Letters | In the land of the free, there’s another side to free speech

Readers discuss what migrants find at the end of the rainbow, and the wisdom of the South Korean opposition on the Taiwan issue

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Chinese migrants wait to be processed after crossing the US-Mexico border on May 8, near Jacumba Hot Springs, California. Photo: AP

Published: 2:30pm, 25 Jul 2024

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I refer to “Chinese border crossers chase the American dream, with mixed success” (July 18).

There is no need for a Chinese person to travel to the other side of the globe to see that the obverse of the freedom of speech is the freedom to listen. Actually, it’s enough to watch Shree 420, the 1955 Indian comedy film which features a young vagrant stealing the show at an election rally.

Many Russians who during the Cold War emigrated to the United States were thrilled to bits to be able to openly criticise the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, only to realise no one was listening to them.

As a teenager in Siberia in the 70s, I saw on television a Soviet journalist interviewing a young Jewish émigré who was working as a dishwasher in a seedy nightclub in Jerusalem instead of going to school.

In the late 90s, when I hired Moldovan workers to do up my flat in Moscow, a woman showed up with her teenage children. When I asked her why they were not at school, she suddenly wept. The former Soviet republics had become for Russia a source of a malleable workforce.