Immigrants: Why We Find It So Hard to Accept People We Don't Know

But there’s a way to have a change of heart and mind.

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Born a Migrant

I was born and raised in a small village in northwestern Balochistan, Pakistan. It was a tiny community with only 40 households. My grandfather, who was the imam of the village mosque, had migrated from a town across the hills. It was about a 40-minute drive from the new place. My father and uncles married women from the village or nearby towns. In a tribal, rural society, one could go only so far. My mother came from a landowning family in the village that played a significant role in local affairs.

Growing up, I attended the mosque for religious lessons, went to school, and played hide and seek or cricket with kids in the village, which felt like home. But sometimes, something strange would happen, especially when a fight broke out with kids from landed families. They would tell my cousins and me, ‘Majaraano, bara-wo ma’ (migrants, we will expel you). Back then, we did not understand what it really meant, but it hurt us deeply. We understood the words' meaning but not their political significance.

Such threats never materialized, probably because my mother’s family was among the landowners. The threat of expulsion would have had to go through them, which they would never allow. I should mention although life in the village was good overall, that doesn’t take away from the times we felt alienated. It was a hardship that those who owned land did not face. It was a form of discrimination we felt deeply but didn’t know how to address.

I was probably between seven and ten years old and could not understand why they said so or how they knew we were not from there. In hindsight, it's not rocket science to realize that most likely, elders talked about us in such terms, and the kids had picked up on it. This makes one thing clear: it is highly unlikely that we are born with the tendency to exclude or possess. It is not hardwired into us. We learn it through socialization and education, and over time, software probably becomes a part of the hardware.

Our Xenophobia Towards Afghan Migrants

Anyway, the period when this was happening was the mid to late 1990s, when many Afghan migrants, fleeing conflict in their homeland—largely a result of the rivalry between the US and USSR—had migrated to Pakistani cities and towns, including a few families in our village, this time from across the mountains and ranges. Most were Pashtuns who shared our language, culture, history, and religion. 

Despite their shared identity, many in the village considered them maajir, which means migrants or immigrants. The root of the word maajir in Arabic is Hijr, meaning migration, referring to the Prophet Muhammad’s migration from Makkah to Medina. Therefore, maajir, mahajir, or muhajir are different spellings of the same word, indicating migration for political, economic, cultural, or religious reasons from one oplace to another. 

Afghans had been displaced by an ongoing conflict in their homeland. Pakistan, as an ally of the US, played a significant role in the instability in Afghanistan. As teenagers and even young adults, we lacked the knowledge and political awareness to empathize with these families and treat them as equals. Most people avoided eating at their homes, claiming that their houses smelled. No one dared to marry their daughter to a family of an Afghan migrant or vice versa. A few were kind to them, not because it was the right thing to do but because it was convenient.

Most Afghans in villages like ours worked farmland, and landowners would give them space to stay and exploit their labor because these people had nowhere else to go. For years, I saw them working on the farm, but they were never accepted as part of the village. After decades, many have been sent back with the recent deportations by the government. Probably the only exception to discriminatory behavior was the welcoming gestures of political parties like Pashtun Khwa Milli Awami Party, mainly in the capital Quetta of Balochistan, which helped register these Afghans as Pakistanis.

Afghans, I have been told (but never experienced myself), don’t quite welcome Pashtuns from Pakistan in their homeland either. I am sure there are Pashto and Pashtun-loving Afghan nationalists who would do anything to host them, but the general attitude is far from welcoming. Regardless, it seems that tribalism, nativism, and provincialism are tendencies that humans have had for millennia. Trusting strangers, at one point, probably meant inviting trouble or even death into one’s life.

Tribalism and Xenophobia in America

I left Pakistan twelve years ago for higher education. For the first couple of years, I lived in San Diego. Before that, I had spent five months in Nebraska, in a tiny town called Kearney. This was the time in the late 2010s and the beginning of 2011 when I was going through a change of views on moral as well as existential questions. My views began to change in Lahore, Pakistan, where I went for my undergrad in Political Science and a minor in history. Before that, I studied civics and Islamic studies at a local college in Quetta, where I saw a library for the first time at age twenty.

In Kearny, my host family, the Ledroits, were kind, church going, American patriots. They had an adopted daughter from a Central Asian state (Kazakhstan, if I am not mistaken) and had been hosting students like me for decades. They took me to church, family lunches, showed me the fields, and gave me a place to stay in their home. They would ask me what I like to eat and cook it for me. Dan Ledroit, one afternoon, while we were eating lunch, told me the man who burned the Quran is like a naked person without clothes and has no shame. That day or week, someone had burned the copy of the Quran.

