I received an email from an African man last week, a gentlemen from the country of Nambia who had a few questions about moving abroad. I write a lot articles and blogs on travel and living in other countries, so he read one and reached out to me. 

I wanted to share our exchange with you. Why?

In the United States, 'immigrant' is a bad word. At least some times it is, for some people. But particularly right now in the United States, the only frame of reference most of us have with the idea of immigration is people from Mexico and Central America illegally sneaking into our borders. Or we might have a feint notion of Irish, Italian, Polish, etc. immigrants coming through Ellis Island in faded photographs.  

But the world is filled with migrants - to and from every single country, throughout every inch of the world, the ebb and flow of our existence within geography is as old as human kind, itself. In fact, borders are unnatural. We are all on the same globe, yet we draw an invisible line and call the space within "ours," almost arbitrarily - in proportion to our power, opened or shut per our convenience. The permitters of nations are like rubber bands, constricting and expanding through history as wars, refugees, famines, disputes, industry, colonization, language changes, social and cultural norms, and  even weather patterns change.  

I don't play at politics, so I'm not trying to tell you that the borders of the United States should be open to everyone, all the time. Of course that would be a disaster, and every country requires policies who can enter and who can not. I don't have the answer what that policy should be, exactly. The only thing I know is that there is a far bigger picture of immigration than the average person understands in the U.S., so I'm trying to paint the corners. Hopefully through this blog, you will be introduced to another kind of immigrant, a real person with a life journey outside you previous realm of understanding, to humanize the issue beyond headlines and political rhetoric.  

As I've travled all over the world, I've noticed a few things:

1. Every country experiences the same circumstances: people from more economically-disadvantaged countries trying to enter for jobs, safety, or a better life. And the population of every country is trying to enter another country for economic advantage. Everyone's nature is to try to move up. The United States is one of the few countries where that does not occur - our citizens don't have anywhere to go but down.

2. The vast majority of immigrants are good people who just want to work hard, take care of their families, and live happy lives. I estimate that percentage to be exactly the same as the rest of the non-immigrant population who are good people who work hard, take care of their families, and live happy lives.  

3. How can we criticize an immigrant when his country was colonized by the same people who are now denying him entry to theirs?  

4. I have been an illegal immigrant - living and conducting business in countries for periods longer than my tourist visa allows, so I have no right to judge anyone. It's not easy. There 

5. In fact, I know that if I was born into poor circumstances and had trouble putting food on the table or keeping my family safe, I'd take advantage of every opportunity to move somewhere else for a better life.

Would you?

Here is the email I received from this gentlemen from Africa, and my reply:

Hi Norm,

Im T.J. (name changed) a 30-year old black man from Namibia, Africa who is
interested in working overseas either in Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, or United Arab Emirates.

I'd like to know from you as you possess priceless information in travel as to which countries are worth the effort. I'm  looking for a country offering the following;

1) minimal racial discrimination- I was born and raised in the Apartheid era. (Namibia was colonised by the very same racist South African government after Germany lost the 2nd world war)

2) Well-paying unskilled or semi-skilled jobs. I want to earn and save as much foreign currency as possible to help shoulder some family responsibilities (check out the Namibian dollar exchange rate in comparison to £/€/$,im sure it can help paint a picture)

3) Opportunities to help forge business endeavours with foreigners while living aboard, as there are many opportunities here in Namibia which foreigners can benifit from including my own people (trying to utilize any opportunity available should i go overseas).

4) Which towns/cities one should consider living in within these countries.

I hope im making enough sense concerning the posed questions,if not please do let me know as not all info on the net is reliable regarding these countries and i need raw info and you are the main man
concerning this:)

To conclude i highly appreciate any response given regarding this matter and any extra info will be treasured thank you for your time in reading my letter Norm.

Regards,
T.J.

***

Hello T.J.;

So nice of you to reach out and say hello.  Thanks for asking that great question, and I hope I can help.  I have a little experience with those places or what I've heard, and out of those, I think Canada might be my first choice.  Of course it is cold, but from what I see there are plenty of work opportunities, they have a liberal immigration and work policy, and the economy is terrific.  Also, I understand Canada is a country with large immigrant and foreigner/non-white pockets of population, and there is far less racism that in my home country, the U.S.  Vancouver is the best city there but crazy expensive.  Toronto has the most international flavor and that may be a good place to start.  I know a lot of people who work in mining or drilling way up north and make great money - they'll work a month on and two weeks off or some schedule like that.  So it's not glamorous at all, but they make great money without advanced qualifications and it gives them some time freedom.

Germany's economy is tough right now and there is a big  anti-immigrant sentiment.  England is great and possibly my second choice, though it's very expensive and more competitive in London.  I really don't know that much about UAE.

I certainly hope that helps ! I applaud your efforts to build a better life for you and your family, and wish you the best of luck. Please keep me posted and keep in touch!

