Freedom Vs. Responsibility

Immigration, Identity, and Keeping Our Values Without Hate

Freedom is a word we use a lot. We put it on banners and slogans. We wield it like a shield or a weapon. But freedom, lived honestly, is something quieter and more demanding than that.

This essay is about freedom not as a slogan, but as a lived human responsibility. It’s about immigration, identity, and memory — and about how we protect what matters without turning bitter, fearful, or cruel. It’s personal. And it feels urgent. Because somewhere along the way, I think we got confused about what freedom really means. And if we aren’t careful, we risk trading it in for something that looks bold on the surface, but is actually brittle and small.

My grandfather came to Canada from Lebanon with almost nothing. War drove them out. When they arrived, he apparently slept in a drawer — a drawer. That’s how poor they were.

Later, he fell in love with my grandmother, a French Canadian woman. Her family disapproved. He was Lebanese. Poor. Maybe that was enough. They cast her out. And that silence — that fracture — followed us.

My grandmother never passed on the French language or culture. She erased it. Maybe out of pain. Maybe out of pride. So my mother’s generation grew up cut off from their roots.

And me? I ended up an English teacher in a French village. Always slightly outside. Always straddling worlds.

As a child, I had darker skin. I was called “Paki” at school. I didn’t even know where Pakistan was — and neither did they. They just knew I didn’t quite belong.

And I didn’t. Because my family had buried its history in order to survive.

That’s a cost of immigration we don’t talk about enough. Not just what people leave behind, but what gets erased so they can stay.

Psychologists talk about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: food, shelter, safety, belonging, dignity, and finally potential. My grandparents never made it to the top. They lived on the lower rungs, scraping by. But their struggle laid the groundwork so that their children and grandchildren could rise.

That’s what strong societies do. They don’t only celebrate the people at the top. They protect the people at the bottom so everyone has a chance at a full life.

We love to talk about freedom. But Viktor Frankl — Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist — warned that freedom is only part of the story, and only half the truth. The positive aspect of freedom, he said, is responsibility.

In other words, real freedom doesn’t mean I do whatever I want. It means I have the space to grow — and the obligation to help ensure others can grow too. True freedom requires a society where people are not abandoned when they’re most vulnerable. It isn’t about pulling up the ladder. It’s about steadying it for the next person.

Where I live, there’s a stigma around “welfare.” People say it’s for the lazy. That it weakens people. But my own family is living proof that this isn’t true.

My grandparents needed help. And that help — public school, healthcare, and the stability of a functioning country — gave their children a foothold. That’s not weakness. That’s how dignity works.

Franklin D. Roosevelt understood this during the Great Depression. Through the New Deal — Social Security, jobs programs, food support — he didn’t weaken the United States. He helped build a middle class. He gave struggling families a chance. And in return, those families helped build a nation.

That’s the cycle. Support leads to dignity. Dignity leads to contribution. And contribution strengthens the whole.

Today, many of those safety nets are being chipped away. And what do we see? Rising homelessness. Burnout. Despair masked by addiction and anger. People yelling about freedom while their neighbours go without insulin.

If you’re building your life on a cliff edge — no support, no second chances — you aren’t free. You’re just afraid. And fear, left unattended, turns into cruelty.

So what about immigration?

People are scared. I understand that. But reducing whole families to words like “illegals” or “invaders” is not courage. It’s cowardice dressed up as patriotism.

My family came here with nothing. Now we’re teachers. Writers. Doctors. Scientists. Artists. Entrepreneurs. We are not a threat. We are proof that this country’s heart is still beating. And if we want it to keep beating, we have to protect the systems that gave us a chance.

What makes a country truly free isn’t that the rich get richer. It’s that the poor don’t get forgotten. That a sick child can see a doctor. That a newcomer can find shelter. That an artist can paint without starving.

So where does that leave us?

Freedom, stripped of responsibility, becomes something thin and brittle. Loud, but easily shattered. Real freedom is heavier than that. It carries obligation. It asks us to notice who is being held and who is being left behind.

A society shows its values not in its slogans, but in what it protects when things get hard. Whether people are allowed to fall through the cracks. Whether difference is met with curiosity or contempt. Whether dignity is treated as conditional — or fundamental.

We can love a country without hardening our hearts. We can hold values without turning them into weapons. We can acknowledge fear without letting it decide who belongs.

Freedom and responsibility were never meant to be opposites. They are inseparable — the balance that keeps a society humane.

And when that balance holds, something quiet but essential survives: the possibility of living together without erasing one another.