Editorial - People on the Move
18.11.2008
PEOPLE move because of the continual weight of anxiety; the gnawing feeling that no matter how hard they work their efforts will yield nothing, that what they built up in one year will be torn down in one day; because of the impression that the future is hopeless; that they might make it but not their children. They believe that nothing will change, that happiness and prosperity are possible only somewhere else. That's why people move.
Millions of people are on the move looking for security so they can live in peace; looking for a country with jobs so they can work and have enough to eat; looking for a place where their children may have a future and not become ‘collateral damage' between warring nations; looking for a country where there is a future, the promise of relief from trauma, violence, bloodshed, rape, genocide or a life cut short by malnutrition and disease, just to mention a few hazards.
To own a passport! It is more precious than gold; it's an exit from no future. But illegal people and often-trafficked people have no passport and risk everything to make a new start without one. Do we owe these people anything? Some say, ‘No, send them back, send them anywhere but here.' But our God doesn't agree with that attitude at all. God's motto is ‘Welcome the stranger for were you not strangers once yourselves?'
Fr Gary Walker
TFE@columban.org.au
Click here to read other editorials written by Fr Gary Walker
