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I am so sick of Danish news articles about immigrants and immigration that are written as though immigrants themselves were not reading the newspapers. Danish journalists write as though they were carrying on a very private conversation between themselves and other “real” Danes.

Well, here’s a piece of breaking news – Danish immigrants actually watch Danish television. It took a research company called MediaCom more than 1000 interviews with families originating in different countries (that have very little to do with one another) to discover this.

D’uh. They live here! Of course they watch it, and their kids watch it too. And so what if they also watch Disney Channel, CNN, and… (wait for it)… Arabic satellite TV? A number of Danish newspapers and television stations all quoted the same Danish professor who has researched media and ethnic minorities.

He says, “It points in the direction of a strengthening of consumption of Danish media among ethnic minorities, and nuances the hypothesis (sic) about it being so dangerous that they are sitting watching satellite TV from their home country and thereby isolating themselves from Danish society.”

What hypothesis?? If we want immigrants to feel included in Danish society a good start would be to stop talking about them like they’re not listening. For the record, I would like to let Homeland Security in the United States know, that I occasionally watch Danish television on the internet while living in New York. I would also like to confess that I have watched Hispanic television at my grandmother’s house in Puerto Rico.

Anybody who thinks an Arabic soap opera is dangerous – or God forbid news from a different perspective – really needs to get out of the house more. You don’t automatically isolate yourself from a society by looking outwards and beyond it.

I just came back from Europe. Here’s something I’ve written for NACLA’s special issue on immigration in America. Read it and weep. It’s based on research I’ve done for a longer report, which I hope to be finished with very soon. The anti-immigration movement here is entirely different from what we have in Denmark, but just as deeply routed in fear and hate.

How do you turn the “brain drain” from developing to developed countries into “brain circulation”, where diaspora professionals share their expertise to benefit their home countries? Ehsan Masood, on openDemocracy, says the answer depends in part on whether you are a policy maker who sees the disapora from the perspective of where they came from or where they live now.

People like to say we should help migrants in their own countries rather than allow poor people to come rich countries.

When you consider that the money working migrants send back home to their families (remittances) in some countries amount to more than foreign aid, domestic tax revenues, or export earnings, this distinction makes no sense.

The solution must be to think creatively about how to channel some of this cash directly into development. On openDemocracy, Chukwu Emeka-Chikezie reports on a United Nations meeting on migration, and highlights some of the questions and political solutions that are popping up around the world. He calls on migrants to begin to organize, so they can participate in negotiations without NGO proxies.

At the meeting, Koffi Annan said: “Just a few years ago, many people did not think it possible to discuss migration at the United Nations. Governments, they said, would not dare to bring into the international arena a topic on which their citizens are so sensitive.”

If you ask me, it’s immigration people have a hard time discussing, not migration. It’s nearly impossible sometimes to see things from the perspective of the migrant. The more we are able to think about solutions on a global scale, the better.