Last night I had drinks with some people at a pub. I was shocked and astounded to find out that parents of the one people were planning on immigrating from SA to Australia.
Why the blog post? Well let me put it to you this way. In my experience people like to talk about how crappy their situation is, how unhappy they are and how they want to leave. When the truth of the matter is that they neither want to move or are able to move financially. Not to Australia or anywhere else for that matter.
It seems to have become trendy to discuss where you want to live when you leave. It seems to have become dinner party chatter. I think it’s crap and it irritates me.
My immediate take on immigration is that it is such an extremely personal choice that it shouldn’t be thrown about like a game. It’s not a game. It’s not a game for you, your family, friends, country and lifestyle/livelihood.
I say it’s not a game because most people really don’t think it through in its entirety. Immigrating is not about escaping crime, it’s not about the political state of the nation that you live in, it’s not about power cuts or anything other than your personal outlook on things.
You need to move if you personally feel that your quality of life would be improved anywhere else (or the place where you intend to move to). You should not be leaving any country or lifestyle for one factor alone. It needs to be you deciding to better your life. If you are running away, trust me, your problems will follow you.
Then another friend of mine decides to mention that when he completes his studies here in SA he is leaving to go to the UK. Why? Because he will never find a job here, he’s white, young and semi-privileged, thus he believes that he will never, ever, ever find work in SA.
Let me clarify my stance on this point; yes affirmative action is around and yes it affects some people at some point. But in my personal experience (including my friends and associated friends groups) it has not affected anyone detrimentally. At all, ever. All of my friends graduated from university and got jobs. Not within a year, not within five, but from the time of graduation within months.
There are exceptions to everyones rule, there are cases that defy what you think is normal, or actually taking place. In the end the most irritating part of the entire discussion was that the end result is personal. The best part is that there are people in SA who are passionately, defiantly and overtly proud to be here, live here and build a life here. That makes me happy, that keeps me going.
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February 14th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
I couldn’t agree more mate.. great post!
February 15th, 2008 at 7:37 am
I thought you were going to write about immigration, and the cops raiding a Joburg church and arresting 1500 people and then ending up charging only 15.
But then I find you are writing about EMigration… there is a difference, you know!
February 15th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Steve, not sure what your point is – are you trying to poke at me about my opinions from another blog post that I commented on? Do you not like a particular opinion of mine? Or are you arguing semantics, because if you are and you’ve done your dictionary searches you’ll note that emigration and immigration differ only slightly in their definitions. One is defined as “The migration of people into a country” and the other as “The migration of people out of a country”.
So what is your point exactly?
February 15th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Using the “em” is grammatically more correct than using “im”, when referring to your – the writer’s – point of view. When you’re leaving your country, you’re “emigrating”. When people move to your country, they’re “immigrating”.
For example, South Africa’s illegal “immigrant” problem relates to those jumping the border into SA. South Africa’s “emigrant” problem would relate to the brain drain.
Similarly, it’s like saying “I am in Cape Town right now, but am coming to Joburg over Christmas.” It’s not correct.
Regarding your topic, I disagree. No topic is taboo, and no topic should be regulated, no matter how uncomfortable it makes you feel. The reason why the conversation surrounding emigration has become so trivial, is the same reason why conversations about how many rapes and murders we experience daily; we even turn them into stats and figures used in comparisons. We even joke about it, and refer to other countries as “sissies”. The reason why discussing emigration is so trivial, is because human values and life, in SA, are so trivial. We trivially converse about what age little girls, who don’t even have tits yet, and their right to abort babies. The reason why talking about emigration is so trivial, is the same reason my friends and family joke about how many times they’ve been stabbed and hijacked at gun point. “Only four times? That’s nothing. Try seven times, china!”
February 15th, 2008 at 11:17 am
You hit it spot on your analysis on ahem EMigration is so true and it’s encouraging to see people feel so positive about our country. Thank you so much it really means a lot.
ROCK ON!
February 15th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Jeremy – Thanks for the grammatical corrections!!
And I agree with everything that you’ve said. Something that we have to be cautious of here is becoming complacent with our situation. That is never a good thing. What we need to ensure is that we are constantly checking and rechecking our situation and our opinions on things. Thus, emigrating is an NB topic of discussion because the world is a smaller and more accessible place to be nowadays.
February 15th, 2008 at 8:00 pm
I understands Nick’s point and I live South Africa but having lived in South Korea for 3 years has made me see a lot of things differently. I am not planning to emmigrate anywhere right now but I may in the future. From my own personal experience the problems of crime, lack of planning, lowering of education standards (I’m a teacher so I have seen the system go down firsthand) etc etc are prety bad in comparison to a large percentage of the world. I can walk around safely 24 hours a day in Korea without fear. I can leave my camera in an internet cafe or on the street and no one will take it. I can leave my keys outside in n my apartment door and sleep the whole night safely (I have done so by mistake). South Africans problems did not follow me there… I’m sorry to say but we do have problems, perhaps you have gotten to used to a life behind burglar bars and with ADT but it’s not like that in a lot of other places and I can totally understand why people talk of emigrating…
August 15th, 2009 at 11:00 am
do you see any SA cities?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Most_Livable_Cities
http://www.citymayors.com/features/quality_survey.html
http://www.economist.com/markets/rankings/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13809770