International population of YOUR city? [Archive] - Page 2

bjfan82

July 20th, 2008, 11:19 PM

Changing Racial Makeup in U.S. Cities Marks the End of White Flight

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Sunday, July 20, 2008

Decades of white flight transformed America's cities. That era is drawing to a close.

In Washington, a historically black church is trying to attract white members to survive. Atlanta's next mayoral race is expected to feature the first competitive white candidate since the 1980s. San Francisco has lost so many African-Americans that Mayor Gavin Newsom created an "African-American Out-Migration Task Force and Advisory Committee" to help retain black residents.

"The city is experiencing growth, yet we're losing African-American families disproportionately," Mr. Newsom says. When that happens, "we lose part of our soul."

For much of the 20th century, the proportion of whites shrank in most U.S. cities. In recent years the decline has slowed considerably — and in some significant cases has reversed. Between 2000 and 2006, eight of the 50 largest cities, including Boston, Seattle and San Francisco, saw the proportion of whites increase, according to Census figures. The previous decade, only three cities saw increases.

The changing racial mix is stirring up quarrels over class and culture. Beloved institutions in traditionally black communities — minority-owned restaurants, book stores — are losing the customers who supported them for decades. As neighborhoods grow more multicultural, conflicts over home prices, taxes and education are opening a new chapter in American race relations.

Part of the demographic shift is simple math: So many whites had abandoned cities over the past half-century, there weren't as many left to lose. Whites make up 66% of the general U.S. population, but only about 40% of large cities. Sooner or later, the pendulum was bound to swing back, and that appears to be starting.

From the Collection of the Ali family
Ben's exterior in 1958
The Census data "suggests that white flight from large cities may have bottomed out in the 1990s," says William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

For instance, while most of the 50 largest cities continue to see declines in the share of whites, it is at much-reduced rates. In Los Angeles the share of the white population declined only about a half a percentage point between 2000 and 2006, compared to a 7.5-point decline the previous decade. Cities including New York, Fort Worth and Chicago show a similar pattern.

'Natural Decrease'

Demographic readjustments can take decades to play out. But if current trends continue, Washington and Atlanta (both with black majorities) will in the next decade see African-Americans fall below 50% for the first time in about a half-century.

Meantime, in San Francisco, African-American deaths now outnumber births. Once a "natural decrease" such as this begins, it's tough for the population to bounce back, since there are fewer residents left to produce the next generation. "The cycle tends to be self-perpetuating," says Kenneth M. Johnson, senior demographer at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.

Ramin Rahimian/WpN for The Wall Street Journal

San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, from the book "Harlem of the West" by Elizabeth Pepin & Lewis Watts, Chronicle Books
San Francisco's Fillmore (top) is losing black businesses; the same corner in the mid-1940s (bottom).
There are myriad factors driving the change. In recent years, minority middle-class families, particularly African-Americans, have been moving to the suburbs in greater numbers. At the same time, Hispanic immigrants (who poured into cities from the 1970s through the 1990s) are now increasingly bypassing cities for suburbs and rural areas, seeking jobs on farms and in meat-packing plants.

Cities have spent a decade tidying up parks and converting decaying factories into retail and living space. That has attracted young professionals and empty-nesters, many of them white.

The shift has put the future at odds with the past. New York City's borough of Brooklyn has seen its proportion of whites grow to 36.1% in 2006 from 35.9% in 2000 -- the first increase in white share in about a century.

Hoarding Computers

While the root of neighborhood conflicts is often money or class differences between white-collar and blue-collar workers, it often unfolds along racial lines. About two years ago Public School 84, in a largely Hispanic section of Brooklyn, meetings of the Parent Teacher Association started drawing a more professional, wealthier and whiter group of parents.

Soon, disagreements spilled into the open. Arguments concerned everything from how PTA money was spent, to accusations that some white parents were hoarding computers for their kids.

Even ice cream became a point of contention: In the past year, a group of mostly white parents took issue with a school tradition of selling ice cream to raise money. They felt the school shouldn't be serving sugary foods to kids, but the break with tradition angered many minority parents who felt the sales were an important source of money and that ice cream is a harmless treat.

