Should We Defend Our Borders from Panda Bears?
What do five years of political negotiations at the highest level mean? For some It’s a treaty to end a war, for others it can be a major economic cooperation act, for our friends in the UK it means getting two panda bears.
The UK finally got its hands on Tian Tian and Yangguan, two giant panda bears as part of a deal between the Chinese Wildlife Conservation Association (CWCA) and the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS) which took five years of political and diplomatic negotiations at the highest level to be ratified. The two bears are expected to arrive in Edinburgh, Scotland in the next few months.
So for all of you parents out there who wanted to get a panda bear for your kid next Christmas, you better start abandoning the idea. The waiting list is at least five years long, assuming you have contacts with high government officials from both your country and China. (If you're Chinese you might have just killed two birds with one stone.)
Tian Tian and Yangguan join the dozens of pandas who have left their homeland China seeking fame and fortune. It may be ironic that I, being Mexican, am not so keen on some migration waves. Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m totally OK with the potato famine emigration wave from Ireland to the US in the 19th century; the Irish had no choice. And at some point my heart goes out to the immigrants from the still constant Mexican emigration wave to the US; they just want to make a better life for themselves and their families — but the pandas, oh the pandas have to stop.
Many people don’t know this, but when it comes to immigrants there’s a certain kind of hierarchy (we call it the immigrant pyramid), and if you move from a developing country onto a developed one you know exactly where you stand on it; panda bears, of course, are the highest ranked (see picture).
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