In Europe, America, and all over the world refugees and immigrants are “causing troubles” and bringing out the worst in people. Most countries are closing their borders to people fleeing wars, starvation, cruel governments and gangs, etc. The new slogans include Americans for Americans, border walls, France for French people, go back to your country, and such words.

Isolationism seems to be on the rise.

The world is about to forget two things:

1. What I will call “the law of econotropism”

2. The way things were.

Econotropism is very much like phototropism or heliotropism: the force that forces plants to grow towards light. Econotropism forces humans to go to the places where food, shelter, and survival means exist. No force is capable of stopping it, not even a border wall. During the Voyages of Discovery era, the almighty Atlantic and Pacific Oceans could not stop Europeans from reaching Africa, or what is now called Americas, or India, etc. The Europeans in skimpy boats sailed the high seas in rickety boats and with very little navigation instruments to go get spices and discover newer inhabitable lands.

The same is true today. No cries or walls or border patrols would stop forced migration to the lands where food is.

The solution is to make survival possible in the lands where people are fleeing from. When East and West wage wars in Syria or Middle East, the people will flee to safety in Europe or America. The choice is to stay and die of bombs or to flee with a chance of finding a safe haven. People will always choose to die trying than to sit down and die.

When people are hungry they would rather die in search of food than to sit down and die of starvation. Africans would cross the Sahara Desert on foot or by whatever means necessary and the Mediterranean Sea to get to Europe. South Americans will journey from Honduras, Venezuela, Mexico, etc. to get to USA, Trump’s No Tolerance Policy or not.

The solution is to make Africa, Middle East, South America inhabitable and food sufficient to the residents. And the people who MUST do it are the wealthy nations with assistance from the native peoples. To think otherwise is to be short sighted. After all the wealth of the rich countries were a result of the exploitation of the “shit countries” and the debt is due.

If the massive investment required to resettle people where they are is not done the world would have murdered sleep and would sleep no more.

•Benjamin Obiajulu Aduba writes from Boston, Massachusetts, USA.he can be reached via baduba54@aol.com

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