Emigrant: Someone who leaves their homeland voluntarily to live in another place (or places), with no expectation of returning in the near future. Someone who leaves and does not intend to come back.
Immigrant: Someone who arrives from other places voluntarily to live here, with no expectation of returning to their place of origin, at least not in the near future. Someone who comes to stay.
Migrant: Someone who leaves their homeland voluntarily or arrives in another region without the intention or desire for it to be permanent. Either because they want to return to where they came from, or because they are doing temporary work. Do not confuse with nomads, who, although they do not have a fixed location, live in a fixed region.
It was around 2005, in New Jersey, USA, when Engineer Leonard Goldblatt (LG, an American who had lived in Brazil for 15 years, where we met) told me that, about five years earlier, he had overheard some people speaking "Portuguese" on the street, struck up a conversation, and found they were part of a group working there, some legally, but most illegally. He got closer to some of them, which led him to learn a bit about their lives. In a way, what he saw and heard made him think about how little we know about the world, despite hearing the stories:
LG: _ Many young men and women come here with the illusion that life is better, and they submit themselves to an unbelievable way of life and work. To start, they share small apartments with many people to save money, they put up bunk beds, they work shifts of up to 12 hours. I think if they all tried to sleep at the same time, they wouldn't fit in the rooms. There’s no Saturday, no Sunday, no holidays. They hardly go out for anything—it's all work and saving money, so they can return to their hometowns and say they made it in life, buy a little house, start a business, and tell whatever story they want about how it went, because no one will ever check... When you ask "where are you from," partly as a joke, partly because the immigrant is often ashamed of what they are doing, they change the subject, saying they’re from Governador Valadares, MG, a city that has the reputation.
LG: _ Why don't they do that in their own country, Brazil? Working 12 hours a day, without holidays or weekends, not spending any money, just saving up. With that kind of effort, that “dedication,” it would work anywhere. It would be easier too.
The difficulty is making those sacrifices in front of people who know them. Vanity, appearances, they don’t allow it.
In fact, we mostly know the stories of those who made it. But what about those who didn’t? The ones who died? The ones who committed suicide? The ones who went crazy? The failures who disappeared into begging, into the lumpen, vanishing into the slums. I met someone from the Spanish consulate in Rio (hello Casas), among other consuls responsible for social assistance, who covered the states of ES, MG, and RJ. We sailed together, had many conversations. I heard every story... Some are enough to make you cry! Most of the time, it was third parties who went to the consulate to report that they had heard about some Spanish emigrant in misery, and the consulate would go try to locate the person to repatriate them. The person themselves wouldn’t show up, they would keep postponing it, too ashamed.
Since 1850, with the Industrial Revolution, capitalism, and the evolution of customs and laws, it seems that fewer people leave their corner of the world out of adventure or for freedom. They emigrate out of necessity, whether due to hunger, religious or political persecution, or for reasons of social, family, psychological, or personal disarray.
They are, after all, people, like any one of us or our ancestors. And people should be respected.
Look on the map where the municipality of Borba is, in Amazonas (AM). To this day, it has no land access. By air, you can only get there by helicopter. It’s an average of 24 hours by boat from Manaus along the Madeira River. Does anyone know how, why, and for what reason some families I know, originally from what is now Lebanon, on the border with Syria, ended up there in the early 20th century, around 1905, before World War I? The descendants still ask these same questions without finding answers. They probably didn’t tell the truth, they fantasized, like most people.
By the 1950s, post-war, many people from my parents’ hometown and many Northeasterners appeared here, all arriving full of hope. It was either succeed or fail. Some thought it was just a matter of time, others threw themselves headfirst into their work. Some succeeded, others didn’t. I take off my hat and pay my respects to those who tried and to those who are still trying.
Within this subject, noteworthy is the case of the current Brazilian, former stateless person, Maha Mamo, who, because she was the daughter of a Christian father and a Muslim mother, both Syrians, where interfaith marriage is illegal or not accepted (which is the same), they moved to Lebanon. Since Lebanon only grants nationality through descent (if they did this to Lebanese citizens, they would complain), it resulted in the 3 children being stateless, meaning legally nonexistent, unable to have identity documents. They had no passports, couldn’t enroll in school, and so on. Just thinking that these things still exist in more than half the world makes me realize the childishness of most people. Or the cynicism. It is worth watching her testimony (Maha): I Belong - pelo fim da apatridia no mundo | Maha Mamo | TEDxSaoPauloSalon - YouTube I Belong - pelo fim da apatridia no mundo | Maha Mamo | TEDxSaoPauloSalon - YouTube ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbL6f3AVYfM )
In the middle of this misery, some migrants are privileged: those who have what are called international jobs, state agencies, multinational companies, athletes, and artists. These are usually temporary where they are. They’re full of liberal ideas, but deep down they are prejudiced, especially since many live off these problems, like the elegant employees of international organizations.
There are still those who, for various excuses, change environments because they can "support" themselves abroad. Some, a few, retire and seek a change of scenery. Others do it for snobbery or cultural luxury, with someone else supporting them or burning through inheritances. I believe these are few, though expensive. Deep down, they are stateless by choice.
But there are always idiots, here or there, who hostilely treat foreigners in difficulty. They forget that we are not from here, we are here.
Miguel Fernández y Fernández, engineer and chronicler, written in 2023/2024, 6,208 characters (with spaces).
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