Immigration becomes a devil’s pact leaving migrants belonging nowhere

Evidence

These days it feels to me like you make a devil’s pact when you walk into this country. You hand over your passport at the check-in, you get stamped, you want to make a little money, get yourself started … but you mean to go back! Who would want to stay? Cold, wet, miserable; terrible food, dreadful newspapers—who would want to stay? In a place where you are never welcomed, only tolerated. Just tolerated. Like you are an animal finally housebroken. Who would want to stay? But you have made a devil’s pact … it drags you in and suddenly you are unsuitable to return, your children are unrecognizable, you belong nowhere. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 763

Categorization

• SEED: A powerful first-person voice for an essay on how assimilation as tolerance rather than welcome strands migrants between worlds.
• SHARE: Worth sending to anyone writing about immigration or the immigrant novel — a crystallized articulation of being ‘tolerated’ vs welcomed.