Wednesday, January 29, 2014

CAN ONE REALLY BE A CITIZEN OF THE WORLD?

The world is either a very big place or very small place, depending on your point of view.


Can your point of view really make you feel yourself a 'citizen of the world', with no more feeling for the place where you were born and where you grew up than for the place where you now find yourself?


True, there are people who leave their native lands and never look back, but does that mean that they feel the whole world is their homeland?


Can somebody born and bred in the desert be really at home in the tropical rain forest, even if both desert and rain forest are on the same continent, such as Africa and South America? Can someone from a tiny island in the middle of the ocean really belong to continent and vice versa?


All this makes me wonder why so many people of late have claimed tove St. Martin so much they claim it as their homeland, not so slowly and not so subtly pushing the natives out and causing them to be treated as second and third calss citizens.


If it were not possible to do so much in St. Martin that cannot be done elsewhere, would the rich keep coming? If the French did not give such generous social benefits even to illegals, would the poor keep coming?


This little island is only 37 square miles and is not likely to grow in the near future, and it is being forced to support outsiders from its own budget without being able to decide who stays and who leaves. How long can this go on?


And where does it leave the natives who consider this their ancestral homeland and are not 'citizens of the world?'

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