"It was a gigantic fight," says Brooke Parker, who is white and whose daughter attended the school last year. "If the school is saying 'It's OK to give out ice cream' while at the same time they're holding workshops on how to deal with your kid's Type 2 diabetes, maybe we should rethink the message we're sending."

Relations got testy enough that about 20 kids, most of whom were white, transferred to private schools or other public schools. "I don't think the battleground against gentrification should take place in the schools," says Ms. Parker, who withdrew her own daughter from P.S. 84 as tensions built. "It seemed nothing could get accomplished," she said.

Cries of 'Segregation'

Patrice Gilbert for The Wall Street Journal
The Rev. John Blanchard (right) at his Washington church, which plans to woo whites.
A few months later, a small group of families, most of them white, proposed establishing a new public school, to be located inside the existing P.S. 84. Hundreds of minority parents reacted by putting out a press release calling it de facto segregation. The proposal is "clearly discriminatory," the release said. "Children will suffer the effects of negative stigma as a result of this segregation which will send our City back 120 years!"

"I honestly felt like they didn't want to mix our children with their children," says Virginia Reyes, vice president of the PTA at P.S. 84 who has two foster children at the school. "It upset me a lot."

A spokeswoman for the New York City Department of Education says, "We obviously would not and could not open segregated schools." The department says the new school didn't get the go-ahead because it didn't have broad enough community support.

Backers of the new school couldn't be reached.

Elsewhere in Brooklyn, in a majority African-American section of the borough, Councilwoman Letitia James says a handful of predominantly white parents last year asked her if some of their local tax money could be steered to schools in a nearby neighborhood. The parents wanted their kids in schools with a more diverse racial mix, Ms. James says, rather than the majority-black schools in her district.

The parents felt "tax dollars should follow the children, and not the school," Ms. James says. She denied their request.

There's a century's worth of history behind the ebb and flow of whites and minorities in urban America. Rural blacks began flocking to cities more than a century ago, lured by factory jobs. After World War II, whites headed for the suburbs as the great postwar building boom got rolling, while African-American families stayed in the cities, partly because they were often denied access to home loans that whites could get. In the 1970s Hispanic immigrants surged into cities, chasing service jobs and further diluting the share of whites. By the 1980s, as cities hemorrhaged manufacturing jobs, blacks and whites both left -- but whites at a higher rate.

Cities Get a Makeover

Today, cities are refashioning themselves as trendy centers devoid of suburban ills like strip malls and long commutes. In Atlanta, which has among the longest commute times of any U.S. city, the white population rose by 26,000 between 2000 and 2006, while the black population decreased by 8,900. Overall the white proportion has increased to 35% in 2006 from 31% in 2000.

In other cities, whites are still leaving, but more blacks are moving out. Boston lost about 6,000 black residents between 2000 and 2006, but only about 3,000 whites. In 2006, whites accounted for 50.2% of the city's population, up from 49.5% in 2000. That's the first increase in roughly a century.

Tracking population shifts is an inexact science. Changes in how Census data are tallied makes for imprecise comparisons across decades. Hispanics, for instance, were mostly lumped in with whites until 1980, potentially overstating the white population in earlier decades. Also, losses of African-Americans from cities are often disproportionate to other minorities because unlike, say, Hispanics or Asians, the inflow of black immigrants into the U.S. isn't big enough to offset the loss of African-Americans to the suburbs.

Washington -- where African-Americans have been in the majority for a half-century -- has lost about 80,000 black residents between 1990 and 2006. Whites had been leaving, too, but recently they've started coming back. Between 2000 and 2006, Washington gained 24,000 whites and lost 21,000 blacks. Whites are now 32% of the population, up from 28% in 2000.

Churches Take a Hit

This is a problem for Washington's African-American churches. The past few years, numerous black churches have relocated to suburban Prince George's County, Md., to follow their parishioners. Later this year, Metropolitan Baptist Church (founded by freed slaves during the Lincoln administration) plans to leave town as well.

Some of the remaining black churches are now courting white members. On a recent Sunday, the Rev. John Blanchard, the 64-year-old pastor at Ebenezer United Methodist Church, preached to a thin crowd; several pews were empty. About half his parishioners now live in the suburbs and drive into the city for services. High gasoline prices aren't helping attendance.

