We all desire for more
Let’s widen our lens 💡
We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees,
fears we have hidden in as if caves.
I wish for all this to be marked on by body when I am dead.
I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women
on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books.
We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience.
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
Some weeks ago I asked,
when sharing my sentiments on the termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian immigrants. And though my answer is not definite, but rather a combination of what I know should be done and the obstacles that stand in the way of its implementation, the news of 49,000 immigrants swimming from Morocco to the shore of the Spanish city of Ceuta layered my thoughts on the risk and reward of migration.
And conversations on the political costs of immigration are often so far from the visceral reality of what it means to cross a border. Over the span of just a few days, tens of thousands of people—mostly young men, but also families, women, and unaccompanied children—leapt into the deep, swam several miles, and rushed breakwater fences just to touch Spanish soil. The desperation was so profound that at least 67 people passed away attempting to cross, drowning in the Mediterranean Sea or being crushed in a stampede at Tarajal beach. The waters were left littered with buoys, while the parks and sidewalks of the city became makeshift open-air shelters for children left unaccompanied and exhausted survivors roaming aimlessly.
Ceuta is a 7.7-square-mile peninsular exclave that, along with nearby Melilla, function as the European Union’s only land borders with Africa. Spain has possessed Ceuta since 1580, maintaining a culturally Spanish but geographically African stronghold—a territory that, by all geographic logic, is an occupied land. But to solely point the finger at European colonial remnants would be to absolve the Moroccan government of its glaring complicity in this crisis. Rabat often uses these borders as a geopolitical pressure valve, loosening controls when it suits their diplomatic aim, all while violently ignoring the cries of their own people for an improved standard of living.
Look no further than the mass protests that erupted across Morocco in late September 2025. Driven by an abysmal national unemployment rate of 12.8%, and 35% for young folk between the ages of 15 and 24 years, citizens took to the streets across dozens of cities. Yet, instead of addressing this decrepit state of social services, the Moroccan government has poured billions of dollars into upgrading stadiums to co-host the 2030 FIFA World Cup. As protesters rightfully chanted, “Stadiums are here, but where are the hospitals,?” police fired on demonstrators, killing three, and arresting over a thousand people over the course of the protests.
And in February of last year, the Moroccan Parliament passed Law 97-15, which essentially outlaws the right to strike in the agricultural sector. In a country where over 80% of rural workers are trapped in the informal economy without contracts or social protections, striking is often the only way to advocate for oneself. The agricultural minimum wage is already 30% lower than the industrial sector, and rural women face even deeper structural discrimination. In criminalizing collective action and hiding behind complex administrative barriers to do so, the government is showing that they care only for noise control.
Migration has always been an alchemy of push and pull factors. People are violently pushed from their homes by war, systemic poverty, and natural disasters, while they are pulled toward new lands by the promise of better jobs, higher wages, and basic physical safety. The Moroccan working class, particularly its youth, is suffocating under a government that has other post-colonial priorities in mind.
Spain being located so close to the tip of Morocco makes the decision to swim miles into the Mediterranean heartbreakingly plausible.
To get granular (in $USD for easier comprehension), a minimum wage worker in Morocco earns roughly $1.83 an hour, compared to $9.06 in Spain. A Moroccan worker grinds through a standard 44-hour workweek to earn a fraction of what a Spanish worker makes in 40 hours. The average gross salary in Spain sits at around $2,789 a month, swallowing Morocco’s $613/mo four times over. With Spain’s GDP per capita sitting nearly six times higher than Morocco’s, the irresistible allure of Western Europe is simply a primal pursuit of sustenance.
The U.S. government currently seeks to target and scapegoat those who arrive at our borders, so it was no surprise when Donald Trump eagerly commented on the crisis from Camp David, branding the desperation of these people an “invasion”—a dog whistle quickly echoed by Spain’s far-right leaders, who blamed the influx on leftist plans to grant legal status to undocumented workers.
