Migration is transforming the world and its many nations. It is an unstoppable force, writes Desmond Cahill, keynote speaker at a major conference today
Early one morning while out jogging in a posh Melbourne suburbs last month, "Crazy" John Ilhan, aged only 43, collapsed and died. In a typical migrant rags-to-riches story, he had come to Australia as a toddler from Turkey. His family were among the first Turks to arrive. Riding the mobile phone revolution, he set up shops known for their "crazy" prices all across Australia.
Widely mourned and much loved for his generosity, he had become one of Australia's richest individuals. His final farewell from a mosque in the poor suburb where he had grown up was the largest Muslim funeral ever in Australia.
Much earlier during the early 1970s, in one of the bitterly contested furores that regularly explode on to the Australian political scene, it was debated whether Turkish migration was in Australia's short-term or long-term interests. The latest furore has focused on the southern Sudanese refugees.
The low-skilled Turkish group, because of the cultural distance to be travelled, did take a considerable time to integrate as the urban villagers they have become. Now they and their sons and daughters are fully functioning citizens of the Australian cultural mosaic.
People are on the move as they always have been, whether it was Abram from Ur of the Chaldees moving to the promised land of Israel or my own ancestors from Co Kerry moving to Australia in the late 1860s.
Some might describe the tensions between the British Protestants and Irish Catholics, so central to Australian history for 170 years until the early 1970s, as a cultural or religious conflict. Certainly there was conflict but it was never ever systemically murderous.
It is preferably framed in terms of cultural ferment and religious accommodation. In their urban and rural settings, in their pubs and on their farms, the Irish migrants were to find their political and employment niches particularly through the public service, the police force and the Australian Labor Party rather than through big business and international commerce.
It was Irish Australia's greatest achievement to have prevented Australia from becoming the "little Britain of the South", much as this was desired by the Anglo-Australian pseudo-aristocratic squattocracy. Each immigrant and refugee community has made and continues to make its contribution. And there are still lessons to be learned from the distant and recent past.
Across the world we are seeing the formation of migration societies led by the United States, Canada and Australia. More than 200 million (one in 35 of the world's population) live outside their country of birth. Ireland has joined the lengthening list of those developed countries becoming migration societies.
The economic success of these countries has brought about a lower birth rate, a highly-skilled workforce, an ageing population. The pensions of older Australians now depend on the work of younger immigrant Australians as does their health care in nursing homes. Younger mainstream Australians no longer want to do the dirty, difficult and dangerous jobs.
The north-south divide is the main driver of these planned and unplanned migration movements. But there are many other types of movements such as the professional elites working for international agencies and businesses, highly-skilled tradesmen on worksites across the world, the contract workers led by the Filipinos working in places such as Japan and the Middle East as well as the refugees and asylum seekers, the great nuisances of the world who demand our compassion and welcome.
In the future, there will be the environmental refugees. These migrant journeys may result from personal choice, dire necessity or ethnic cleansing.
The Chinese have a saying, "chickens do not marry ducks". Yet more and more, young people are partnering each other across cultural and racial and religious barriers. Then there are the temporary migrations, not least the international students.
All developed countries are grappling with the impact, even countries as assertively homogeneous as Japan and South Korea. Their populations are resistant to the stranger but they know it is inevitable. The issue has become not whether to have migrants but how to manage their entry and settlement and gain the maximum benefit. Social cohesion is the new focus.
In the political debates, the noise from the extremities can become intense. The industrial left will cry out that migrants will be exploited by bosses with their wages undercutting those of the mainstream workforce. The environmental left will argue "no more migrants. The country is full. The environment will be irreparably damaged."
On the right, the arguments are more culturally based on the grounds of the dangers to the national identity and the nation's cultural and religious patrimony. The religious right will say, "other faiths are the work of Satan".
After several decades of economic disputation, it is agreed, certainly in the Australian and Canadian cases, that migration, when planned, creates demand and thus economic growth; state funds devoted to settlement, educational and welfare services are soon outweighed by the economic pluses.
Adult migrants arrive partly or fully trained. The settler nation does not have to bear the educational and training costs.
But a well-formulated settlement policy does demand an education system to meet the language and other educational needs of immigrant children. Refugee children may be only partly or even unschooled.
The state educational authorities, in liaison with the universities, must demand a world-class response by the education system as they build up the specialised capacities to assist integration.
Another gain is that diversity is increased, especially productive diversity which relates to the specialised knowledge and the cultural and linguistic skills migrants bring. If properly utilised, all this can create new business and commercial opportunities as well as cultural enrichment.
Migration generally results in the creation of a multi-faith society. In the case of Australia, over the past decade migration has meant that the country has become more religious but in a different way while also becoming more secularised as more Catholics and Protestants become disenchanted with organised Christianity.
All this means an expansion of the national identity. In Australia, national identity is constantly being expanded despite the attempt by the prime minister to base it on rural and outback Australia, sporting achievements and military exploits. We are learning there are different ways of being Australian. And this diversity is enriching, especially in a globalising world.
Just as in India, to be Indian cannot be equated with being Hindu, despite the arguments of the BJP Party; so too in Italy, now home to an estimated four million migrants. To be Italian can no longer equate with being Catholic.
Pope Benedict may wish Europe to remain Christian but it is a forlorn hope as population movements occur and the population base of Christianity moves from the rich countries of the North to the poor countries of the South.
All migration is a risk. Some migrants die poor and lonely deaths. Measures have to be put in place to counter racism, bigotry and personal and institutional discrimination, the dark underbelly of developed migration states.
In the global village, loving your neighbour has become more difficult. But migration is at the core of the Judaeo-Christian heritage as is welcoming the stranger. The Holy Family is the exemplar of the refugee returnee family.
And loving the neighbour down the street who is very different from yourself in skin colour, culture and religion can be very rewarding and enriching.
Prof Desmond Cahill is professor of intercultural studies at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. He is the keynote speaker at From Pastoral Care to Public Policy - Journeying with the Migrant, a conference today, tomorrow and on Friday organised by the Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference. Further information from www.catholiccommunications.ie