are knowingly going through hell, selling everything and suffering from disease, injury, dehydration, heat stroke, snakebite, theft, kidnapping, ransom, extortion, and violence from ruthless smugglers, corrupt Mexican cops and American vigilantes, because they’re desperate — as Warsan’s poem so eloquently explains, anything is better than staying in their current hopeless situation. And thousands have been murdered or disappeared.
If they make it, they risk almost certain deportation back to their home countries, usually penniless. While they’re in the US, they face further dangers from xenophobic mass murderers and government-authorized vigilante gangs: Under a new law in Texas, for example, government-deputized squads of anti-immigrant citizens will be able to accost anyone in public places, demand to see papers, and arrest anyone who can’t produce them. And in Texas, anyone can ‘open carry’ guns of any size, including military weaponry, without the need for license or registration, training of any kind, or a background check. We’ve seen domestic terrorist acts in Texas this week alone by a deranged anti-Asian mass shooter, and a deranged mass murderer who used his car to slaughter Venezuelan refugees.
More struggle, suffer or die trying to access the Canada-US border to make asylum claims or escape capture on either side. But a new deal between Biden and the obsequious Trudeau is tightening up that border as well.
Laws, wars, walls, cops and vigilantes aren’t going to solve this problem. We are seeing the early signs of what is likely to become the largest humanitarian disaster in the history of our planet, and an accelerant to political, social and economic collapse. This is going to swell to become a human flood of massive proportions, and given the desperation of the people caught up in it, the border will either become the largest killing field in history or it will be unable to hold back the hordes, producing national chaos. It may not happen this year, or next, but as collapse deepens, a confrontation is inevitable. And no one is even working on an answer that acknowledges the inevitable — that in times of collapse, we’re all in the same boat, and people must ultimately be free to move to and live wherever they want.
Yet another inconvenient truth no politician will touch with a ten-foot pole.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dave Pollard publishes the blog How to Save the World, a chronicle of civilization's collapse, creative works, and essays on our culture, searching for a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works. For more information about this author, click here.
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