Neighboring European countries clutched their purses on impact. Italy temporarily suspended the Schengen free-movement agreement, and France activated its Rapid Intervention Border Force. Even European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, looking at images of drowned bodies and exhausted children, declared the scenes “unacceptable”—not because of the loss of life, but because, in her words, “returns must be swift.”
It’s important to resist anti-immigrant propaganda with fact. The reality is that the narrative of a “migrant-led surge in crime” is nothing more than a tired historical tactic used to point the finger at marginalized groups during times of political or economic unease. A robust body of research actually proves the opposite: immigrants, including those who are undocumented, are statistically much less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens.
Beyond making our communities safer, immigrants are a foundational pillar of economic survival and growth. If we look at Spain as the prime example, between 2022 and 2025, their foreign-born population grew by roughly 2 million people, reaching 9.5 million. During this time, their GDP per capita rose by 1.8% annually, and immigration played a massive role in that improvement by way of increased employment and productivity.
Even when factoring in current productivity gaps—where foreign-born workers’ hourly productivity is estimated by BBVA Research to be 20% lower than native-born workers due to temporary factors like job tenure and structural barriers—immigration still accounts for an impressive 25% of Spain’s total increase in GDP per capita. If these populations were properly supported through public policy interventions that provided better access to education, training, and higher value-added occupations, their contribution to that GDP growth would jump to nearly 40%.
The same can be said for the U.S., where, as opposed to depleting American resources and taking all the jobs, immigrants generated a staggering $14.5 trillion fiscal surplus for the U.S. government between 1994 and 2023, consistently paying more in taxes than they utilize in public benefits. As native birth rates decline and our population ages, it is this incoming working-age demographic that sustains resources like Social Security and Medicare. They drive consumer demand, spur innovation, and lift up our GDP. To shut down our borders, relentlessly targeting these communities in defense of the nation, is so ridiculously counterintuitive, it’s a ruse.
And a bold-faced one at that.
It’s calculated self-sabotage of a country’s economic future.
But to bring us back to the people behind the migrations we observe, I want to share a conversation I had with my roommate and sister on the matter.
What kind of factors do you feel motivates migration?
Bahar: Probably opportunity. A financial situation or social situation that’s not possible in one’s country. I mean, as an immigrant myself, it’s political unrest elsewhere or. Yeah, it’s usually just for a chance, not necessarily to escape something, but just for a chance, it’s something better. Yeah. Which I think all people are entitled to have in a life that they make for themselves. Yeah. Um.
Toyin: Economic unrest, political unrest too, and I don’t know they just always sell the American dream so a lot of people chase that and they go over thinking you know, these places are better and there’s more opportunity. And also sometimes just for aesthetic reasons, you know, we leave other places because we grow up watching certain media that paints other places as prettier or as cooler. So people migrate because of that, too.
Do you feel more connected to the place where you were born, or the place where you chose (or ended up) living? What makes a place feel like ‘home’ to you?
Bahar: Um.. What makes a place feel like home to me? I think I’ve come to learn, I always grew up, I mean, as an immigrant, like, not really feeling like anywhere was really home. Like, I never settled in Iran enough to, like create or experience that much of a feeling of home.
And here, obviously I was a transplant. But what I’ve come to realize as I’ve grown older is that, it’s really a sense of community that you know, is home to me and that’s when I think about my family back home and being home, like it’s that is the biggest difference and that’s also why I like New York better than California coming from California because there’s a lot more community to be found here.
And so I feel more grounded and in the right place here. That’s my biggest community is the biggest thing for me.
Toyin: Well I was born in the United States in Georgia, and I haven’t really been to Nigeria. I went once in 2016, but I wasn’t really old enough to remember a lot or how I was feeling at the time.
So I’m definitely proud of being Nigerian, and I’m proud of where our history lies, but I feel more connection to America because I was born here and I was born into, like, you know, the social customs here. And I grew up with people that were born here, but I’m definitely just still looking for places to go and to see so I wouldn’t say this is the definitive answer, but as of right now where I was born.
How far back can you trace your own family’s movement across borders or regions?
