Choices

[talon]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60P3LT20100126

I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, non-Muslim countries are not set up to accommodate burqas, veils, and other indentity-obscuring clothing. They are based on being able to identify others via facial features (driver's licenses, for example). On the other hand, this is a deep part of their religious beliefs, and I feel they have a right to live their lives according to their religious beliefs - except when it could cause disruption or harm to the society outside their religion.

I am myself as close to an immigrant as one can get without actually being a real immigrant (born and raised outside the US but technically a US citizen by both parentage and parental naturalization), so I understand what it means to leave one country for another. The ways of my former country (Germany) are similar enough to the US that one would assume the changes are minimal and easy, but I came from an extremely rural small town lacking electricity or running water to DFW, TX - a rather large change. If it was hard for me, I can see how hard it would be for someone coming from an even more different culture. However, I chose to be in the US and that means I follow US laws and US mores and US societal preferences, even if I find them offensive, or disturbing, or just plain stupid. If I was that unhappy about the changes, I can seek a country that more closely resembles what I prefer. It is a big world and not all of it is warring.

This is where I get all hard-nosed. If you move to another country with the intention to live there long term and seek employment there and bring all or most of your family (whether you seek citizenship or not, if you seek work, you are planning on along term commitment to the country), you are obligated to live by that country's laws, cultural mores, and societal preferences when in public. What you do inside your own home or inside your own religious buildings with those who adhere to your religion is your business, but once you step outside those areas and interact with your new countrymen, you do as they do in your new chosen country. You speak the language of that country as best you can, you purchase things from the stores with that country's coin, you test for and buy that country's permits and licenses for various things (driver's license is most common, but there are others), and you obey that country's laws. You don't set up enclaves within the country and run them as if they were colonies from your previous country, nor do you go out in public and expect the citizens of your new country to obey the laws of your old country.

See, when you immigrate, even if it's just on a work-visa (and especially if you're doing it illegally!), you have chosen to enter that country and in my book, that means you have chosen to obey the laws of that country, to blend in and to be as like the citizens as you can be.

When you leave your country to live in another country, and you set up enclaves or communities of other people from your former country and run it just like the country you left behind; you aren't immigrating, you're colonizing - and most countries will object to being colonized within their borders by other countries.

It sucks if you come from a country with very different concepts of lifestyle and/or religious codes and choose to move to a country with a very different lifestyle and very different laws, but it was a choice. Whether you chose France or Germany or England or the US or Mexico or Brazil or Japan or Australia or Iraq or Italy or Russia or China or Canada or anywhere else, you had a choice, and once you arrived in whichever country, you now have the obligation to mold yourself to that country, not to carve out a piece of that country and make it like the place you chose to leave.

And yes, even if that choice was to stay and face possible torture or death, dishonor or loss of social standing/wealth, it is still a choice. Maybe not a good one or a fair one, but choices aren't always easy or fun or pleasant. Once you make the choice, you have to live with the consequences of that choice - whether it's death or adapting to a new country - and you do it.