So Mr. Blanchard says he's planning to add a white intern to preach with him, in hopes of filling more pews. "You've got to love the one you're with," he says, "but you also need to adjust to the environment you're in."

While his church flounders, the predominantly white Capitol Hill United Methodist Church just down the street is flourishing. There the average attendance on Sundays has doubled to about 120 people the past five years. "Demographics are in our favor. We're attracting the folks that are moving in," says the Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli, 38, who headed the church for five years before recently leaving for a position elsewhere.

In San Francisco, the African-American population has fallen by a third, or about 30,000 people, since 1990, largely due to surging housing costs and redevelopment that destroyed some public housing. Mayor Newsom's African-American Out-Migration Task Force, set up last year, has a two-pronged strategy: keep African-Americans from leaving, and promote affordable housing and cultural institutions like a jazz center to try to lure blacks back. "The greatness of our city and region is in its diversity," Mayor Newsom says.

So far, his efforts have focused on residents of public housing, about half of whom are black. The city is trying to prevent evictions by building new community centers where residents can get job training and help with the rent. The city is also giving residents displaced by redevelopment, many of whom are black, an inside track on affordable-housing units.

From Poor to Poorer

As middle-class African-Americans have left San Francisco, the remaining black population has gone from poor to poorer. In 1990, half of the city's African-American population was very low-income; by 2005, that number swelled to about two-thirds. The number of black-owned businesses fell 25% between 1997 and 2002.

As blacks migrated to San Francisco's suburbs, so too have many social activities centered on the community. The San Francisco Chapter of the National Black MBA Association has started hosting many of its events across the bay in Oakland.

The Western Addition, a historically black neighborhood in San Francisco once home to many jazz clubs, has lost much of that character. Powell's Place, an iconic soul-food restaurant that had been located in or around the neighborhood since the 1970s, has moved to Bayview-Hunters Point. Charles Spencer, who owns a barbershop catering to black men, says he has lost many of his customers and is trying to diversify. His Web site has a picture of a white client to go with three black faces.

'An Act of Faith'

The city has celebrated its traditional black culture by designating a stretch of Fillmore Street the "Fillmore Jazz Preservation District," yet the businesses that defined the era are now gone or dying. Raye Richardson, owner of Marcus Book Stores -- its motto is "Books by and about black people everywhere" -- has been in the Fillmore district since 1946. She remembers the clubs, the black tailor shops and the many black residents who supported her shop. Today, Ms. Richardson says her store is losing money; much of her business comes from mail-order traffic.

"San Francisco has so few blacks now, that it's just an act of faith to stay open," says Ms. Richardson, 88.

Sherri Young, executive director at the African-American Shakespeare Company in San Francisco, is one of the few blacks at her theater company who still lives in San Francisco. "I'm a single woman in my late 30s," Ms. Young says. "Culturally, it's difficult."

Recently, she says, her production of "The Comedy of Errors" drew a mostly white audience. It's the first time that's happened since she founded the company 14 years ago.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121642866373567057.html?mod=yhoofront

bayviews

July 22nd, 2008, 02:44 AM

Changing Racial Makeup in U.S. Cities Marks the End of White Flight

http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-AM301_WHITER_20080718213815.gif

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121642866373567057.html?mod=yhoofront

That's another one of the very positive trends you see in places where there's a lot of diversity: immigrants move into & revitalize the older neighborhoods & aging suburbs, African Americans gain inclusion & move to the suburbs, which become more integrated & "white flight" ends as more whites stay in, or move into cities.

What's interesting, although often overlooked, is that NYC, Chicago, Washington DC, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver & many other cities that have elected African American mayors over the past few decades & spawned large African American middle-classes have seen a stabilization or decline in the black population percentage within their central cities, even as the percentage of blacks & other minorities rises in many suburbs.

bjfan82

July 23rd, 2008, 05:24 PM

bjfan82

July 23rd, 2008, 05:25 PM

Poll: Blacks, whites don't see eye-to-eye on race relations
Posted: 09:00 AM ET

From CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser

(CNN) – A new national poll suggests that black and white Americans don’t see eye-to eye-on race relations and racial discrimination.

