By Howard Whiteman
Murray State University

Like clockwork, it’s happening again. The migrations have begun. Whether it is new bird species arriving in our yards every day, frogs hopping to their breeding ponds, or insects crawling up into the trees, migration is all around us.

Sometimes migration is seasonal, which is what is occurring now: the same birds that are migrating into our yards in the spring will be migrating south—some of them all the way to Central and South America—come the fall. Other migrations are one-way dispersal events, like when young white-tailed bucks move into a new area, beavers moving farther up a stream, or armadillos moving northward.

Whether they are seasonal or one-way, migrations all happen for the same reason: animals are looking for a better place to live. Seasonal migrants are like the so-called “snow birds” that love living in the north during the summer but are happy to travel south to Florida in the winter. Whether they are two-home families or just jumping in an RV, they are living where they are most comfortable, weather-wise.

One-way dispersal is similar. White-tailed bucks move into new areas because it reduces the chance of inbreeding and allows them an opportunity to set up their own territories. Beavers do the same thing, to reduce competition with their parents and colonize new areas. Armadillos are just chasing the climate, as northern latitudes become more and more hospitable to them. Animals will always move to find a better life, and to escape a bad one, like areas with high densities or less food.

Thankfully, humans have done the same thing. If they hadn’t, the United States would not exist, nor would any country that was initially colonized from somewhere else. There are examples throughout history of how environmental conditions have pushed us to find better homes. You might even say that this is one of the defining characteristics of humans, which has led us to be so successful and explore not only every corner of this planet, but the moon and, someday, perhaps other planets. Migration is in our genes.

Early humans migrated from our origins in Africa to colonize Europe and Asia. Later, humans dispersed across the Bering land bridge into North America, perhaps following some of the game they subsisted on in Asia. They found a continent filled with plentiful food, and eventually colonized both North and South America, becoming the first citizens of the Western Hemisphere. In the U.S., we call their descendants Native Americans, or members of the First Nation. The first humans in North America, however, were not native; they migrated from a different continent, just like the ancestors of every human in the Western Hemisphere. But given those Eurasian people from the west arrived tens of thousands of years before European colonization from the east, they are a lot more native than the rest of us.

Europeans also migrated, as early as 1000 AD, but started moving in earnest to the “New World” in the late 1400s, looking for a better life and new opportunities, while others were fleeing religious oppression and monarchical societies. As time went on and our country was founded and began to mature, migrations continued, but increased in the late 1800s and early 1900s, as Europeans fled famine, crowded and filthy cities, and oppressive dictators. Some of those folks were ostracized by the earlier migrants, whom had all kinds of disparaging names for them. My great aunt used to call anyone that immigrated after our family ‘foreigners.’ That was one of the nicer names; everyone knows the ugly ones.

Not surprisingly, we now have similar issues. New groups are coming, but this time from the south, fleeing oppression, famine, crime, and a changing climate. They know the U. S. is the land of opportunity because of the European migration that preceded them, and they know we are a democracy, not a dictatorship which many of them have experienced first-hand. They are looking to find a job, provide for their family, and start a better life, just like our ancestors were doing.

The “native” response to this migration is not surprising as well. Just like previous generations looked down on our great-grandparents, many in our society treat these migrants like they aren’t even human, without any compassion or empathy, even though many of us had ancestors that went through very similar experiences, just at Ellis Island rather than Brownsville, Texas.

Have you noticed who isn’t complaining? Business. Agriculture, meat packing, construction, and other businesses aren’t arguing about the migrants because they need workers, and good workers are becoming harder to find. New workers mean increased productivity, which is a benefit to the economy, much like those immigrants of the late 1800s and early 1900s fueled the steel and manufacturing industries, helping to create the economic juggernaut that the United States has become.

Immigrants bring other things besides hard work. They bring their culture, and although we might look down upon that initially, consider how much richer our country is because of the Italian, Mexican, Korean, Brazilian, Cuban, Japanese, and Chinese food and culture that has already infused many of our lives.

Legal immigration to the U. S. is controlled, but that will not solve the problem that the migrants face, nor slow down the migration. They have good reasons to migrate. Consider where migration to the U.S. has slowed: Europe. Once Europe stabilized its economy and political systems (which is still a work in progress), migration has been reduced to a trickle. The same will be true of the new migrations from the south. If we continue to help make their native countries a better place, as we did in Europe, people will not be so eager to leave them and travel thousands of miles over arduous terrain just for a chance to be a U. S. citizen. Like Europeans a century ago, the migrants from the south are desperate right now, but that can change.

Change is hard. When a white-tailed buck moves in, there is another buck that is not happy about it, and territorial fights occur. When beavers move up a stream, they change the environment and sometimes conflict with other beaver families. Armadillos dig holes in our yards and burrow under our porches, making us wonder what we can do about them. Similarly, we call our new neighbors names and repeat mythical stories about them because they represent unwanted changes in our environment. Every migration has costs and benefits to the migrator, as well as to the current residents that such migration affects.

But given that every single human in our hemisphere is the end result of a successful migration, it seems that all of us could have a bit more sympathy for the new migrants. They may come from a different continent, but they are otherwise identical to my great-great-great grandparents that came across the Atlantic, and none of our human migrations are that different from a migrating buck, beaver, or armadillo. We are all animals, after all, and we are all looking for a better life. Humans aspire to be better than other animals; sometimes our behavior suggests otherwise.

Spring not only brings on migration, it brings rebirth and renewal. Perhaps now is the time to rethink as well, start treating our fellow humans with dignity, and remember how to act more like humans and less like grumpy whitetail bucks and beavers. Just like migration, empathy is in our genes too; we just need to use it.

Dr. Howard Whiteman is the Commonwealth Endowed Chair of Environmental Studies and professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Murray State University.