Every living human is a legacy of migration from somewhere. Anthropologists state that the Homo sapiens originated about 300,000 years ago in Africa but they cannot precisely located the “Garden of Eden”. Humans migrated everywhere on earth from Africa in ancient times.
In the early 17th century, after Columbus’s voyages in late 15th century, Europeans started migrating to the Americas (North and South) which were already populated by the same number of people as in Europe at that time.
Every president of the USA has traced his ancestry in Europe except Obama whose ancestry is in Africa. One would like to ask Trump; which migrants have infested the USA?
European migration to Australia and New Zealand only started in the 19th century by whalers, sealers, missionaries and later deported convicts after Captain Cook’s voyages in the late 18th century.
Until then, migration to Europe had been orderly and had taken place by invitation (like Windrush Generation), by political considerations (like Ugandan Asians) or by skill requirement using work permits. Lately, some orderly migration has also taken place on humanitarian grounds.
Mrs Merkel’s 2015 action has created discord in the European Union (only 16 out of 28 countries attended the migration meeting on 24th June), friction between host communities and recent migrant communities and even reignited persecution of Roma (Gypsies) in Italy, Hungary, Romania and other European nations.
The Roma communities had arrived in Europe several centuries ago from Bharat. It seems, migration, conflict and persecution is a perpetual human activity.
Narsibhai Patel
New Malden
