"Our Way of Life"

When you hear people who are against the acceptance of immigrants or refugees, you usually hear their reason as, “It will change our way of life.”  This assumes that their way of life is totally static.  It assumes that at some point time has stood still for them.  It assumes that that new arrivals will be the only thing that could change their way of life.  This is nonsense.

“Our way of life” changes by the day.  Your life today is significantly different than it was three or four decades ago.  It is even different than it was ten years ago.  Our way of life changes through a myriad of ways that affect us every day.  It changes through technology, politics and medicine and many other ways.

Take technology for a start.  Who would have thought ten years ago that we would be seriously talking about self-driving cars, electric cars and cars that stop on their own?  Who could had imagined the computer power you could harness in a watch, cell phone or car infotainment system?  Who could have imagined twenty years ago the concept of smart phones when simple cell phones were in their infancy?  Every one of those changes changed our way of life to a greater or lesser degree.

Politics is an ever-changing fact that affects our way of life almost every day.  Personalities and parties change at every level of governments.  The problems faced by governments change constantly.  Who would have imagined a Donald Trump as President of the US or a Doug Ford as the premier of one of our provinces?  Some love these leaders, and some hate them.  The split they have caused in our societies was unthinkable ten years ago.  It is not only the governments that we deal with directly but the governments of other countries with other leaders.  It seems at times that the only constants in the world are Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin.  

Medicine has made enormous strides in the last ten and twenty years.  Diseases that only a few years ago were considered incurable are now treated successfully with new and improved treatments.  Fifty years ago, who would have believed in knee, hip and shoulder replacements?  

And then there is climate change.  It was unheard of thirty years ago, whispered about twenty years ago and just starting to invade our conscience ten years ago.  Now it is a constant factor in our lives.  It is visibly causing problems almost daily.  The Arctic and Antarctic are losing their ice quickly.  Severe storms are becoming more frequent and deadlier.  When we see the results of Hurricane Michael everybody must wonder.  Some deniers will say that hurricanes have been with us forever, but the rapid intensity and power of this one is almost the worst to have hit the United States and the most severe to hit Florida ever.  The biggest factor we have to be aware of is the rising temperatures of the Pacific Ocean which acts as a veritable heat sink for the planet.  And unless there is a massive, world-wide change in our actions on this one subject, it will have the greatest impact of any other factor on our way of life.

The immigrants and refugees we turn away or denigrate now will not change our way of life to near the extent than any of the above factors will.  Just as the English, the French, the Scots, the Italians and Jews and Greeks and Chinese and Ukrainians did many years ago, these new arrivals will come, settle and become good citizens in the years ahead.  It is the way life evolves in every facet and every day of our existence.