Where we come from

Us. Is that “us, not you” or “us and you”?

Let me relate to you an exchange that has been repeated on many occasions during the 30+ years I have lived in Belgium.

“Uw naam?”

“Vincent.”

“Ik bedoel, uw familienaam.”

“Dat is mijn familienaam.”

“Heus? Omdat, bij ons is Vincent een voornaam.”

“Dat is juist, Vincent is ook in mijn geboorteland een voornaam. Maar in dit geval is Vincent een familienaam. Ook in mijn geboorteland is het een familienaam. En ook bij u is het gebeurlijk een familienaam. U vraagt naar mijn naam, en mijn naam is wat ik aan u heb gegeven.”

For the non-Dutch-speakers, I shall translate:

“Name?”

“Vincent.”

“I mean your surname.”

“That is my surname.”

“Really? Because Vincent’s a first name where we come from.”

“That’s correct, Vincent is also a first name where I come from. But, in this case, Vincent is a surname. Where I come from it’s also a surname. And where you come from it can also be a surname. You asked me for my name and my name is what I gave you.”

I could add, “Do you think, if my first name were Tom, that I’d answer to a request for my name with my first name? ‘Tom’?” But I don’t.

This can be a cause for merriment, or for sourness. It’s a product of seeing the world from one point of view only, but I’ve been the victim of that standpoint for 30+ years, so I’m used to it.

When, some years ago, I decided that where people who asked this question came from should also be where I come from, by applying for Belgian nationality, one question I was asked to substantiate was: What contribution have you made during your time in Belgium to the community that you have been a part of?

I told them that, for many years, I was a member of my local committee for organising our street party, that I had actively taken part, and distributed leaflets and cooked Reibekuchen for everyone, and manned the disco, and sold drinks, and been cheerful. That I had been a member of a theatre company. That, under an oath sworn before God to the three kings I have lived under in this country and to its constitution (which the Ministry of Justice is occasionally seemingly unfamiliar with), I had translated for the State. Helped it pursue the men who fired murderous machine guns in Forest in 2016 and who blew up our airport and killed passengers at one of our capital’s metro stations. That I had helped this State pursue a perpetrator of crimes against humanity in Chile. That I had helped this State pursue criminals who committed the Rwandan genocide. And many other criminals of note, like those who pose as Microsoft engineers and trick the elderly out of their life savings.

I told them I speak fluent French, Dutch and German, which are the three national languages and which is more than many who were born here can say.

The Crown Prosecutor in Brussels was impressed; at least, impressed enough to let me in.

Nowadays, when people say to me bij ons—where we come from—I tell them it’s also bij mij—where I come from. And I look at them to challenge them to tell me that, on the ground that I have a funny surname, I don’t belong here. Because the Crown Prosecutor in Brussels thinks I do. I feel like asking them how many street parties they’ve organised, how many plays they’ve acted in, how many criminals they’ve helped catch. They pay their taxes? They think I don’t? The form makes it clear: unlike a contribution to the community, paying tax is not a qualification for nationality. But you’d think, from how some people speak who were born in a place, that it is. No, it is a qualification, that’s true: for not being sent to prison.

Assimilation is a demand that is founded in the idea that a nation’s characteristics—like which surnames and which first names are normal where we come from—are set down in tablets of stone. That a nation is a nation for all time and will never veer from that which it is. That which millions of people, all taken together, are. If you hold to this idea, then you hold to a fallacy. It’s not a tablet of stone, it’s a pot of bronze.

The assertion that a nation’s characteristics are unchangeable is an idea that demands that language will never change, that technology will never change, that family life will never change, and that men and women will never divorce, that crime will never increase nor decrease, nor greed, nor liberty, nor beauty. It demands that a nation be solidified into a die-cast shape that is eternally immutable. For example, it demands that a nation’s 1789 constitution should be interpreted as if we lived in 1789.

What a nation is, is a group of people who are bound together for their joint defence. That is what a nation is, and trade and exchange and all that stuff are really a nice to have, but it is defence that is the must for a nation. That’s why we draw black lines on maps.

Nations that want to thrive ensure a broad gene pool. As the Amish know, in-breeding can lead to congenital defects: the Amish are short-sighted, literally. And those who resist immigration also develop congenital defects. Short-sightedness, but this time figuratively. The trick for any nation is to allow entry by immigrants who are benign and beneficial, and resist entry by immigrants who are malevolent. And that is a difference that is not marked out by skin colour, not by a long chalk, or by means of entry or by port of entry, but by character. There are always some who don’t want the rich, because they gentrify, and push property prices up beyond their reach; and there are always some who don’t want the poor, because they cause their properties to devalue. Maybe we should just freeze all property prices, so no one will ever gain or lose on their property investment; then we could let in who we want. Just what is it that people want? Never to change ever again?

What those who demand assimilation by incomers fail to realise is that assimilation is not one-directional. It is two-directional. The incomer assimilates to the host, and the host assimilates to the incomer, and that is something that cannot be legislated. You cannot legislate the shy to be gregarious. Only a prohibition against incomers can be legislated, but not the free, mutual exchange of ideas.

What immigration law does is legislate against … ideas. What hosts and immigrants do is exchange their mutual, cultural backgrounds and experiences, and thereby create a new society, in which both of them feel at home.

That is the reason why the United States of America is often called a melting pot. You cannot melt tin into copper and expect to still have a pot of copper. Instead, you get a pot of bronze. You can even add aluminium, manganese, nickel, zinc, phosphorus, arsenic, silicon (you can, I checked). You still don’t have copper, and you still do have bronze: what you change is its diversity, its consistency. But it’s still bronze, and not copper.

If you are prepared to accept even a small portion of that notion, then you are in favour of immigration. Because even immigrants who come, not to offer their utility as such but merely to flee persecution, have an idea to exchange: their gratitude for the host’s compassion, and compassion and gratitude are two ideas that mix very well in a melting pot.

If Americans don’t want to welcome incomers that change the consistency of who and what they are, then, quite honestly, they shouldn’t be in America in the first place. They are like pirates who capture a vessel and its booty, and then pull up the boarding ropes behind them, declare the vessel theirs for all time, and defy all and sundry to challenge their rights of possession as they brandish their muskets. It’s funny how revolution is dubbed melt-down, because that may yet be what it is.

In fact, none of us should be where we are in the first place. Because, thousands of years ago, back when time began, none of us were there at all.

Bronze is a valued mark of olympian achievement. Copper and tin on their own, on the other hand, aren’t.