Foreigners Are Heroes

Post from March 21, 2017 (↻ June 5, 2021), filed under Everything Else (feed).

Foreigners to our countries—expats, migrants, 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 a lot of 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 our likes.

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 I’ve never understood it: It’s against our own 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

I’m Jens, and I’m an engineering lead and author. I’ve worked as a technical lead for Google, I’m close to W3C and WHATWG, and I write and review books for O’Reilly. I love trying things, sometimes including philosophy, art, and adventure. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.

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