Vanessa Hayes, a geneticist at the Garvan Institute for Medical Research in Sydney, points out in an article published in the journal "Nature" that human beings with their anatomical characteristics as we know them today, had their origins roughly 200,000 years ago by the south of the Zambezi River in Africa. If that's real, as science suggests, how can we explain that we are present and scattered throughout the globe? The answer is migration. According to different theories, our ancestors began to migrate looking for resources 150,000 years ago towards what we now know as the Middle East. Then, they advanced to all of Asia, Europe, Oceania, and the Americas.
Migration is in our DNA, we only have to think about how many times we have changed house, city, or state (and even country) to realize that migrating is part of our human nature, as a response to our need to look for a better future. But what about those whose migration is not part of a plan? With those who must leave their place of origin to safeguard their lives. Those who migrate just with the clothes they are wearing sometimes leave behind belongings and even those they love? Those who flee for political, religious, or sexual orientation reasons? Those who migrate within their country or even cross continents seeking to reach a country that promises to be that land where Milk and Honey flow?
Human beings are specialists in generating categories to talk about these realities; we speak of forced displacement, internal displacement, displacement abroad, border crossing, migratory caravans, migratory exodus, refugees, internal migration, asylees, dreamers, undocumented, deported, etc. However, and here is the central point of my reflection, in the middle of these categories. Because we recognize migration as something typical of the human species, we lose sight of a profound reality: behind those categories, behind that human reality, there are real human beings, people of flesh and blood who live and suffer because of the migratory fact.
Once, I had the opportunity to speak with someone precisely about the issue of the faces of migration, the people who suffer when migrating. That person told me something like this: I don't understand why it is so difficult for people to migrate. They should be grateful for having the opportunity to go to a new context, they are fleeing a problem, and I love to travel. After hearing it, I told him: I have also traveled a lot; I lived for four months on an island in the Colombian Caribbean (at that time, I had not yet come to serve here in the US); But it is different migrate for work, study, or because you want a new context, or because the money you receive from your pension will reach you more in another place, or because your doctor asked you to migrate to an area with a more favorable climate, that you have to do it to continue living because you can starve, or they can kill you because you are or think differently, or simply because there is a war in your country.
This person, with whom she spoke, continued to tell me: yes, but for that suffering in their place of origin, they should be grateful for the horizon that awaits them. Then, with resignation, I said to him: I don't understand why you think they should be grateful; they left behind what they knew, family, friends, food, language. They frequently go to places where they are looked at poorly because they look different, eat differently, speak a foreign language, or have a particular accent. And if that were not enough, the regulations of our countries are an obstacle, because in many places they cannot travel without permits. So, when they arrive at a location, whatever it is, they must go through legal procedures after which they may not be sheltered but perhaps deported to their place of origin, reliving the same drama from which they are fleeing.
This person told me that he did not know anything about it, that he imagined that everything was as easy as it happened to us when we moved to another city or asked for a scholarship to study. I finally told him no, that we are privileged in many ways because there are others who suffer and are victims who re-victimize themselves because of the response we give to migration.
I don't know if that person was Christian or not, this conversation happened at the University. But, still, if I had my partner in front of me today, I would say to him: do you know what the most challenging thing about this issue is for those of us who call ourselves Christians? That we are called to see the face of Jesus in those who migrate, those who venture to leave their land simply seeking to continue living, and who along the way are the victims of scorn, pointing out, and who are even returned to their country of origin.
Padre Nelson Serrano-Poveda is the Latino Missioner for EDSJ and is a member of SJRAISE.