PEOPLE AND BORDERS

Author’s note. Trill is a fictional female acquaintance who makes it possible for me to write in what is for me a comfortable style, on a variety of subjects

My Dear Trill,
    Sooner or later, the issue of legal and illegal immigration and migration was bound to come up, wasn’t it? It is quite an interesting subject, and has implications that people have only begun to imagine.There is no stopping it. You can build the highest, impregnable wall  along a nation’s border and people will tunnel under it. In some regions, like the southern border of Europe. the terrain is such that a wall to keep out immigrants is unthinkable.
    There is more to it, however, than the movement of people to find a better life. That has been going on for thousands of years. Earth is beginning to undergo a big change as scientists forecast a warming trend, caused largely by human activity, that correlates with the increased concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide traps heat from the sun, and the consequences are rising Earth temperatures, melting of the polar ice, and significant rise in ocean levels. The predicted rise is many feet, which will inundate large land areas and affect a hundred-sixty million people in twenty countries. 
     There is a word of Greek origin, Diaspora, which in general means movement of bodies of people from one place to another, for any one of a number of reasons. They may be expelled from a region, or, like the wildebeests in the African grasslands, move to where food is more abundant, or, as in the  modern world, because opportunities exist for a better life, because homelands have become uninhabitable, or simply expelled from a region due to religious or other ideological differences.
    Examples of Diaspora over history are the Spartan exile of the Messenians in the third and fourth centuries BC, expulsion of Jews from Judea, African slave trade, settlement of the Americas and Australia, and  more recently to the present, refugees from Vietnam, movement North from Africa into Europe and from Mexico into the United States and migration of Jews from Europe and Asia to Israel.
    Where will one hundred sixty million people go?  If you have a globe handy, southern movement is not likely in large numbers.. Africa and South America taper off  into a limited area. Australia and New Zealand cannot accommodate a large influx of people. But look north and you see large areas that are virtually uninhabited that will become more inviting as the climate warms. Siberia, Canada. Alaska, and Norway, Sweden and Finland comprise about ten per cent of Earth’s land area.
    But will they be welcomed? Will the migrations be preplanned and agreed to by the participants and proceed in an orderly manner or will there be border wars, starvation, panics, massacres at the  border, that have time and again been demonstrated to be typical of hegemonic human behavior?
    Earth is evermore rapidly transitioning into a new era, for better or worse. Considering the age of Earth, it seems unusual and somewhat unsettling to witness huge changes within your own lifetime. It is fascinating and not a mystery as to the causes. Attempts will be made to reverse, or at least slow the process, but the  day-to-day needs and desires of a burgeoning and largely heedless population may well negate all such corrective  efforts.