移民成了小事一桩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年生于曼彻斯特，他的父母是来自立陶宛的新移民。很快，他们一家就再度远迁他乡：在两个孩子在这座污浊的工业城市死于腥红热后，他们移民到了环境健康得多的罗得西亚。<?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赐，我生下来就是英国籍，但不可否认的是，我并不那么像英国人。我的出生证明上写着"生于乌干达共和国West Mengo区"，证明上还有当地一位名叫"Louis Mugonoki Kinkuheire Keitirima"的官员的签名。很快，我们也开始踏上移民的进程。在我的成长过程中，我的足迹遍及世界各地。我的孩子出生在巴黎。现在，英国拒绝授予他们英国公民身份。我祖父在曼彻斯特呆过的15分钟，似乎不足以让他的多代子孙获得英国国籍。

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，当谈到移民问题时，我的态度是有倾向性的。我们库柏家族属于“连环移民”。然而，一个客观事实是，或许西方国家三分之一的年轻人未来都应移民。既然移民已变成了小事一桩，那就没必要再考虑太多。尽管移吧。

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.

过去，移民曾经很是困难。我曾祖父母坐船到非洲时，他们大概清楚自己得一辈子呆在非洲了。当时，糟糕的选择是很难纠正的。20年前在阿根廷（当时南美刚刚经历了"失去的十年"），我所看到的是，这个移民国家的人民非常想回到过去，他们似乎认为自己上错了船——当初本应移民到美国。

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."

有时错误的选择涉及个人，而非国家。我祖母的一位朋友在战时的伦敦邂逅了一位捷克难民。战后，她跟随他去了宁静的资产阶级国家捷克斯洛伐克。但突然之间，共产主义来了。当她在上世纪90年代终于回到伦敦时，我对她在"铁幕"后度过的几十年表示了同情。“哦，我并不介意那个政权，”她说道，“我无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.

过去，即便是找到幸福的移民也会失去祖国的印记。驻里约热内卢的一位意大利领事曾给我讲了一些在巴西的意大利移民的故事，这些意大利移民每隔几年就出现在领事馆，来更新他们的护照。领事说道，每次他们来领事馆时，都可以看出他们身上的巴西印记又深了几分。他们穿的不再是熨过的意大利衬衫，而是穿上了背心，最后竟然穿上了短裤（说到这里，领事皱了一下眉）。我说道，穿着极为得体的米色西装、系着蝶形领结的领事本人，仍然保持着意大利人本色。他回答道：“我是刻意穿成这样的。”

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.

自人类首次走出非洲以来，就一直在移民。但上世纪90年代以后，移民的性质发生了变化，它不再是只能一条道走到黑了。如今，你可以登上一架廉价航班，在机场通过Skype与你妈妈聊天；如果你不喜欢那个地方，飞回家就是了。

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.

这就是为什么现在对数千万人来说，移民才是正确的选择。在西方国家，约五分之一的年轻人没有工作。在西班牙和希腊，约一半的年轻人失业。他们可以呆在本国，或许有朝一日会找到工作，然后工作到退休、来为上一代人的养老金、医疗费用和债务埋单。或者他们也可以移民。在巴西、加拿大或德国，想要立足的确并非易事，但不走这条路的话，他们未来4年可能就只能呆在父母家里看电视了。类似的是，承担不起医疗费用的美国老年人也应考虑马上移民到英国或印度。

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.

移民或许是改善我们职业前景的最迅捷方式，无论对于现在还是对于你的一生来说都是如此。你会建立新的人际关系，学会生存技能，可能还会学会一门新的语言。人类学家、即将出版的新书《连环移民之路》(Paths of Serial Migration)的作者苏珊•奥斯曼(Susan Ossman)写道：“如果某人不是外交官，又没有多重国籍的优势，那么他从一地移民到另一地的经历，带给他的往往不只是在与官僚打交道时能更加自如地应对。它还为行动和思考开辟了新的地理、语言和政治空间。”更妙的是，它还令仇外者感到头疼。

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.

甚至连不愉快的移民经历，也能成为有益的经历：或许你把你的汽车遗弃在了机场，但如果你在住在国交了朋友，你就可以永远与那个国家有贸易往来，依照商业周期在祖国和住在国之间来回迁移，在遥远的某一天把你孩子送到大洋彼岸的朋友家免费寄宿。

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.

关于摩门教徒和犹太人在商界为何往往混得很成功，人们有着很多猜测，这些猜测通常相当阴暗。然而，这可能只是因为他们属于移民人群。犹太人常常跨越边境逃避迫害，而摩门教的所有年轻男性教徒都要从事为期两年的“传教活动”。其中一半的人会远赴海外，在那里他们必须学习当地语言，然后每周工作6天，努力让持怀疑态度的外国人改信这种不仅禁止饮酒还禁止喝咖啡的宗教。正如很多摩门教商人指出的那样，这段经历为经商、特别是跨国经商做了很好的准备。L•托德•巴奇(L. Todd Budge)是一家日本银行的首位外籍首席执行官，他就曾经在日本传播过摩门教。

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，英国内阁大臣谭百德(Norman Tebbit)曾力劝失业者骑上自行车去找工作。今天，他们可以搭廉价航班去找。现在我们全都是"库柏一族"。