JUDAS.

Introduction:

Immigration is often spoken of in numbers, statistics, and soundbites. Yet behind the debates lies a quieter truth. Entire industries survive because of the very people society labels as burdens. This poem explores that contradiction. It reflects on the irony of a system that profits from asylum seekers while condemning them, and on the betrayal that echoes through governments, corporations, and even within immigrant communities themselves. The title "Judas" becomes a symbol not just of one man’s betrayal but of a cycle repeated again and again in the shadows of modern economies.

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JUDAS.

I welcome you.

I thank you for your time.

Not many know

that they are the reason we are here,

that their bodies feed contracts,

their hunger makes industries bloom,

their very presence

is a feast for men who hide their gold

in banks beyond the sea.

Hotels once empty now breathe.

Caterers long starving now serve.

Merchants sell again,

but not to them,

to the keepers of contracts

who fatten themselves

while preaching scarcity.

And still the question is asked:

what contribution do these aliens make?

It is the wrong question.

Always the wrong direction.

The loudest voices

clutch the richest purses.

They cry for deportation,

while their ledgers are inked

with the labor of the very ones

they cast out.

Still they come.

By boat. By plane. By road.

Chasing a green field,

a promise whispered,

a life not yet lived.

But the grass is not grass.

The carpet is painted,

its green is regret,

its threads woven with silence.

And when the silence grows heavy,

they too may sell their own.

One brother against another.

One sister betraying sister.

Survival becomes a marketplace

where loyalty is bartered away.

Judas was not only a man.

He is a system.

He is a contract signed in shadows.

He is a bargain struck in silver.

He is the lie that keeps them coming,

the silence that keeps them here,

the betrayal that keeps them bound.

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Poet’s Notes.

This poem reflects the contradictions of immigration debates. It speaks to the irony that asylum seekers and immigrants are called non-contributors even while their presence sustains parts of a failing economy. Entire industries including catering, hotels, and welfare administration benefit from their existence.

The title "Judas" is chosen carefully. Judas, remembered for betrayal, is not just a figure from the Bible but a symbol of systems that thrive on double-dealing. The betrayal here is layered: governments profiting while condemning, contractors gaining wealth while demanding deportation, and even the painful reality of immigrants themselves sometimes betraying one another under survival pressures.

The painted carpet is a metaphor for the illusion of prosperity. Immigrants are drawn in by the image of a better life, but once inside, the cost of that illusion becomes clear: regret, silence, and in some cases, complicity in the very betrayal that ensnared them.

The closing lines expand Judas into more than a man. He becomes the system itself, a machinery of betrayal fueled by profit and silence.