The things no one tells you about before you venture abroad
Growing up in Tunisia, many of us were fed the silly idea that the sun shone brighter on the other side of the Mediterranean. (A very ironic metaphor since half of us, who immigrated there, ended up in countries where the sun never seems to shine.) It was our own version of the “American dream” if you will.
Let’s call it the “European dream” for the purposes of this article, even though it’s increasingly becoming inaccurate since everyone is running away from the country in any and all directions these days; The Gulf Countries, Japan, Canada, and the list goes on.
The European dream is this silly idea that once you leave your own country, you’ll find all the opportunities in the world. It is an assumption that the world is a meritocracy outside of Tunisia; free from nepotism, discrimination, and what we like to call back home “hattan la’sa fil ‘ajla,” a beautiful expression that sums up dreadful bureaucracy, monopolies and business mafias, political instability, and all those wonderful things that force us to leave the place we once called home in the hope that we will find a rope to save whatever is left of our dreams and our willingness to live and thrive in dignity somewhere else.
For the longest time, we were fed the fallacy that it was “better” and “fairer” in Europe. Some of us studied hard and accumulated an impressive CV, thinking it will make us “deserving” of moving there, others jumped on boats and risked losing their lives, like the other near 9,000 who drowned in the mediterranean in 2023.
The world constantly tells you that the first category is better than the second, that the legal docile intellectuals deserve a better life and the others don’t deserve a life to begin with. Yet, I always wonder: What makes people so comfortable with a thought as sadistic as “You don’t deserve to live if you don’t meet the requirements of a visa”?
Moving past that dreadful thought, I want to focus on the first category. Some of us get scholarships: barely enough money to make it to the end of the month if you don’t have a wealthy enough family supporting you and constantly sending you an allowance, considering the dreadful conversion rate. And with some governments casually deciding not to include you in social healthcare, if you have a chronic illness or a disability, you simply must suffer. After all, you are expected to be grateful for whatever you get and constantly made to feel like a charity case with no right to protest the inconsiderate details in your scholarship agreement. Who asked you to be born south of the mediterranean AND be sick or differently-able?
Other Tunisian students get accepted into Universities and have middle-class parents who are willing to sacrifice everything to watch their child have a future, they graduate eventually, and then, if you’re in the wrong country, you get the beautiful surprise: “We don’t sponsor immigration papers.” You spend months looking for a job, stress eating at whatever is left of your brain and immune system after graduation, in a teeny tiny pool of jobs at companies and institutes that are highly competitive and are the only ones who can provide sponsorship for your immigration papers. This is, of course, not taking into consideration all the automatic rejections and casual discrimination you endure, especially if you happen to be named Mohamed, Ahmed, Fatma, or any typical Arab name.
You see, it is actually perfectly legal to discriminate against green passport holders in the European Union. If you take the French law as an example, since there are over a million Tunisian living in France, there are 23 criteria of discrimination defined by law that span from origins and race to gender and all that cute diversity jargon. What is not a criteria for discrimination, however, is nationality.
The European Union: Land of the Opportunities, but not if you have a green passport. The bit after the “but” is what no one tells you.
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