移民成了小事一樁Take the plunge and emigrate

My grandfather was born in Manchester in 1912. His parents had only recently arrived from Lithuania, and they soon moved on: after losing two children to scarlet fever in filthy industrial Manchester, they left for much healthier Rhodesia.

我祖父1912年生於曼徹斯特，他的父母是來自立陶宛的新移民。很快，他們一家就再度遠遷他鄉：在兩個孩子在這座污濁的工業城市死於腥紅熱後，他們移民到了環境健康得多的羅得西亞。<?xml:namespace prefix="o" ns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office">

Thanks to my grandfather's birthplace, I was born British, though admittedly not very British. "Birth in the district of West Mengo in the Republic of Uganda", records my birth certificate, signed by a local official named Louis Mugonoki Kinkuheire Keitirima. We soon moved on, too. I grew up everywhere, and my children were born in Paris. Now Britain is refusing them citizenship. It seems my grandfather's 15 minutes in Manchester weren't sufficient to confer Britishness on generations of descendants.

拜我祖父的出生地所賜，我生下來就是英國籍，但不可否認的是，我並不那麼像英國人。我的出生證明上寫着"生於烏干達共和國West Mengo區"，證明上還有當地一位名叫"Louis Mugonoki Kinkuheire Keitirima"的官員的簽名。很快，我們也開始踏上移民的進程。在我的成長過程中，我的足跡遍及世界各地。我的孩子出生在巴黎。現在，英國拒絕授予他們英國公民身份。我祖父在曼徹斯特呆過的15分鐘，似乎不足以讓他的多代子孫獲得英國國籍。

So when it comes to emigration, I'm biased. We Kupers are serial migrants. However, it is objective fact that perhaps a third of young people in western countries should emigrate tomorrow. Now that emigration has become a cinch, it's a no-brainer. Just go already.

因此，當談到移民問題時，我的態度是有傾向性的。我們庫柏家族屬於“連環移民”。然而，一個客觀事實是，或許西方國家三分之一的年輕人未來都應移民。既然移民已變成了小事一樁，那就沒必要再考慮太多。儘管移吧。

Emigration used to be hard. When my great-grandparents sailed to Africa, they probably knew it was for life. A bad choice was hard to rectify. In Argentina 20 years ago, just after South America's "lost decade", I encountered a nation of nostalgic immigrants who seemed to feel they'd got on the wrong boat. They should have gone to the US instead.

過去，移民曾經很是困難。我曾祖父母坐船到非洲時，他們大概清楚自己得一輩子呆在非洲了。當時，糟糕的選擇是很難糾正的。20年前在阿根廷（當時南美剛剛經歷了"失去的十年"），我所看到的是，這個移民國家的人民非常想回到過去，他們似乎認爲自己上錯了船——當初本應移民到美國。

Sometimes the wrong choice was personal rather than political. A friend of my grandmother's met a Czech refugee in wartime London. Postwar, she followed him to quiet, bourgeois Czechoslovakia. Then suddenly communism arrived. When she finally made it back to London in the 1990s, I commiserated with her on her decades behind the Iron Curtain. "Oh, I didn't mind the regime," she said. "It was my husband I couldn't stand."

有時錯誤的選擇涉及個人，而非國家。我祖母的一位朋友在戰時的倫敦邂逅了一位捷克難民。戰後，她跟隨他去了寧靜的資產階級國家捷克斯洛伐克。但突然之間，共產主義來了。當她在上世紀90年代終於回到倫敦時，我對她在"鐵幕"後度過的幾十年表示了同情。“哦，我並不介意那個政權，”她說道，“我無法忍受的是我的丈夫。”

In the old days, even emigrants who found happiness lost their homeland. An Italian consul in Rio de Janeiro once told me about the émigré Italians who showed up at the consulate every few years to renew their passports. Each time they returned, he said, they looked a little more Brazilian. Instead of ironed Italian shirts they'd come in vests, and eventually (here the consul winced) even shorts. I remarked that the consul himself, in his impeccable cream suit and bow tie, had remained Italian. "I make a point of it," he replied.

過去，即便是找到幸福的移民也會失去祖國的印記。駐里約熱內盧的一位意大利領事曾給我講了一些在巴西的意大利移民的故事，這些意大利移民每隔幾年就出現在領事館，來更新他們的護照。領事說道，每次他們來領事館時，都可以看出他們身上的巴西印記又深了幾分。他們穿的不再是熨過的意大利襯衫，而是穿上了背心，最後竟然穿上了短褲（說到這裏，領事皺了一下眉）。我說道，穿着極爲得體的米色西裝、繫着蝶形領結的領事本人，仍然保持着意大利人本色。他回答道：“我是刻意穿成這樣的。”

People have emigrated since the first humans walked out of Africa, but since the 1990s emigration has changed its nature. It's no longer forever. Nowadays, you get on a cheap flight, Skype your mother from the airport, and if you don't like the place, fly home again.

