Jens Oliver Meiert

Foreigners Are Heroes

Published on Mar 21, 2017 (updated Mar 21, 2024), filed under (feed). (Share this on Mastodon or Bluesky?)

Foreigners to our countries—expats, immigrants, refugees—are heroes. Foreigners, people like you and I, add to our lives and our cultures. Foreigners deserve our respect and our support.

Foreigners are heroes because moving countries, no matter whether temporarily or permanently, and no matter whether voluntarily or involuntarily, requires courage.

Foreigners add to our lives and our cultures because they bring change and variety, they challenge and expand our world views, and they actively help and actually strengthen us and our economies, no matter how hard some of our nations try to make it difficult for them to contribute.

Foreigners deserve our respect and our support because traveling and moving abroad comes with risks—therefore requiring courage—and always means leaving behind, and possibly never seeing again, people and possessions.

Foreigners are heroes. Let’s be kind and welcoming to foreigners, just as we wish to be kind to ourselves.

Exceptions, now, prove the rule, and then, perhaps, what the message probably boils down to is that we’re all heroes. That’s again what makes xenophobia so sad, and hard to understand: It’s against our humanness, and people would only need to examine their concerns, or try to be compassionate, or leave their country just once to see beyond.

About Me

Jens Oliver Meiert, on November 9, 2024.

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a web developer, manager, and author. I’ve been working as a technical lead and engineering manager for companies you’ve never heard of and companies you use every day, I’m an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (I value you being critical, interpreting charitably, and giving feedback.)