The first week of July is very important to those in North America. Both the U.S.and Canada celebrate their Special Day, when everyone takes a day off work (or more) to celebrate their unshackling from an Imperial past with beer, sausage products, and fireworks. To me it often feels more than just a birthday; almost a groundswell of thanks for everyone that has ever lived in those countries, it is a celebration of the human spirit, more than just a Federal decree that everyone should enjoy baseball.
So should those that were born in these countries feel the same, no matter where they are? Obviously, this modern world is now home to millions of people born in one place, and now living or working abroad. Should those take their own special day, and celebrate how clever and industrious their forefathers were, no matter where they are on the planet? Of course: Coming from a country that doesn’t have a ’special day’ like this, I wouldn’t begrudge anyone the chance to spend a weekday at a sporting event, clutching suds and hot pork. How about those people not born in that country, but a passport holder of there? Same rules, I guess – everyone else has the day off, so why not? But the more the global borders come down, the more the entire issue of nationhood and belonging has changed.
Canada announced this week that there are more than 3 Million passport holders that were born on foreign lands and have moved back, or elsewhere, on the face of the earth today. For the U.S., I imagine you could at least triple that figure. At the same time there are more than that amount of illegal workers in America that, if they were rousted and left the country, would affect the economy negatively by $1.8 Trillion dollars. It may be an unspoken truth, but rich countries in the First World needs it’s modern slave labour in order to simply keep the wheels turning on the hamster cage of Commerce.
Last summer, Israel’s attack on Lebanon resulted in a cadre of hundreds of Canadian citizens scrabbling at a steamy, sunny port to get on a ship out of there. Because they were passport holders, the Canucks sent a ship in at huge expense to save them, but it became obvious that most of these people hadn’t been born anywhere near the North. It is almost as if it no longer matters where you were born, unles it gives you an edge in something. It only matters who you declare you are a citizen of when it suits you – crossing a border easier, or having the Navy coming in to get you out of perilous mortar fire.
I am British. That’s what I am. I am still a passport holder of that country, but I don’t pay taxes there. I pay taxes to my new country, but refuse to change my citizenship. Believe me, it’s a bitch getting over the border to the States, too, so I know it causes me a level of discomfort to be this person.
But, I wouldn’t hit the British Consulate if something violent happened to the city where I live, because my partner for life is Canadian, and she is the reason I am here in the first place.
If it doesn’t really matter where you were born because you are welcome elsewhere for your skills; if it doesn’t matter what passport you hold because you can change it like an outfit for a special occasion, and it doesn’t matter where you work, becasue you know you will never be a part of that country, what is the use of a nationality at all?
The wired world means that you can run your life from anywhere with a lap-top and a cell phone. Your language skills can be brushed up to appear in any country you wish, with whatever language you want.
If none of it really matters, and you are part of a community purely due to your great-grandparent’s heritage and a certain striking flag, it shouldn’t really matter who your neighbour is, or which God they pray to.
What matters? I remember watching January 1st, 2000 unfurl across the Globe from my seat on the Pacific coast – the penultimate place on earth that it did. From simple ceremony in some countries to a complete waste of cash in our hemisphere, I saw everyone in the World celebrate one day in a manner that we will never see again. This is what we should be celebrating annually: A day for all of us despite where we were born, where we are, what we do, or how we speak.
In my global travels, the one common denominator that tied everyone together no matter which country they were in was the need to keep a roof over their head and food on the table. Isn’t our nationhood one of being human?
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