World Citizenship

In the video we watched in Intercultural Communication on Wednesday, November 16, 2011, I saw people being treated as if they were less valuable than a piece of paper. This is because they were refugees—“internationally displaced persons . . . victims or potential victims of persecution on the basis of their race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, gender, or political views”—who had fled their homelands out of fear (262). Thus, they did not have time to collect papers validating them as fellow humans worthy of equal treatment.

The people in the video were a part of transnational migration, a “movement in which a person regularly moves back and forth between two or more countries and forms a new cultural identity transcending a single geopolitical unit” (259). The reason for this is that they were regularly shunted from nation to nation because of their illegal status. Indeed, as illegals they were actually prevented from getting jobs and often deported.

Paradoxically, one gentleman that we saw actually attain a visa was then restricted from

leaving the country at all. The point is, then, that international laws restricting movement are highly illogical and ridiculously discriminatory. Indeed, Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” Barbara Miller refers to this as the “right of return” and explains that it was “elevated by the United Nations to an ‘inalienable right’ in 1974” (273).

However, international laws hardly allow for someone to fulfill their right to leave any country because they are then not allowed to reside anywhere else as full and equal citizens. The most common barrier is that applying for visas or green cards are extremely long, complicated, and discriminatory processes that do not lend themselves to helping foreign citizens that are in poor situations due to violence or a lack of opportunities in their home nations. For example, take a look at who may apply for visas in the United States. The list is limited to visitors, students, workers with a U.S. employer, and people with family already in the U.S. Indeed, the qualifications for a green card are the same—“green card through family . . . green card through a job”—though it does at least include “green card through Refugee or Asylee status.” However, whether or not people are really refugees is still determined by a person with a clipboard when they are “admitted to the United States.” Furthermore, the system is clearly classist. If a person is leaving his or her nation for the fact that there are no jobs and he or she has no money for school, how exactly is it that he or she should legally transition to an area with opportunities? I certainly have no answer for this question, and it seems none of the world’s nations do either.

Thus, in response to this inadequacy of laws was born the World Citizenship movement. It was created by Garry Davis, a former WWII bomber pilot, who stated that:

the essence of democracy is universal participatory decision-making, whereas the essence of national sovereignty, a hangover from the feudalism and the absolute sovereignty of kings, is exclusivity and the non-participation of citizens outside the national boundary. Citizens "belonged" to the nation only while all humans outside that nation were "foreigners," or worse, "aliens."

Indeed, the World Government of World Citizens issues the World Passport which “over 150 countries have visaed . . . on a case-by-case basis.” The passport is founded upon the tenants penned in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and “therefore it is premised on the fundamental oneness or unity of the human community.”

What is needed now is a universal acceptance of our shared humanity. To do so, we must abandon our “lifeboat mentality, a view that seeks to limit enlarging a particular group because of perceived constraints on resources” (272). Indeed, one of the most common arguments I hear against Mexican immigration to the United States is that they are taking all of our jobs. However, that is utter crap. Often, illegal immigrants take jobs a citizen would not. Also, an illegal immigrant’s residency in the United States is no more of a threat to employment than the people already living here. Indeed, additional people create a rise in demand which, in turn, leads to a rise in supply and creates more jobs.

Thus, in summation, it does not hurt us, the unduly privileged, to ensure the rights and freedoms of our fellow humans. Indeed, it serves only as a reaffirmation of the shared humanity from which all of our natural and inalienable rights derive. It follows, then, that the only injurious action is to do nothing while the freedoms of our fellow humans are impinged upon, thus debasing the very foundation upon which our own rights and governments stand.