Discrimination in a country that is not your home country

The reasons why people decide to leave their home country and to immigrate to another can be slightly different, but mostly the main reason is the desire for a better future, for a more secure life.

It can be a mother that wishes a better life for her children or a father that wants to support the family.

It can also be a child that wants to offer his parents everything that he can, as a reward for all the sacrifices that they did for him since the day he was born. All the parents are sacrificing themselves from the moment they decide to have a child and raise him.

It can be a sister or a brother that wants to help with the expenses of the family or to pay for the treatment of a beloved one.

It can be a partner that wants to build a family and wants to have a stable income and good living conditions.

It can be even a grandmother or a grandfather that, as a last resource to support the family, they decide to leave their home at a late age.

No one immigrates for the sake of immigrating. That is something different called travel or is a luxury that some people have, to choose in which country they want to live, but immigration is a powerful word that holds different ways of defining the real meaning.

Nevertheless, immigration is produced also by wars. Everyone has the right to live in a safe environment, without violence.

Very few people will stop, sit next to you, and invest the time, and the interest to find out the reason why you decided to immigrate. People are just busy with their own stuff and do not want to find the time to listen to the others, some of them they also do not care, they just immediately judge.

Her own definition of immigration was that is an action forced by the circumstances, to change the environment where you were until then.

In her situation, she decided to leave because she realized that, the system she was living in, will not allow her to have a good level of life equivalent to the amount of work that she will be supposed to do. At her age, 18 years old, she realized already that this was just not fair and at some point, the system was failing.

She used the opportunity that she had familiars already living abroad and left her homeland. She left behind her family, she left behind her friends, she left behind everything she knew, she left behind her comfort zone with the risk to lose the close connection she had with the beloved ones until then.

When she arrived there, she will notice a slight tendency of some people to discriminate foreigners.

She will notice a difference in the percentage of the people working in the factories. Most of them were foreigners and most of the people in higher positions will be native people.

She will notice a difference in the people that were working in the restaurants as waitress, cleaners, dishwashers; most of them were foreigners.

She will notice a difference in the people working in the fields and collecting the fruits under a hot sun during the summer; most of them were foreigners.

She will notice a difference in people working in the cleaning department; most of them were foreigners.

And she will notice the look on their face when she will say where she was coming from. People that judge without even knowing the story of someone, people that judge without even caring, people that judge without even knowing how the system from that respective country works and what is failing, what makes people abandon their own country.

What pushed all those people away, to leave that safe environment that they known all their life for something completely unknown? It is sad, but I do not know how many of you genuinely asked those questions: “What made you leave?”, “What made you leave your mother crying at the door without knowing when she will see you again?”, “What made you leave your little kids behind knowing that when you will come back they might me grownup?”, “What made you leave your pregnant wife, knowing that you will not assist the born of your first child?”, What made you leave your grandparents, knowing they will pass away and you will not be able to assist their funeral?”.

It is so easy to judge people by their appearance, by their origins, by their way of dressing, and to put a stupid label, but if we will really care for people, you will try to find out their story.

Many think that they come to steal the jobs, even though mostly are jobs that the locals do not want to do, that they come to take advantage of the system, that they come to steal the women or the men, to impose their religion, but is nothing like that.

Next time when you see a foreigner, think that he is doing that bad paid job because he will do everything to offer his family a better future.

Most of them run from poverty, most of them run from the war, most of them run from a cruel, corrupt system, most of them just want an honest job with an honest income. And the exceptions that you see, those punctual cases, are this: just exceptions.

She will feel bad in the beginning, she will start to feel ashamed to say where she was coming from, she will feel sad sometimes, but with the time she will grow older and a bit wiser and she will not care anymore about what people will say or think.

One time someone beloved said to her: “If people will get to know you how you are then they will have a good opinion about your country, so do not be afraid to show yourself how you really are and where you are coming from!” That hunted her for some years.

She will not care anymore for those people that did not take the time to get to know her. It does not matter where you are coming from, because in each country you have good and bad people, but as long as you are a good and respectful person, well educated; and I am not talking about expensive universities, and you have good values, this are the most important things in life.

I am here right now, in a random restaurant crowded with people from all over the world, thinking about all this regarding all that is happening everywhere in the world.

I do not pretend the foreigners to have the same rights as the natives, but as long as they are doing an honest job and earn their money, and pay the same taxes, we all should be treated the same, without any kind of difference regarding our nationality.

Being born in a different country does not make you a better or a worse person!

I learned with the time not to judge people, in general, and I think this is a long process because the society teaches racism sometimes.

If you have never been in that respective country, that you cannot have a fair opinion just with the things you see in the media.

The only borders we have is our mind because is a free world to travel and discover!

Travel, open your mind, form your own opinion unrelated to the things you see in the media, talk to the people, listen to the people, go to the roots of an action, and only then you will be able to have a fair opinion about a topic or a person.

Are you that kind of person that is afraid of the unknown?

Version in Spanish: https://journeywithmada.com/historia-nr-9/

Version in Romanian: https://journeywithmada.com/povestea-nr-9/