I found it delightful and comforting to bask in the
tranquility apparent in
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the three small
Baltic republics I just visited this past July.
A sense of order and calm filled the
picturesque streets. Despite their bloody
history of continuous invasions over the centuries,
the charm, certain safety and, yes, interesting
history of the capital cities of Tallinn,
Riga and Vilnius now invites a return
visit—especially when one thinks of the terrorism
that has plagued other, more typical tourist
destinations in Europe .
The 1939 Molotov-Von Ribbentrop
"non-aggression" pact gave these
three Baltic republics to the Soviets. In 1941,
they were overrun by the Nazis and then
reconquered by the Soviets in 1944.
But the magic of freedom, achieved in 1991, has
been
transformative. The shops seemed
well stocked and the restaurants excellent. And
prices had definitely not hit the high side, even
though the
dollar is now at a one third discount from the
Euro.
Vilnius, Lithuania, is one of the
oldest cities in Europe. Its outskirts show the
effect of large foreign investments—the car
dealerships and other businesses that
mar the approaches of many
American cities. But once in the city center,
one is taken back centuries, despite the
destruction that occurred in WWII, still being
repaired.
All these Baltic citizenries have a real sense of
their history and the value of their present
governance. They are ethnically very similar,
allowing for some regional differences, And
Lithuanians,
like Poles, are certainly
bound together by their religion.
All of course is not ideal. As in
Catholic Spain and
Italy, predominately Catholic Lithuania also has
very low birth rates and considerable problems
with alcoholism and suicide.
But so do we!
However, Lithuania's most striking problem
is—excess emigration! The literacy rate is nearly
100%, but there's a paradox to this high level of
education. Unlike Mexico, which
endeavors to export
its untended poor, many skilled Lithuanians have
gone West. Indeed, not only do Lithuanians with high
skills leave to get higher pay abroad, but this
flight has also taken working class people such as
truck drivers, waitresses and supermarket clerks.
(The US doesn't benefit from this emigration because
the infamous
1965 Immigration Act in effect discriminates
against Europeans and in favor of the less-assimilable
Third World.)
According to a January 10, 2007 Christian
Science Monitor article,
Where have all our migrants gone? Eastern Europe
wants them back [By Michael J.
Jordan] " some 400,000 people, an incredible
10+ percent of the population, have migrated West,
"whether to work in construction in Dublin, pick
strawberries in southern Spain, or conduct
research in Scandinavia."
Now the Lithuanian government has set up a
department, the "Returning Lithuanian Information
Center" (RLIC), to entice migrant Lithuanians to
come home.
To augment the RLIC, there is the
International Organization for Migration (IOM)
whose job it is to get employment information to
those Lithuanians thinking of emigrating and to
Lithuanians overseas who might be considering coming
home.
The Mexican government, if it didn't have such
passion to dump its
poor and uneducated workers on the US, could
well benefit from an IOM. But of course that would
mean
Mexico's oligarchs would have get the
country's education system up to par and make
more effort to build a Mexican middle class. Not
likely.
There is one
similarity, however, between the US and
Lithuania. Complaining of a
"people shortage", Lithuanian employers have
begun taking in laborers from
Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Moldova, Some
Lithuanians see the threat of a return to Russian
dominance—just as many in the US now see the
threat in our southwestern states of
"La Reconquista".
Does this sound like our US situation, where
Americans will do any kind of work–there are
no jobs Americans won't do–if the pay is
adequate??
For decades, our feckless and/or greedy
politicians have allowed the Treason Lobby to inject
the
heroin of cheap labor into our system. Now in
many parts of our country, this slave labor has
replaced what our own
young people did as entry level jobs, which are
such a
key part of learning to grow up. As a teen, I so
well recall being a shoe salesman in the Christmas
rush period and working construction jobs in the
summer. Now far too many of our too-idle teens loll
at
malls and
inject drugs.
If little Lithuania, with its rich cultural
history which its people value highly, wants to
remain stable, healthy and free, then the efforts of
those entities like IOM and RLIC must be increased.
Further, its employers must be willing to pay more.
Significantly, part of the draw to get
Lithuanians to come back home (or not to leave in
the first place) will be, not higher wages, but
rather what economists crassly call the "inertia"
which ties most people to
their native lands.
One unique approach is offered by
lietuviams.com. It seeks to stop the diaspora,
not only by emphasizing job opportunities, but by
stressing the quality of life to be enjoyed at home,
as well as Lithuanian
"istorija" and
"tradicijos"—powerful inducements for this
ethnically homogeneous population.
It is now so clear that we, as a planet, must
understand that a
world population of 10 billion by 2100 will
present very difficult problems. In reversing high
population growth, countries with low birth rates
can prove instructive in showing others how to
manage a gentler return to
lower levels of population.
The lesson that Americans can draw from the
Baltic phenomenon:
quality of life will be the key.