Even though I was going through an intellectual transformation, where I questioned religion and God, it was kind of Dan to make me feel he cared. Gloria, Dan, and I never met again, but we have been in touch on social media. And in the past decade, our political views have diverged even more, but whenever we have chatted, it has been warm and friendly. It has been civic. I will never forget their kindness despite our disagreement on politics.

When I came back to the United States in 2013 for my MA, I decided to stay here because of the increasingly dangerous political climate for freethinkers in Pakistan. I thought this was the place where I could speak freely and still be safe. Of course, there has been an ebb and flow in the politics of immigration, and even under Obama, millions of Mexican immigrants were deported. So, I was not naive to think this was a political paradise, but I knew enough to realise that one could still live comparatively freely.

I applied for political asylum, and while awaiting a decision on my case, I felt confident in the American Constitution, the courts, and institutions in protecting free speech. Again, even here, I knew there was no absolute freedom anywhere. It comes with a price, even in a so-called liberal democracy like the United States. As years passed and I waited, 2016 began to change things dramatically. But even then, I felt like this was probably the ebb and flow in human affairs.

Then comes the regrettable October 7th and the horrible Israeli Genocide against Palestinians, actually under the democrats. But one could still speak out against it. Come 2024 and Trump 2.0, and a new phase of oppression is set in. We have come to a point in 2025 where I have a green card and am a year away from eligibility for US citizenship, and my confidence in free speech has been shattered. So many of us do not feel safe. The trust in courts and the justice system is nearly lost.

However, I want to be honest: the immigrant is in serious trouble. I am in serious trouble. I could be and might be deported if I don’t stay quiet. And maybe it won't even be about staying quiet anymore. Just being non-white could be enough to be considered eligible for deportation. Because we are witnessing the most extreme forms of xenophobia, it's hard not to imagine the worst fears and outcomes.

Despite this frightening political climate, part of me isn't surprised because human beings everywhere can be so full of shit. Let me give another example of xenophobia: Turkey, or Türkiye as it is now called.

Xenophobia in Türkiye

For my research, I have lived in Istanbul, Türkiye. You can read my story, From Nangarhar To The Bosphorus: War, Displacement And The Afghans on Afghan migrant teens in Istanbul for details, but suffice to say that my conversations with Turks in Istanbul and outside blame Afghan and Syrian migrants for ills and troubles in their society. From rape to economic problems, the tendency in society is that these migrants are responsible for such issues.

Several people, in passing, would comment on the Arabic names of businesses owned mainly by Syrian Arabs. The resentment at the absence of Turkish instead was palpable, in addition to the frustration at why these people were there in the first place. Of course, I am not saying most Turks hold such a view. The ruling party of Erdogan has been pro-immigrants, even if the motive is political. The opposition republican party has been anti-immigrant.

I am aware that the argument on the politics of immigration in Türkiye and elsewhere is far more complex than I can settle in these lines. But there is a widespread tendency to neglect empathy, overfocus on the drawbacks and challenges immigrants bring with them, and ignore the good they contribute to the host community. There is a wealth of research on the topic.

Should I Expect Fairness and Equality in the US?

I want to return to how and why I began this piece the way I did, and wonder if I should have any expectations. The question that comes up for me is: If I was not welcomed in the village a few miles across the hills by kids who spoke our language, looked like us, played with us, and went to school with us, why should I expect people continents and oceans away with a different history, faith, language, and culture from my place of origin to treat me fine?

The truth is, I have been treated fine for the most part, except for the racist cops with nearly deadly encounters because of their violent and aggressive behavior, for which I am very grateful, but that does not mean I have all the rights that those who are born and raised here have. Even here, one can realistically accept that, since I am not a citizen, I do not have full legal rights; however, I have a green card, which guarantees certain rights that are now being taken away. The dispossession of rights seems unstoppable.

So the realistic answer to the question posed, probably, is that I should keep my expectations to the bare minimum. As some friends have suggested, in the wake of the October 7th massacre, the post-October 7th Israeli genocide of Palestinians, and the crackdown on free speech of the pro-Palestinian activists, if you are not white and a citizen born here, you should lie your head down. Even whites and citizens are not safe anymore. So we share that.

