Immigration & the Oneness of Mankind

The more I follow the news, the more I realize this is becoming a serious issue in N. America and in Europe. Just this morning, I read an article in the New York Times that highlighted once again how difficult it seems to reconcile human rights with societal obligations. The subject of the article, an African immigrant to Sweden who was appointed minister for integration and gender equality, expresses an opinion which conflicts with that of other immigrants in her country. One recalls also the recent and ongoing debate in the United States about illegal immigrants, the Paris riots last year and the fury over satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in Denmark.

This question is one I've been thinking about more and more. It is a sign of the integration of the planet into one common land, and it is stretching our political, legal and most importantly our social systems beyond their breaking points. Something is going to have to give. The question that must be answered is this: what happens when my personal beliefs and practices intersect other people's beliefs and practices? The search for a universal set of values that can be adhered to and applied anywhere in the world will have to be recognized and pursued vigorously by leaders of thought and of nations. (I believe Dr. William Hatcher laid a foundation for this in his seminal book Love, Power and Justice: the Dynamics of Authentic Morality.)

As early as 1931, in words at once challenging and prophetic, Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Baha'i Faith, expounded on the principle of the Oneness of Mankind:

Let there be no mistake. The principle of the Oneness of Mankind—the pivot round which all the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh revolve —is no mere outburst of ignorant emotionalism or an expression of vague and pious hope. Its appeal is not to be merely identified with a reawakening of the spirit of brotherhood and good-will among men, nor does it aim solely at the fostering of harmonious cöoperation among individual peoples and nations. Its implications are deeper, its claims greater than any which the Prophets of old were allowed to advance. Its message is applicable not only to the individual, but concerns itself primarily with the nature of those essential relationships that must bind all the states and nations as members of one human family. It does not constitute merely the enunciation of an ideal, but stands inseparably associated with an institution adequate to embody its truth, demonstrate its validity, and perpetuate its influence. It implies an organic change in the structure of present-day society, a change such as the world has not yet experienced. It constitutes a challenge, at once bold and universal, to outworn shibboleths of national creeds—creeds that have had their day and which must, in the ordinary course of events as shaped and controlled by Providence, give way to a new gospel, fundamentally different from, and infinitely superior to, what the world has already conceived. It calls for no less than the reconstruction and the demilitarization of the whole civilized world—a world organically unified in all the essential aspects of its life, its political machinery, its spiritual aspiration, its trade and finance, its script and language, and yet infinite in the diversity of the national characteristics of its federated units.

It represents the consummation of human evolution—an evolution that has had its earliest beginnings in the birth of family life, its subsequent development in the achievement of tribal solidarity, leading in turn to the constitution of the city-state, and expanding later into the institution of independent and sovereign nations.

The principle of the Oneness of Mankind, as proclaimed by Bahá’u’lláh, carries with it no more and no less than a solemn assertion that attainment to this final stage in this stupendous evolution is not only necessary but inevitable, that its realization is fast approaching, and that nothing short of a power that is born of God can succeed in establishing it.

(The World Order of Baha'u'llah, Selected Letters, p. 43)

As I understand them, these statements call for a radical change at all levels of society. Thus the 'problem of immigration' is not separate from other world developments nor will it be solved by the means currently available. No law, no government programme, no call for mutual tolerance and good-will can ultimately succeed in binding together diverse peoples, cultures and nations.