2016•11•09

Photo by Eva Guillamet

Professor Noam Chomsky gave UNU-GCM’s 2016 Annual Guest Lecture on Saturday, November 5th in Barcelona. He delivered the following lecture entitled “Crises of Immigration”.

Pope Francis captured the essence of the “immigration crisis” in simple words: “Migrants are not a danger — they are in danger.” Sometimes, however, such crises are objectively real: in Lebanon, for example, where some 40% of the population are refugees. There have also been immigration crises of extreme objective severity: notoriously, for the native populations in settler-colonial societies. Sometimes immigration crises are culturally and morally real: in the rich and powerful countries, where the shocking reaction to refugees is a profound moral crisis, a political crisis as well, particularly in those countries with a large share of responsibility for creating the refugee crisis – and who have been creating a crisis that will soon be of colossal proportions unless they take drastic actions to curb the destruction of an environment that can sustain organized human life.

Full text: Crises of Immigration