One of the bad bits of life on a boat is the fact that, although we pay licensing fees equivalent to council tax, we do not have mail service, garbage pickup, or any recycling facilities.
Just now I stomped off muttering about isolationism and did a bit of, uh, vigorous recycling, flinging all of my accumulated glass in the municipal bins.
It is so satisfying to break things.
Then I wandered around the corner store, where the immigrant shopkeepers can routinely be found taking tender care of elderly people and customers undergoing chemotherapy. They always call me dear and genuinely seem to care – about me, the neighborhood, the city.
I am aware that I enjoy certain privileges denied other people based on income, ethnicity, or other factors. The recent fight to get equal rights for all Ghurka soldiers – people who put their lives on the line for this empire, only to be denied equal access to services – underscored the disparity of the system.
Knowing that doesn’t make me feel any better.
One of the few things that binds all immigrants together is the fact that we are displaced. Some of us move for economic opportunities, others are fleeing war and famine, but we have left one life behind in the hopes that we can build another.
To be told that we are not wanted is a harsh rebuke.
My life started by accident and proceeded in a perilous fashion. I grew up in poverty, with cancer, and fought hard just to stay alive. I will always be scarred, literally, by my past.
I’m also the plucky outsider who worked my way through school as a single teenage mother. I played the system – and won. Yet I chose to leave my homeland as a deliberate political protest, seeking a new home in a place that offers health care and basic services to all.
I do not wish to be the poster child of any cause (no matter how worthy). In this particular debate, the fundamental truth is that I am not exceptional – I am just one face amongst many, a person who wishes to live and work and contribute in a society that values the presence of people like me.
Is that desire just a fantasy? Have I wasted years of my life caring about a country that would rather I just go away?
How alarming.