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#MeTooMigrant, but with clear privilege

The COVID-19 crisis in India has unleashed the mass movement of poor migrant labourers (the key word here) that has people rightly up in arms.  Whether you blame the government or not, it is something that cannot be right and needs to be righted. In response, some people have used the twitter hash tag #metoomigrant to say that they, too, are by definition migrants i.e. they migrated from their hometown to another place to make it, just like these people. When the migrant labourers came from nothing to nothing to (relatively) bargain for a little something, the #metoomigrants came from something to something else usually bargaining for a lot more (else they wouldn't even come).  

We are all migrants because we all come from somewhere. Even if it wasn't us who made the arduous journey, we are here in our privilege because someone else did. That is why we sit pretty with that privilege today. As long as your ancestor many generations ago didn't move a micro inch from where they were born, your privilege is built on migrant movement from a particular time period. If you don't have an idea of what it looked like, it was more or less like how many such migrant labourers are attempting to walk home for thousands of kilometers just so that they have a better deal.

Once you truly understand get these distinctions and similarities, your response can be a more sober one than #metoomigrant. If that doesn't get through your head and your heart, it's privilege that is clouding your best senses. It's seeped into your bones and has made you thick skinned disabling you from understanding any other reality apart from your own. You could have been that migrant but for a twist of fate. That is not a privilege you claim. It's a privilege you should be thankful for. 

It's a privilege you share, since you have the good fortune of it. If you can't effectively share it, the least you do is not mock, be grateful for what you have and show that you feel the compassion. Just the basic will do. More, if you are moved 

To add to the tragedy, because (at least not all of) our privilege actually fell from the sky, #metoomigrant attempts establish common ground with those walking home. It identifies hard work on equal basis that all work is equal work. It forgets that, while all of us earn our success and failure, all of us are not equally predisposed with resources, skill, comfort and a cushion that we ourselves did not work for. All work may be equal work but privilege we work from is not equal.

The only thing that's common between the richer and the poorer migrant is the rat race to remain above threshold - where they can feed, clothe and house themselves with the simplest of dignities. The only thing different between them is that one is perfectly equipped to stay above, and the other is equipped to constantly stay below. One is a contradiction of the other, nullifying any similarity. 

Unless you individually invented everything good about your life as you stand, every inch of good fortune you have is blatant privilege. You can splash it around with inherited ego or you could choose to help someone break above the threshold (with it costing very little) so that they can pass it on with gratitude. 
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