Migration has always been a part of the history of humankind. Thousands of years ago, the first group of people in Africa started to migrate around the world. Later on, Chinese families also happened to move to other countries such as the United States of America to pursue the “American Dream”. However, what are the reasons that make people want to leave their homelands and move somewhere new? Are there any effects from migration to both the sending and the host countries? In this essay, I would like to point out the reasons people migrate to other countries: to find new opportunities, to free themselves from political issues, and to have (access to) better social services. I would also describe some of the impacts of immigration on some countries.
The first and foremost reason people leave their families and friends behind and move to the other countries is because of the jobs and opportunities. In most populous countries such as Indonesia and India, finding suitable careers for college graduates is not an easy task due to the large number of people who are looking for the same occupations. As a result, people end up doing the work they are not trained for. So, in order to get the jobs that are suitable for them, they immigrate to other countries that provide them more opportunities. In addition, there are also people that emigrate from opposite country due to the lack of support from the people of their country. For instance, Anggun, an Indonesian singer, moved to France because the people in Indonesia did not appreciate her work.
Secondly, a lot of people immigrate to other countries in order to free themselves from political issues or religious obligations in their country. Sometimes countries got into political problems that might endanger the citizen of that country, such as a coup, conflicts with other country or war. These problems, depending on how the government deals with it, can force people to move out from their country in order to escape from the conflict. One example is the mass exodus of Jewish people in Germany during World War II in order to escape from the Nazis. Another example is during the Syrian revolution, a lot of people immigrate to neighborhood countries
to escape from the civil war.
Lastly, the reason why people migrate is to gain access to better social services. This happen because people feel the services in their country is not good enough and wants to have access to better services. So, in order to obtain better services, they move to other more developed countries. This usually applies to people from developing countries that are already financially secured. For instance, a lot of Indonesian upper class own properties in Singapore and Australia and move there when they retire because it is safer there and they also got better healthcare system. Another example is the increasing number of Chinese people moving to other developed countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and United States because of the same reason Indonesian move to Singapore and Australia.
As the results of migration, countries might gain benefits from it but it can also bring some troubles, especially for the host country. Some of the benefits are the increase in available workforce, enrichment in cultural diversity, and a boost in tax income; whereas the disadvantages of migration are exploitation of migrants, overpopulation, and lower quality of services.
With more and more people moving in to a country, the number of available worker increase and it can also motivate people who already got a job to work harder because they know if they do not work hard enough someone is always ready to fill in their shoes. Another benefit is the fact that when someone emigrate form their home country, they also bring their culture with them which results in the enrichment of cultural diversity to the host country. One example is in the United States, almost every big city have a Chinatown as the results of an abundance of Chinese people who migrate here and stay in one neighborhood. Migration also makes the host country richer because the more people immigrate to one country, the more tax they receive as the results of the increasing population.
But the availability of immigrant workers can also lead to exploitation, such as lower wages and harsher working environment. This is because the people from the host country know that immigrants really need their jobs in
order to survive so they make them work harder while giving them lower paycheck. The increase in population may also lead to overpopulation, and in the end will lower the quality of public services because the number of people using them increases which might lead to unavailability of public services to some people.
In conclusion, migration happens because people want to live a better life then the one they have now and the only way to do that is to move to another place and get a fresh start. And as people move to other places, they bring new ideas, cultures, lifestyles as well as troubles to their destination. But because of migration, all the different ideas, cultures, lifestyles, and troubles blend in together and emerge as an identity that differentiate one country to the other.