Your brother and friend,

Norm Schriever

Lately, I’ve become fascinated by maps.  Cartography is a strange and unexpected passion, I grant you, but it coincides with my relocation to exotic southeast Asia, where I’m adjusting to existence on the opposite side of the globe.  I'm forced to recalibrate my paradigm every day, half expecting the sun to rise in the west and set to the east.  So I’m considering maps with a brightened curiosity here, realizing that despite the factual data they claim to portray they are essentially just social pictographs – a view of the mapmaker in relation to the world.  Indeed, a map of the thing is not the thing itself, but a fair representation, like the reflection of the sky on a glassy lake, slightly distorted but beautiful, none-the-less.

“I speak to maps. And sometimes they something back to me. Before maps, the world was limitless, but maps made places on the edges of the imagination seem graspable and placable.” 
- Abdulrazak Gurnah, By The Sea

But so much of cartography is socially-constructed, not just cold geography.  Who made the map, where were they from, what do they believe, who have they conquered, how do they see themselves in relation to the rest of the world?  These are the real questions about any map that you won’t find clarified in its legend.  Pondering the absolutism of a map leads us to question everything else in our lives, even gravity and the laws of physics, but never grants us comfort in our own infinitesimal mortality – if anything we're gently reminded of the Reaper at the door every time we unfold a map.  

“Two important characteristics of maps should be noticed. A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.”
- Alfred Korzybski 

Therefore maps are, at their essence, nothing more than snow globes - they depict a scene of the world frozen in time but when turned upside down, prodded a bit, and shaken vigorously a dynamic story emerges, the story of humankind.

***
I want to share with you 20 maps that helped me view our big, beautiful, infinitely fascinating earth from a new vantage point.  I hope they make you think about the world differently, as they have for me.

1. Lets start with a 100% accurate map of the world that you probably have never seen. The Northern Hemisphere is always “up” on the map.  The practice stems from European map makers who used the North Star as a point of reference on their maps.

That is completely arbitrary – “up” and “down” do not exist on a perfect sphere rotating and floating through directionless space. 

2. On most maps we see North America and Western Europe centered or featured when viewed left-to-right, because we read text, see pictures, and view maps left-to-right, top-to-bottom in the West.  But when we look at this ancient Japanese-drawn map, Asia is almost perfectly centered. 

3. Before the expansion of European colonialism, East was often “up” or featured on maps, hence the word “orientation,” (which comes from the Orient.) 

4. Even the shape of the world changes how we see things - a map when the world was thought to be flat.  

5. Map of countries conjoined to show their true relational size, as if a modern-day Pangea existed.  

6. To put Africa’s size in perspective, we could fit the land masses of the United States, all of Eastern Europe, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, India, Japan, and inside of it.

7. Perspective is everything - like we can see in this map of the world from the vantage point of the North Pole.

8. Longitude and latitude can be deceivingly hard to visualize on a map, as illustrated by this map of time zones in Antarctica. 

9.  He who conquers, writes the history.  We can trace the reach of Colonialism with this map of all the countries Britain invaded at some point.

10. We can even track social issues via maps, like countries that offer paid maternity leave, framed in perspective to the rest of the world.  Note that the United States is on par with Suriname, Liberia, Palau, and a few Pacific Island nations in it’s refusal to offer standard paid maternity leave.

11. Or a map of the world according to who makes under $2 a day, a barometer for desperate poverty.

12. The Peters Projection World Map, a controversial project by German filmmaker and journalist Arno Peters, characterizes the true flat map projection of the world much different than we're used to.

13. If we want to investigate the power of corporate influence in the world, we only have to peek at this map of countries who have McDonalds.  That corporation is, in fact, the largest private land owner in the world outside of the Vatican City.

14. Another way to graph our world is to resize nations according to certain factors, like this map that portrays size according to possession of nuclear weapons.

15. For instance, an issue that isn't even on most peoples radar is unexploded land mines. They're a HUGE problem in many war-torn countries, because obviously the mines don’t just disappear once the conflicts are over – they sit in the ground unexploded for many decades, often detonating on unsuspecting farmers and especially children. 
 

16. Maps can shed a light on the dynamics of how we exist, like this map of the concentration of population in the world.  There are more people living inside this circle – in India, Indonesia, southeast Asia, and China, etc., than are living in the whole rest of the world combined.

17. Maps can be redrawn with startling quickness, like this map of a changing Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the fall of Communism, between 1989-1991.

18. Maps can also show us a clear ripple effect of our policies, like this map of the countries who have not signed the Kyoto Protocols, a 1997 United Nations agreement to lower the environmental impact of greenhouse gases.

19. And how the polar ice caps have shrunk more in the last 30 years than all of modern history previously due to  global warming and climate change.

20. When we look at this photographic map of the Pacific Ocean from outer space, we realize that in the cycles of birth and death on this planet, in the span of time, and in the vastness of the cosmos we barely exist at all.  

Ultimately, maps remind us that the there are as many ways to view the world, as many opinions on reality, as people beholden to it.