I detest the xenophobic politics sprouting up everywhere these days.
Nature thrives on diversity and all areas of society do too.
If you work in a team you don’t want everyone to think the same way. Well you don’t if you want to promote creativity, innovation and resilience. You do if you want to impose conformity and control.
If you want an institution, whether a school, university, health service or company, diversity is essential for adaptation and survival.
Discrimination against people on the basis of where they were born, or where their parents or grandparents were born is simply wrong – morally and rationally.
Immigration is not a problem – integration is. We should be putting our energies and resources into integration – building mutually beneficial relationships between well differentiated parts – between people who are different from each other, between people and the rest of Nature.
This story – https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckkkgvl59x3o.amp – is a good example – a PhD student from Romania studying at Imperial College in London and working with the University of Edinburgh and Cancer Research Horizons to develop a home test which could replace uncomfortable, unpleasant smear tests. If successful this could make a big contribution to reducing the numbers of women who will die from cervical cancer.
It’s really not hard to find other great examples of integrated diversity.
Shame on those politicians who promote hatred and fear of “the other”.
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