The current issue of Tiempo Latino, the Spanish-language weekly paper that the Washington Post distributes for free, has an article in which Mexican actor Diego Luna talks about the warning issued by "Elysium", the new movie about illegal immigration on a cosmic scale.
I haven't seen the movie, so I won't comment on this Hollywood projection of the world's burgeoning immigration crisis into the middle of the next century. My purpose here is simply to introduce the movie and the views of one of its principal actors, who identifies strongly with illegal immigrants in the United States.
"Elysium" is a science fiction thriller starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster. It is set in the year 2154, when, the article notes, "there are only two classes of people: the tremendously rich, who live in a majestic space station designed for the world elite, and the rest, who roam through the remains of a ruined planet Earth."
Of course, the wretched masses of the earth seek to find a way to Elysium. Conflict ensues. There are smugglers who help meet that demand and there are oppressive forces who seek to crush it. Matt Damon is the hero who risks everything for the desperate poor.
Luna sees the story as a warning of a future that is inevitable unless the rich countries of the world share with the poor:
"It is vital that we reconfigure the relationship among countries," says Luna. "It is ridiculous that we keep drawing borders or believing that some walls could confine the necessity for humanity to survive. It is absurd. . . . If there continue to be so few who have so much, that privileged group, in order to protect itself from the attempt of the rest of humanity to survive, will have to build something up there, because on the earth there will be no wall that can contain that. If that situation isn't stopped, what Elysium presents won't happen in 140 years, but much sooner."
