Sonia Shah

That is why all of our genes are mixed up the way they are.

So geneticists know this.

They can see this in our population structure.

And what social science has found is that

the sentiment of xenophobia isn't automatic.

It doesn't happen everywhere where new people come in.

If new people come in and there's no actual barriers to their entry and their assimilation, and those new people are not made conspicuous by, say, policies that say, you have to wear this kind of ankle bracelet, or you have to line up in this line here and we can see you, or something like that.

If there's not those kind of exclusionary policies that make migrants

conspicuous and migrants assimilate into the local culture extremely quickly.

And that is why, you know, yes, migration is, it's only 3.5% of the global population, but we are all touched by it.

Very, very, very few humans today are more than a few generations removed from an act of long distance migration.

For me, it's my parents.

For Donald Trump, it's his parents.

For Steve Bannon, it is just a few generations ago.

So we all have been touched by this in some way.

So the xenophobic backlash, the potential is there.

but we also have an even greater potential for assimilation.

And that I think is in the broader picture, that is actually what happens with most migration is most migrants, we don't notice them.

They are like the blood pulsing through our veins where it's beneath our notice.

It just happens.