自人類首次走出非洲以來，就一直在移民。但上世紀90年代以後，移民的性質發生了變化，它不再是隻能一條道走到黑了。如今，你可以登上一架廉價航班，在機場通過Skype與你媽媽聊天；如果你不喜歡那個地方，飛回家就是了。

That's why emigration is the right option for tens of millions today. About a fifth of young people in western countries are unemployed. In Spain and Greece, about half are. They could stick around at home, perhaps eventually find work, and then spend their careers paying for the previous generation's pensions, healthcare and debt. Or they could emigrate. It is hard to make a start in Brazil, Canada or Germany, but the alternative might be watching TV in your parents' house for the next four years. Similarly, elderly Americans drowning in healthcare costs should consider hotfooting it to Britain or India pronto.

這就是爲什麼現在對數千萬人來說，移民纔是正確的選擇。在西方國家，約五分之一的年輕人沒有工作。在西班牙和希臘，約一半的年輕人失業。他們可以呆在本國，或許有朝一日會找到工作，然後工作到退休、來爲上一代人的養老金、醫療費用和債務埋單。或者他們也可以移民。在巴西、加拿大或德國，想要立足的確並非易事，但不走這條路的話，他們未來4年可能就只能呆在父母家裏看電視了。類似的是，承擔不起醫療費用的美國老年人也應考慮馬上移民到英國或印度。

Emigration is probably the quickest way of improving your career prospects, both now and for your lifetime. You make a new set of contacts. You learn survival skills. You probably learn a new language. The anthropologist Susan Ossman, author of the forthcoming Paths of Serial Migration, writes: "The experience of moving from place to place without the aid of a multi-national, when one is not a diplomat, tends not only to build a person's bureaucratic acumen. It opens up new geographic, linguistic and political spaces for action as well as contemplation." Better still, it annoys xenophobes.

移民或許是改善我們職業前景的最迅捷方式，無論對於現在還是對於你的一生來說都是如此。你會建立新的人際關係，學會生存技能，可能還會學會一門新的語言。人類學家、即將出版的新書《連環移民之路》(Paths of Serial Migration)的作者蘇珊•奧斯曼(Susan Ossman)寫道：“如果某人不是外交官，又沒有多重國籍的優勢，那麼他從一地移民到另一地的經歷，帶給他的往往不只是在與官僚打交道時能更加自如地應對。它還爲行動和思考開闢了新的地理、語言和政治空間。”更妙的是，它還令仇外者感到頭疼。

Even when emigration is a bad experience, it's a good experience: perhaps you desert your car at the airport, but if you've made friends then you can always trade with the country, move hither and back depending on the business cycle, and one distant day send your kids to bunk at a friend's place across the water for free.

甚至連不愉快的移民經歷，也能成爲有益的經歷：或許你把你的汽車遺棄在了機場，但如果你在住在國交了朋友，你就可以永遠與那個國家有貿易往來，依照商業週期在祖國和住在國之間來回遷移，在遙遠的某一天把你孩子送到大洋彼岸的朋友家免費寄宿。

There's much speculation – often quite dark – about why Mormons and Jews tend to succeed in business. It might simply be because they emigrate. Jews typically cross borders fleeing persecution, while all young Mormon men are sent on a two-year "mission". Half go abroad, where they must learn the language, and then work six days a week trying to convert sceptical foreigners to a faith that bans not only alcohol but coffee, too. As many Mormon businessmen have noted, this is excellent preparation for business, and especially international business. L. Todd Budge, the first foreign chief executive of a Japanese bank, was once a Mormon missionary in Japan.

關於摩門教徒和猶太人在商界爲何往往混得很成功，人們有着很多猜測，這些猜測通常相當陰暗。然而，這可能只是因爲他們屬於移民人羣。猶太人常常跨越邊境逃避迫害，而摩門教的所有年輕男性教徒都要從事爲期兩年的“傳教活動”。其中一半的人會遠赴海外，在那裏他們必須學習當地語言，然後每週工作6天，努力讓持懷疑態度的外國人改信這種不僅禁止飲酒還禁止喝咖啡的宗教。正如很多摩門教商人指出的那樣，這段經歷爲經商、特別是跨國經商做了很好的準備。L•託德•巴奇(L. Todd Budge)是一家日本銀行的首位外籍首席執行官，他就曾經在日本傳播過摩門教。

In 1981, the British cabinet minister Norman Tebbit urged the unemployed to get on their bikes and find work. Today, they could get on their cheap flights. We are all Kupers now.

1981年，英國內閣大臣譚百德(Norman Tebbit)曾力勸失業者騎上自行車去找工作。今天，他們可以搭廉價航班去找。現在我們全都是"庫柏一族"。