Being the American at the Table

One of the things I enjoy the most about my core group of friends in La Paz is the international diversity. Last night I had dinner with my 6 closest friends and at one point we stopped to marvel at the fact that among the 7 of us there was only 1 country overlap. The countries represented were Canada, the UK, Sweden (2), Italy, Bolivia, and the US. Obviously with this many nationalities in the conversation, opinions and experiences land on a pretty wide spectrum. Interestingly though, the spectrum has more to do with national politics and experiences than actual personal beliefs. The typical foreign-educated, NGO worker generally has a pretty left-leaning worldview and when we talk about environmental issues or human rights, we pretty much just reinforce each other´s opinions.

But last night we wandered into a political topic which varies greatly between countries, even generally ideologically similar Western European countries: immigration. It was a really interesting and occasionally heated (heated in the way conversations become heated between friends) dinner, with a complicated mix of international representation. For example, in explaining British immigration problems, my English friend brought up the influx of Eastern Europeans to Britain. According to her, Eastern Europeans undercut the minimum wage expected by native British and took some of the lowest paying work from working-class British. This opinion, which is a pretty common one in response to current American immigration as well, was rebutted by our Polish-Canadian friend, who argued that Polish immigrants to Britain are legal and make the same minimum wage as native British.

In talking about countries impacted by immigration, it´s virtually impossible to ignore the United States either historically or currently. But as a citizen of a country which has a disproportionately influential voice in global politics, I generally adopt a policy of not bringing up American politics unless invited to do so. I´m not afraid of talking about American politics and unlike many Americans abroad, I make a conscious effort not to internalize the decisions made by our politicians and let them become a personal guilt. I think Americans need to take responsibility for the actions of our country but it´s ineffectual to do so to the extent that we´re always apologizing or rationalizing. If I always felt the need to demonize or defend the US, I would be unable to add anything substantial to the conversation. So on the topic of immigration I sort of hovered around the edge of the conversation, not wanting to disrupt interesting debate with the conversational equivalent of a 1,000 pound immigration gorilla.

And I think approaching the topic that way was really rewarding. I learned about the recent increase in Canada of requests for refugee status from Czechs. From a Bosnian-Swedish friend I learned about the emigration of Balkan citizens in the 90´s. And although they didn´t come to any kind of agreement, I learned about the complexity of Eastern European immigration to Great Britain from two equally passionate sides of the issue. At the end of the night we all looked over the entrance or naturalization exams of our countries and came to the consensus that regardless of differing opinions on immigration particulars, the global system is generally broken. On that point, we had little trouble agreeing.