The migratory patterns of humans in this generation are exponentially showing their impact on society. Without giving statistics, countries filled with migrants have been shown to be more productive than those with stagnant local populations.

People thrive when they are forced into situations where they need to find ways to survive and exist. Complacency is a silent killer for native communities. Bermuda is no exception, Canada is no exception.

For more than 100 years, Canada’s population has been te- times smaller than that of the United States — despite its landmass. Now, in less than two decades because of a switch in attitude and also as a result of conflict since 9/11, there is significant population growth. It is almost as if the sign “Send me your poor and deprived”, which towers over the entrance of Liberty Island in New York, was moved and placed over Halifax Harbour instead. Yes, and the poor and the destitute have come and brought with them highly skilled and educated persons.

So what about nativity? Is there any value in this world of increasing diversity for nativity?

For example, there is a degree of turbulence between all shades of nativity here in Nova Scotia, as there is in Bermuda. While new immigrants are generally welcomed, natives from the African community lament the seeming acceptance and smooth progress immigrant persons of African descent can make — as if there was never any social and economic resistance, which was a definite pattern for Black Nova Scotians. The same would be true for the First Nation Peoples who watched the embrace of the Asian, Indian, Arab and Persian cultures, while over the centuries they had their lands misappropriated, put on reservations and in some cases treated as undesirables. Many are still considered relegated citizens.

This sense of lack of respect for the native population is also felt by the now-dominant Anglo-French and European communities which make up Canada and which compete for basic employment in simple enterprises such as McDonald’s, and see their tax dollar used in such way that it seems their livelihoods are taken away.

To quote one person: “They want to spend billions on other countries fighting their wars, but when our veterans return home from these wars they can’t find a job or a home to live in.”

What do you say? How are people to adjust to the realities of a changing world? Where does it all go from here?

Smart nations have switched on the lights and recognise they need people — and the more talented the better. The even smarter nations realise there are two messages to be given — one is for their native population, and the other is a signal to the immigrant.

The native population needs to be housed and educated so as to have a firm footing and not be displaced by the immigrant and, concomitantly, the immigrant needs to feel this can be their new home and that they are given every opportunity as if native.

Sir David Gibbons once said: “Bermuda must come out of its cocoon.”

His visionary thoughts included that Bermudians need to own a “piece of the rock” and educate themselves before emerging into a full-blown internationally integrated community and economy.

Can a country just drift into the ideal position with the complexities of this age? I think not. It requires leadership on both fronts, native and international. It is a balance that must be carefully and thoughtfully managed.

In one of my recent posts, a commenter said: “Leaders are born and Bermuda is not ready for one at this time.”

Time and space will not permit an elaborate, historical discussion on that subject, but there are those who were born to lead. If we use for simplification biblical examples, we have Yeshua (Jesus), Moses, Muhammad and Gautama (Buddha), then more contemporaneously, we have persons such as Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, and so on. Success in either case did not hinge purely on their ability to lead others or on their accomplishments; it was more so on the acceptance by others of their leadership.

In the words of one — “If I be lifted up” — that is where the power lay and will for ever be the case.

Invariably, it is when people discover their leaders and lift them up that they gain success. Tragically, most born leaders are rejected; even killed. Their ideas or words will never die, but too often society has to pay the price of their rejection. A society has to be worthy of having good leadership — if society buries its head or is bigoted because of race, class or clan, it will be stuck with that and not prosper from its inherent leadership. Societies that stood with and suffered with their leaders have prospered.

Structurally in Bermuda, under the existing party construct and selection process, it is nearly impossible to accentuate good leaders. This may in fact be a task for this generation or the next to stock the parties with good, principled persons in the hope that good will prevail eventually. It is difficult to see how the parties can escape from the leaders choosing those who will be their surrogates. At the moment, the guiding principle is “loyalty”, which gets you everywhere. Yet, even loyalty isn’t bad if persons are loyal to truth, to country, to constituents. It is when the requirement is loyalty to party or to the leader or political agenda — right or wrong — that it becomes a detriment.

Can any new candidates in either party be their own person and be guided by their own principles?

So for the immediate future, Bermuda will suffer and be left out of the global migratory trends and benefits because we have a government whose policy needs are for its own survival and require a fixed and determined population to maintain the voting balance that ensures its continued success. While its own sources say the country needs 7,000 to 8,000 people to have a balanced economy, unlike Canada where they can become full citizens, here in Bermuda these people will have zero rights and not be able to look forward to raising a family or having any perpetuity. There needs to be a statue with a sign saying, “If you are poor and destitute, head farther west”.

The interesting conundrum is that it is not driven by native Bermudians in the main, but rather by those who are first and second generation or what we see globally classified as the immigrant community preventing further immigrants. Even when vitally needed, as is the case now.

We cannot blame this pattern on generations of antiquity because in and around 1857 they brought in hundreds of Portuguese, and then beginning in the 1880s thousands of West Indians. Yes, we can say during the period closing in on the era of adult suffrage that the same oligarchs used similar population control to ensure their continuation, but who wants to follow them?