If something happens, it is on you. You are not from here, so know your place. So goes the argument. This advice, I believe, is pragmatic and given in good faith; after all, it is daring to speak out in a foreign country about the most contentious issues. But here is the thing. It was not like this in pre-MAGA America. Disagreements of all kinds had a place. Occasionally, I have been told to go back to where I came from if I don't like America, but nothing of the sort that has been unfolding in the past few years.

There is a pragmatism in the logic, but it still betrays the values, ideals, and practices of political liberty in the United States, which I was drawn to, and which many countries and societies, including my country of origin, do not offer. I came here for freedom and growth, not for material wealth and possessions. While I weave a narrative through my experience, the question is larger and one that concerns history, philosophy, and the humanities broadly. How can one make sense of it in a normative way? And can one?

Philosophy, Poetry, and Xenophilia

What brought me to America was education and the search for ideas, made possible by a scholarship provided by the American government, funded by its taxpayers. I thought of America, the space where I could debate and reflect on questions without fear of violence and retaliation. I never went back for these reasons and have spent the past 12 years in or around college and university towns. I received two Master’s degrees and a Ph.D. this past May.

America has both challenged and excited me. Exile has been the most difficult experience of my life. I have missed the deaths of close ones, including my mother, whom I met luckily after 11 years of separation last year in Istanbul. I have also missed happy occasions, such as weddings and births, and the growth of babies into children and adults. The sacrifice is humongous. It is also debilitating and has taken a toll on my emotional and psychological health and well-being.

During my stay in the US, I have remained mostly in or near college and university communities. Although it has been good for me, there is the risk of being in a bubble and aloof, or in the ivory tower, from the larger society. However, during this time, I have also worked at restaurants, gas stations, clothing stores, and driven for Uber and Lyft. In short, most odd jobs you can think of. This has helped me get to know the broader world beyond the ivory tower, but also get out of my head.

In my most challenging times, I have turned to poetry and philosophy, in short, literature. I have come to realize why exile has been, for most of history, the prescribed punishment for dissenters. Both ancient and modern thinkers and writers have written extensively on the pains of exile. Ovid spent his entire exiled life writing about the sadness and pain of separation and exilic alienation. Edward Said wrote extensively about his estrangement in Out of Place and Reflections on Exile.

For instance, Said’s description in the Reflections on Exile has stuck with me:

“And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in an exile’s life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement. The achievements of exile are permanently undermined by the loss of something left behind forever.”

I can go on, but I want to say a word about my love for poetry. One of my favorite poets and writers, Gibran Khalil Gibran, comes to mind. My own pain and state of unbelongingness or uprootedness have inspired my quest and interest in reading poetry more. In a poem, “On Houses,” in the book The Prophet, Gibran says:

“But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed.
Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.
It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.
You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down.
You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.
And though of magnificence and splendour, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing.
For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.”

Ovid, Said, and Gibran understood the meaning of leaving home and told us things that would not come from comfort. I have carried Gibran’s book with me to places like Istanbul. The first time I arrived in the city, I was excited, and then there was the sudden rush of fearful energy and total meaninglessness. I was questioning why I was there and what the purpose of it all was.

Then I looked around the apartment and felt the quiet, remembered the touch of water from the shower I had just taken, the tree branches moving, and a cat waiting at the door. Then I thought to myself: Is it all really that different? The touch of water? The quiet of the dark? The four corners of the room? The trees outside? Or the cat? I realized why Gibran was right. My home was not in Pakistan. My home was not the United States. My home was my imagination and my relationship to it.

When I meet new people, they ask where I am from. “The Republic of Imagination,” I reply. I borrowed the phrase from the Iranian American writer Azar Nafisi’s book, called The Republic of Imagination. Some appreciate it. Others rebuke, but I couldn’t care less. I think in certain moments in history, we need what I call useful extremism or idealism to counter useless or destructive extremism.

I recognize this is too poetic or philosophical for a political argument. But are they all that different? They may be if we think of them so, but in my mind, they are not. Thinkers and poets like Gibran were useful extremists. We need such voices to go beyond the limited, narrow-minded, and fearful mundane commentary on issues of human existence.

Poetry and philosophy reveal that imagination is much more expansive and liberated than the political and cultural narratives that limit it. They have the capacity to foster xenophilia, a term that describes an attraction to, love of, or admiration for people, cultures, customs, or things that are considered foreign or different from one's own. This word originates from the Greek words xenos (stranger/foreigner) and philos (love). In contrast to xenophobia, or the fear of foreigners, xenophilia is a positive and inclusive attitude.

