AND SO I GO YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW

        Immigrants whether legal or illegal are here to stay and it is time for the American people to accept this fact and do what they can to help these people become assimilated into our society and culture. Immigrants all over the world are migrating from poor countries to Europe and North America. Immigrants to the US are mainly Hispanics from South and Central America with the majority from Mexico. Whereas, Europe is being inundated with mainly Muslims from the Middle East and Africa. The immigrants, both legal and illegal, are coming for jobs and to provide a better life for their families. Many send their sons who work and send money home to help the family survive.

           We certainly can not blame these people for wanting to come to the United States. If you were in their position and could not support your family in your home country and a wealthy country with many jobs was available just by wading across a muddy little stream you to would take any chances necessary to get to that rich country. AND, once there and seeing all that could be had you would want to bring your family to this land of milk and honey to live and prosper and grow.

          The sooner we as a country accept this fact and do something to help those who are already here while securing our borders the less problems we will have in the future. Europe should be a lesson to us in how not to treat immigrants. After WWII a great deal of labor was needed to rebuild Europe so cheap immigrant labor was imported. These immigrants then brought their families. The Europeans used these people and isolated them in their own ghettoes. Now they have second and even third generation native born “immigrants” not having known what their parents left behind are not grateful for the low paying jobs and better living conditions. They see the disparity of their life with that of the general population. There are still language and cultural barriers and so the jobs available to these second and third generation “native immigrants” are still low paid menial work. Resentment and a great deal of anger has lead to protest, hate crimes and even terrorist activities. The reason for this is directly related to how their families were treated. Good enough to work your lowest paying menial jobs but not good enough to become one of you.

          We in the United States are now making that same mistake and we too will reap the anger and resentment some day because of our neglect. At one time immigration was encouraged and the governments offered help to these newcomers. My grand parents immigrated legally to the United States from Russia in 1910 and my grandfather immediately enrolled in a local night school set up to help immigrants learn the language and laws of their new country. This was done to allow these people to move forward and become a part of our society during the later part of the 19^th. and early 20^th. The efforts were abandoned during the depression of the 1930’s due to the lack of money and never resumed unfortunately. But these people soon began to think of themselves as Americans and they prospered in a limited way but their children went further and the grandchildren and great grand children are also prospering because schooling became a family tradition.

          We need to resume education for the adults as well as the children of these immigrants. Guilford County is experimenting with a program for immigrant children with a special school where learning English will be the main objective. This is a great start but we need to go one step further and offer night school classes in the English spoken and written language for the adults.

          We recently had our apartment painted by two young men from Costa Rica who have an apartment in the next building in our complex. I saw the sign on their truck. Painting is their evening and week end job that they hope will become their permanent business. They are identical twins. One has been in the country for 9 years and the other for only two years because he has a family still in Costa Rico whom they hope to be able to bring here in the next two years. The one who has been here the longest (9 years) could understand me very well, but I could not understand him because his English is limited. He of course translates for his brother which is bad since the brother then has no motivation to even learn to understand English. I ask him if he would go to night classes to learn to read, write and speak English and he told me he “would want take school”. If we don’t as a nation make this effort for our immigrants who as I have pointed out are here to stay then we are creating a permanent underclass who one day will be “immigrants” in their own home country and then they will revolt as are those in Europe now.

          I was motivated to do this post by this news story I read yesterday: “By DAVID DISHNEAU - Associated Press Writer 3/27/2007 FREDERICK, Md. (AP) The search for the missing mother of four dead children could expand to other countries, authorities said, as a portrait emerged Wednesday of an immigrant family struggling to live the American dream."

         "Pedro Rodriguez and Deysi Benitez had faced language hurdles when they arrived in the far suburbs of Washington seven years ago. They worked menial jobs to pay a townhouse mortgage, took in a boarder and had a few run-ins with the law, including a shoplifting arrest over children's clothing."

        "The family's dreams ended this week with the four young children dead in their beds of unknown causes and the father hanging from his townhouse banister.”

         Will we never learn? BB