We perceive human immigration primarily as a political issue today. It has been a social phenomenon as long as there have been people. Immigration has been a feature of hominid life from long before Homo sapien sapiens. Homo erectus immigrated out of Africa to Eurasia about 1.5 million years ago. Homo sapiens left their African home range in waves starting about 60,000 years ago following migratory herds of hoofed mammals, results of neighborly encroachment, and climate changes. Piecing together these movements keep paleontologists very busy.
Immigration from one physical location to another in the historic periods is most often a result of people escaping inhumane treatment, warfare, and environmental catastrophe.
The Book of Exodus in the Hebrew canon is a story of a people, the Jews, escaping slavery in Egypt and immigrating to Canaan starting in c. 1447 BCE. To be sure there was local resistance to this mass migration (either 30,000 or 2 million people depending on the contradictory accounts in Numbers). The Passover seder is a recounting of the travails of these people that is retold every year in Jewish homes.
In the Americas, in recent centuries people were torn from their African homelands and brought in chains as slaves. Some Europeans escaped religious persecution. Others from Anglo-Europe as indentured servants. People left Ireland as a result of famines. Decades of internal strife had left a legacy of violence, social chaos, and widespread poverty that led to a widespread Italian immigration in the late 19th, early 20th centuries. Asians immigrated due to economic and physical hardships. Many people from around the world immigrate seeking opportunities not available to them in the lands of their birth.
Immigration is becoming much more prominent in our daily lives. As the climate crises intensifies people are escaping the climatic effects, as well as the political instability that results from climate disruption.
People traveling from one geographic location to another, often thousands of miles from one place to another, has always been fraught with danger and dissatisfaction by the emigres, as well as the population receiving them.
Recently there has been a large influx of emigres from Central America and Mexico to the Hudson Valley, Albany and beyond. The asylum seekers and undocumented aliens are escaping violence and political reprisals in their homelands.
There is also a racial component to this. Those escaping violence in the Ukraine are being welcomed and settled as easily as possible, while those escaping violence coming over the Mexican border are being first relegated to prison like conditions, then meeting opposition from the locals.
The residents of the community they are moving into are concerned because the immigrants do not speak English, they are concerned about untoward effects to school systems, social services allocated, and the immigrants do not share ‘American’ values. This does not mean the current residents are xenophobic, they are concerned with the unknown.
My heart goes out to both the immigrants and the residents. They are both confronted by situations that are not of their making.
An exception to the restriction of people moving to the area is Albany, a Sanctuary City by declaration of the Common Council and the Mayor’s office. Mayor Kathy Sheehan has welcomed the refugees, along with the County Executive, Dan McCoy, they are working with the Mayor of New York city, Eric Adams, and Governor Kathy Hochul to facilitate this process.
Just across the river in Rensselaer New York, the county executive, Steven McLaughlin has taken the opposite tact and issued an executive order not permitting hotels and motels in the county to take in refugees from New York City. “He fired off this edict against migrants, inferring that they would send the very worst people here to take away our “scarce” resources, a scarcity that has more to do with budgets than the border.”
To make matters even more fraught, I have had conversations recently with first generation immigrants from Europe and Latin America who are highly critical of the accommodations we extend toward the immigrants. There is the attitude that they, the first-generation immigrants, had to struggle to make a life in their adopted homeland. Why should we be so welcoming and accommodating to the latest crop of emigres?
This is where our Buddhist practice should dictate our response, speaking specifically of the Four Brahma Viharas, You will see these referred to in different contexts as the Four Divine States of Dwelling, Four Immeasurables, or the Four Perfect Virtues.
The four states are metta (loving kindness), karuna (compassion), Muditā (sympathetic joy), and upekkha (equanimity). We encounter these in our meditations. As is indicated by the various names that are used, they go beyond our time on the cushion and should be an integral part of our way of being. These four states inter-relate and support each other.
Metta is unconditional caring and love for another. As it is recorded in the Pali canon, Metta, “dwells pervading the entire world everywhere and equally with one’s heart filled with loving-kindness, abundant, grown great, measureless, free from enmity and free from distress.”
This is a quality of treating others as one’s own child. There should be no difference in how we treat others, whether they are next door neighbors or persons recently arrived from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria, or Guatemala. This is difficult, in practice, because we are much more accepting of those who we know and with whom we have relationships. It does suggest a sense of getting to know people before we begin to judge them by their place of origin, color of skin, or other perceived differences.
Once we know someone, or a group, we can express our compassion or karuna. This is a realization that all sentient beings exist in each other and take identity from each other Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva is the embodiment of compassion. This requires prajña (wisdom) and upaya (skillful means).
Immigrants that come to any community give as much, or more, than they receive. According to national data, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes, be involved in violence, they provide labor for many jobs that go unfilled by native born people, and they are more likely to start new businesses. Compassion requires us to assist them to be contributing members of our communities.
Specifically addressing a common refrain from the xenophobic people as well as recent immigrant who are derisive of new immigrant is Muditā. This is the joy one feels in the happiness of others. We start with empathy. Cultivation of Muditā is an antidote to envy and jealousy. Cultivation of Muditā is a prerequisite for developing metta and karuna. It is often overlooked, and at times, dismissed as too altruistic. If one is not attached to self, it is not altruism it is Thusness.
Equanimity is a quality oft sought after and difficult to obtain. It is a mind in balance, free of discrimination and rooted in insight. This should not be confused with apathy or indifference. It is the dynamic state that occurs when the three previous Brahma Vihara are practiced fully. In order to achieve it one must acknowledge and practice the insight of anatman,
Taken together all of the Brahma Vihara provide a useful template for approaching the seeming intractable immigration problem. As individuals if we practice Loving Kindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy and Equanimity, we become a light into the darkness of our corner of the world.
With Love and Gassho . . . Monshin