Free to move.

• Author: Gillespie, Nick
• Position: Editor's Note - Editorial

LIKE MANY--maybe most--Americans I come from a family of migrant workers. My grandparents left Ireland and Italy in the 1910s for the United States, chiefly for the opportunity to work long hours and be treated as second-class citizens--a definite step up from the fate that likely awaited them in Old Europe. For a good chunk of his adult life, my father commuted close to 100 miles a day. I've moved from central New Jersey to New York City to Philadelphia to Buffalo to Los Angeles to small-town Texas to Ohio to Washington, D.C., all in pursuit of jobs--or the education that would give me and my loved ones access to more and better jobs.

It's tempting to take such mobility for granted, especially in a country where the most difficult adjustment is likely to be getting used to a new time zone. The freedom to move is ultimately the freedom to enrich yourself, your future, your family. It's never a simple decision, and it is made a thousand times more difficult when it involves crossing national borders. That latter point is driven home in this month's cover story, "Guests in the Machine," for which Senior Editor Kerry Howley traveled to Singapore to report on migrants toiling in one of the most schizophrenic guest worker programs in the world.

Due to chronic labor shortages and hypernationalist sentiments, Singapore simultaneously welcomes foreign workers and disrespects them. Almost 43 percent of the population there was born elsewhere (compared to about 13 percent in the U.S.), but guest workers are systematically denied citizenship, due process, and even the right to have children. That disturbing compromise allows Singapore's economy to flourish even as nativists are...