In my experience in the United States, yes. Without the humanizing infuence of actually knowing someone who is migrant, many people rely on demonizing portrayals from the media. These portrayals are often dangerous, unjust, and mostly, untrue. Many media outlets rely on misleading crime statistics and isolated stories of migrant violence to promote fear, anger, and hostility in viewers who do not know any better. However, knowing a migrant personally seems to provide a view that is contrary to media portrayals. When migrants are viewed as humans who are also just trying to make their way in the world, instead of criminals or job thiefs, many people are more willing to accept migrants as part of their populations.

It is never about knowing or not. No matter where we live or which class we belong to, it is about our mindsets individually. Let me quote an example from our Pakistani society. We Pakistanis always yearn to emigrate to Europe, Canada and America for the betterment of our economic conditions. We hope that when we go to other countries their natives should be embracing us with dignity.

But at the same time, most of us loathe Afghan refugees. They are accused of bringing extremism, terrorism and drug addiction to Pakistan. They are given all the rights equal to a Pakistani citizen i.e. education, health, living and working in Pakistan. But still they are always suspected, by some of the Pakistanis, to be criminals, smugglers and kidnappers. Perhaps this is the reason that even after doing so much for Afghanistan, Pakistan couldn’t make a soft-corner in Afghans’ hearts.

Then there are some people in Pakistan wo always respected those refugees and understood their sufferings and their homelessness. It has been always a burning question in Pakistan whether they should have let these Afghans in or not.

To conclude I can say that it is not about the knowledge but about the thoughts that let us determine about migration.