Cross-Cultural Encounters and a Deeper Understanding of the Self

There is another perspective: cross-cultural encounters deepen our understanding of ourselves and contribute to the cultivation of a kinder, more meaningful, and even peaceful world. In a somewhat controversial book, The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011), Steven Pinker presents evidence of declining violence. He attributes this to factors like increased cosmopolitanism, growth in rationality or literacy, expanded trade, and the broader reach of government, particularly in settling matters of security between citizens. 

Minus the last factor, the first three are relevant. Even more, the first two are directly connected to the point I am making. It is instructive for those who believe that cultural isolation, as we have been witnessing in the United States, is the path to self-enrichment.

No civilization has prospered in cultural silos. There is no inherent supremacy. Communities throughout history have learned from each other: those with better skills and open focus have improved or perfected the insights of others. But to believe they did it all on their own—whether it is the Islamic civilization or Western civilization—is not true.

In an essay, “Western Civ in World Politics: What We Mean by the West,” William McNeil writes:

“So insofar as a concept of the West excludes the rest of humanity it is a False and dangerous model. Situating the West within the totality of human kind is the way to go, and we should in our classrooms move as best we can in that direction, believing always in the ennobling effect of enlarging one’s circle of sympathies, understanding, and knowledge, and aspiring to share that belief with our students. There can be no higher calling for historians, and above all, for teachers of history.”

Thinkers and philosophers from the 20th century have written about this. For instance, in his 1933 essay ‘On the Ontological Mystery,’ Gabriel Marcel offered a vivid image that encapsulates Edmund Husserl's perspective on what 'alien' encounters and international interactions can do for us.

Marcel wrote:

“I know by my own experience how, from a stranger met by chance, there may come an irresistible appeal which overturns the habitual perspectives just as a gust of wind might tumble down the panels of a stage set — what had seemed near becomes infinitely remote and what had seemed distant seems to be close.”

Husserl’s contemporary and former assistant, Martin Heidegger, thought differently: He viewed pre-Socratic philosophy as genuinely connected to Being due to its simple, profound, and poetic nature. However, Husserl did not seek such a simple, lost world.

As Sarah Bakewell, in At the Existentialist Café, writes, “When he (Husserl) wrote about history, he was drawn to more sophisticated periods, especially those when cultures were encountering each other through travel, migration, exploration or trade. At such periods, he wrote, people living in one culture or 'home-world' (Heimwelt) meet people from an 'alien-world' (Fremdwelt). To those others, theirs is the home-world and the other is the alien-world.”

Husserl believed that the shock of encounter is mutual, awakening each culture to an extraordinary realization: that their world is not beyond questioning. A traveling Greek discovers that the Greek life-world is simply a Greek world, and that Indian and African worlds exist as well. In recognizing this, members of each culture may realize that “they are, in general, 'worlded beings,' who should not take anything for granted.”

Bakewell maintains that for Husserl, “… cross-cultural encounters are generally good, because they stimulate people to self-questioning. He suspected that philosophy started in ancient Greece not, as Heidegger would imagine, because the Greeks had a deep, inward-looking relationship with their Being, but because they were a trading people (albeit sometimes a warlike one) who constantly came across alien-worlds of all kinds.”

I can not agree more with Husserl. Based on my own Ph.D. research comparing Kurds and Pashtuns, my experiences living in different places like the US, Turkiye, and Pakistan, and my ability to speak several languages, I believe that the learning and growth that come from encountering new cultures, people, or ideas are much greater than what can be realized in cultural silos. My comparative study has shown me that studying and understanding others helps us understand ourselves better.

To sum up

The point is this: we are all full of flaws. We are all somewhat responsible for xenophobia, racism, and discrimination. We all have blind spots and willful ignorance. But the impact may differ. When we are in power and control, we cause more harm than when our racism is just an individual and isolated incident.

I also want to be careful: this doesn't mean it's inevitable, and if it's white people today, it could be other groups tomorrow, so we can't really judge. That is giving in to counterfactuals. I am more interested in reality as it is, with the understanding that there is nothing inherently malicious about one group. Hannah Arendt aptly described this phenomenon as the banality of evil: we are all capable of it. The extent depends on the power and influence we have or lack. My journey and living in different places, including my village, was to show that.

Ultimately, we have more to gain than lose from cross-cultural encounters on both individual and collective levels. Immigration is therefore often a force of good. Immigrants bring with them their diverse lives and experiences, which both challenge the host communities and provide opportunities for growth.

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