Bahar: for me only very vaguely back in my grandparents generation, but I don’t know very much more than that only because they’re from a region in Iran that comes from like the people there come from Azarbajjan, which is a different country close by. And I know my grandparents migration at some point to Iran, but honestly not very far back. Maybe parents maybe grandparents generation and only some of parents’ generation.
Toyin: I only know for my mom’s generation or my parents’ generation from what they tell me about it. Like, I’ve heard stories of how they came here for, you know, better opportunities and study here and conceived both my sister and I here, but that’s about, like, all I know.
And so, how do you think that affects how you view migration and immigration today?. How you’re. How many generations. You can what you can recall about migration in your own family, how do you think that affects the way you view the occurrence today?
Bahar: Of migration? Um. That’s a good question. I-I feel like I don’t know very much about, even though as an immigrant, I was very young when I immigrated and I don’t. There are things that I’m still realizing now at 23 about like how hard that process must have been that I was not developed enough to understand yet. So I feel like I don’t feel very, even as an immigrant, I’d feel like I don’t truly understand the migration, or the reasoning behind it, or like, I was only digesting this year after 20some years of being in this country, like, how large of a move that was.
And I realized that after moving to New York from California.
Yeah, I think it honestly makes me feel maybe disconnected from you know, immigration and all of that. Because I feel like I should know more, you know?
Toyin: Yeah. Um, will I see where immigrants are coming from, you know, because I grew up in an immigrant family, so I definitely see why. And I’m grateful because without them, I wouldn’t have had the opportunities. I probably wouldn’t have had the opportunities that I was granted now.
But definitely, it just makes me really upset for how hard the process is and how people treat immigrants and people treat the migration process as people just crossing here to commit crimes or to just change country’s values and just to destroy. When we’re all human and we’re all here trying to find better opportunities or trying to, you know, just make a life out of what we think is a good foundation.
So I definitely feel a lot of empathy and I’m just very upset too. Like, I grieve the pain that immigrants have to go through just to have a good life for them and their, you know, kids.
What do you think is the hardest thing a person gives up when they leave their homeland behind forever?
Bahar: For my family, they’re still very Iranian. They’re not assimilated at all.
I-I’ve seen how not having a community, especially like coming from a Persian community, which is an extremely hospitable and generous and kind and warm community to having like, nobody like that has really, like changed my parents’ lives for the worst, honestly.My dad still struggles to speak English, ‘cause I think he just there’s a part of him that’s like, his heart’s not really in it. You know what I mean? And I think they would have grown so much more as people if they had the opportunity to be amongst their own people. And that’s the biggest sacrifice. I say that’s the biggest sacrifice they’ve made because it. changed their lives, you know, for the worst, not just like, it has nothing to do with me. Like, I wanted more of that for them, you know? Yeah.
Toyin: I think it’s, you know, leaving family behind and leaving the community that you grew up in behind, leaving all of it behind and sometimes it might feel like contradictory a little bit because you’re like in these countries, like America, for example, who actively do harm to, you know, the homelands that immigrants were born.
And so it’s like, I’m staying here and I’m a bit safer here, but I’m watching as these same forces do harm to my country do harm to my community and there’s not really much I can do about it and you kind of just hope for the better and you feel bad for those people who are stuck in these situations who can’t move out and you feel bad about how you kind of like watch the deterioration of these communities this happen over and over again as like you know bigger countries just eat off of them and feed off of them, which is what causes them to have to you know migrate over to move to these places when it could’ve just been you know, fine. It could’ve just been as good as it is in America supposedly in all of these countries if it weren’t for these countries, you know, feeding off of these other places and just taking from them.
So it’s definitely weird to, you know, go from a community you love so much a place you love so much people you love so much to this new place and you just seeing how the world treats the place where you come from and treat you because you come from these places is definitely a lot of like it causes a lot of pain
I hope we all move to understand these patterns more. It’s that constant choice to remain dedicated to growing our understanding that makes us resistant to falsehood.
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