One day in the 1980s, my maternal grandfather was sitting in a park in suburban London. An elderly British man came up to him and wagged a finger in his face. “Why are you here?" the man demanded. “Why are you in my country?"

“Because we are the creditors," responded my grandfather, who was born in India, worked all his life in colonial Kenya, and was now retired in London. “You took all our wealth, our diamonds. Now we have come to collect." We are here, my grandfather was saying, because you were there.

Today that grandson is Indian-American author and Associate Professor of Journalism at New York University Suketu Mehta.

In This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto, he takes a hard punch at the world's colonial past, where the rich (America and Europe) got richer at the expense of the poor, who got poorer. Colonialism rigged the game:

• extracting natural resources to feed industries back home,
• exploiting free/slave/low-wage labor, 
• creating institutional systems that favor the ruling elites, and
• leaving behind awkward countries/borders/populations to fight over scraps.

We clearly see that more and more people now want to move, although there's a popular misconception about why. Yes, many are seeking better opportunity, but the biggest reason is that they can't stay where they are any longer. It's simply not survivable.

Here's why. While colonialism as we know it is dead, in it's place we have:

• global multinational companies,
• civil/regional wars, and
• climate change

that have the same effect of giving local populations zero hope of any viable future. If any of us were born in these countries, we'd be facing the same prospects.

So immigrants have little choice but to show up at the doorstep of rich (American and European) countries that are safe from these conditions. These are the same countries that created these conditions in the first place and continue to sustain them politically and financially. Yet we turn immigrants away, and tell them to “go home" where they have no future because of us. They are here because we were there.

What if we welcome them in instead? Many are young, ready to work, and have long years ahead to contribute to a productive workforce. They’ll grow our economy for all and create even more jobs for everyone. They’re not here to conquer us, they’re here to rescue us.

“Have you heard?” is our way of sharing another point of view on commonly held beliefs. Through this we hope to encourage curiosity, dialogue, and tolerance of diverse ideas.