The Foreign Legion

There’s no two ways about this. Tackling the effects of the coronavirus pandemic requires a particularly well-honed toolset that is fully integrated with the global realities of today’s world. The by-now standard reaction in any nation wanting to brace itself and mitigate the impact of the virus is the dreaded lockdown.

The nature of the lockdown – a standstill of day to day life as families are confined to their living quarters and only the most essential of commerce is available – can be widely misinterpreted. Since part of the lockdown entails a shutting down of borders; and since the transmission of the infection is identified with travel, movement of persons and importation, the mover, the border, the foreign is rapidly becoming the enemy.

We are living in unprecedented times of Global War. This World War III is cross species. Homo sapiens vs COVID-19. Unfortunately the misinterpretation that I spoke of above means that across the globe governments and people are confusing persons on our side of the war with the enemy.

The foreigner becomes the suspect carrier, promoter and deliverer of the deathly virus kiss. Short-sighted, knee-jerk, populist reactions fail to factor in that the foreigner on ‘our’ land is part of the army needed to fight in the trenches.

Boris Johnson and Donald Trump ‘nationalised’ the reaction to the virus. Their politics built on the nostalgic pull of rekindling wartime memories of Greater America and Imperial UK could only produce the kind of nationalistic verve that was oblivious of international realities. In Little Malta we had a Minister whose name is not worth mentioning who openly declared that the first expendables would be the foreigners who had until very recently aided in the boosting of the market.

Yet the interdependent society that we had been in the process of building in fits and starts cannot suddenly be waved away with a magic wand. Nations like Luxembourg with 50% of the population ‘foreign’ by definition quickly realised that rather than kick out the non-natives, the nation depended on them. Vital sectors like the health sector ran on the transfrontalieres – cross-border commuters.

As soon as the borders threatened to shut the message from Luxembourg was an invitation to health workers to move their residence to the Duchy – even temporarily – in order not to let the health system collapse. The German Minister for Agriculture has already stated that the country would have to import manual labourers to work in the fields and prevent a food shortage.

However, there could be problems with the harvest in the fields, confirmed DBV President Rukwied. Of the approximately 286,000 seasonal workers who work in German fields every year, many come from abroad. According to Klöckner, their ministry is currently working on “workable solutions” to recruit the required workers. For example, workers from other sectors, such as catering, which are currently at a standstill, could be used. Temporary, flexible solutions will be worked out, such as relaxing the law on ‘mini-jobs’ or Sunday working. If not enough seasonal workers can be made available, they could also be flown in from abroad to cross closed borders, said the agriculture minister.

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The key to understanding this aspect of the Global Reaction to the epidemic is to understand that this is everybody’s war. The cliche’ that the virus knows no borders is not an excuse to build those walls that the populists had so desperately advocated for in pre-plague times. Rather it should lead to an understanding that there is no local answer to the problem – it has to be world wide.

And in these cases the foreign legion is that extra army that might help us cross the line at the end of the tunnel.