Brazil is acquainted with all the sides of migrant issues. Immigrants from all over the world built this country. They arrived here in waves: Portuguese, African slaves, Italians, Germans, Poles, Arabs, Jews, and Japanese. Armenians, Koreans, and Turks and many others came in smaller waves. Today, Brazil has immigrants and emigrants. There are Bolivians living here illegally; there are Brazilians living illegally in the United States and Europe.
There are, also, thousands of dekasseguis -- an interesting Japanese word that means "people who left their hometown but want to return some day." Dekasseguis are the descendants of one million Japanese immigrants who arrived in Brazil a century ago. Now their grandsons and granddaughters go to Japan looking for jobs. It is a return of sorts, but a brief one, just to get some money and send it to their real homeland. Despite being Japanese descendants, and having oriental visages, they face prejudice in Japan. Yet they think working there is worth while. More than 60% use the money they get there as start up capital to establish their own ventures in Brazil.
Brazilians have been facing the difficult drama of being strangers in strange lands. Jean Charles de Menezes was a young hardworking Brazilian native living in London. Two years ago, he was shot in the head and killed in the Stockwell London Metro Station by the police. He was just trying to get the train to go to work, but police officers thought he looked like an Arab terrorist.
The police lied about this incident from the beginning. They said that he was running and did not obey their command to stop, because he was in London illegally. Actually, an independent commission found out that his situation there was regular. He was not running and there was no warning from police officers. No one has been punished for the murder of this “second class” citizen. The commander who gave the order to take him down, Cressida Dick, has been promoted.
Near 700,000 workers from other Latin American countries live today in the Great Sao Paulo area. Most of them are Bolivians who are there illegally and face unacceptable work and living conditions. In Japan, 270,000 dekasseguis work 60 hours a week and accept intolerable pain and prejudice to save money and get back home.
Until 1960, Brazilian statistics registered an outflow of money from immigrants sending their savings back to their families. Now these figures have changed altogether. Since 1990, money sent by emigrants, such as the dekasseguis, to Brazil totaled US$35 billion: an amount larger than Ecuador’s GDP.
The role of migrants in Brazil's past and present have taught us about all the drama, hope and pain migrants live through.
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