In a CNN/Essence Magazine/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Tuesday morning, 43 percent of African-Americans questioned say that racial discrimination against blacks is a very serious problem, with only 11 percent of whites agreeing. On the flip side, 42 percent of whites surveyed say that racial discrimination against blacks is not a serious problem, with only 12 percent of blacks agreeing.

More than half of blacks questioned say they’ve been the victim of racial discrimination. But only 32 percent of white respondents said they’ve been a victim of discrimination because of their race, a difference of 24 points.

There’s also a difference of opinion when it comes to the future. Fifty-one percent of blacks polled say that race relations will always be a problem in the U.S. Only 41 percent of white respondents agreed.
When it comes to their children, a slight majority, 55 percent, of black respondents with kids under the age of 18 say they feel financially secure to provide for their children. That number rises to 72 percent for whites questioned in the survey.

The survey was conducted from March 26 to April 2, with 2,184 adult Americans, equally split between black and white respondents, questioned by telephone.

The survey has a sampling error of plus or minus two percentage points

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/07/23/poll-blacks-whites-dont-see-eye-to-eye-on-race-relations/

bayviews

July 24th, 2008, 04:18 AM

^ My personal opinion is not so much that this is a trend in "diverse" or "more open-minded" or "less segregated" cities...but an overall trend in American cities. That people in general, white black asian hispanic whatever are starting to repopulate the central city partially due to high gas prices and partially due to the eagerness for a 'new' type or more fullfilling urban lifestyle. But it is a pleasant surprise that whites are starting to move back to the central city after decades of "fleeing"...I think it shows that whites are fearing the "scary" and "dangerous" (those are stereotypes) minorities less.

White fears of the black "underclass" around Buffalo Niagara & other hyspersegregated metros haven't been completly irrational. Concentrated poverty fueled by racial inequites takes a big toll on property values, neighborhoods, crime, school & other "quality of life" matters. Its very tough to be the first black moving into a white neighborhood or suburb & often just as tough being the last white out.

Yet when African Americans gain more employment opportunities opportunities & move up the ladder to better jobs, & the middle-class, as has been happening in many of these other metros for decades, that fear fades.

It's a "win-win" proposition, whites also being big beneficiaries of African American inclusion. Metros like Buffalo Niagara, & suburbs like Cheektowaga beginning to experience racial transition, have plenty of "better practices" they can learn from.

That being the case, sure, there's plenty of room for improvement all across the US. Even the most integrated US metropolitan areas are still very residentially (& socially, alkthough that's harder to measure) segregated by the standards of other historically multi-racial countries like Brazil, Cuba, or our own Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Or compared with countries like the UK & Canada that have recently become multi-racial through immigration in the past several decades.

bjfan82

July 24th, 2008, 05:26 PM

I think you're absolutely right, that was an excellent post.

bjfan82

July 27th, 2008, 04:59 AM

bayviews

July 28th, 2008, 01:20 AM

bayviews, can you think of any race issues related to transportation? Not specifically about Buffalo, but in cities across the USA... e.g. minorities in cities have less access to transportation, does/doesn't take them to where they need to go, they rely on it more/less than other Americans...etc. I'm thinking of working on a piece from this angle for an upcoming monthly journal that my company puts out.

Excellent questions.

Actually, the modern Civil Rights movement really got started in 1956 when Rosa Parks a black lady in Montgomery AL refused to move to the back of the bus, as was the law then. The blacks in Montgomery organized a bus boycott that led to the desegregation of public transit not only there but across the south. Dr. Martin Luther King, was a minister in Montgomery at that time, & the bus boycott was the first major campaign that he was involved in.

Incidentally, two of the more recent publicized incidents involving lack of transportation access happened around Buffalo.

The first was in 1990, when the NFTA shut-down for several days because of lack of funding. That was only the second time that a city transit agency was forced to suspend service for lack of funding. Birmingham AL had a similar experience in the 1980s. In both cities, one of the main resons for lack of funding was that white suburban politicians didn't see funding transit that carried mostly poor blacks as their concern.

The second was in 1995 when Cynthia Wiggins, a teenage single mom from the East Side, got run over by a truck when she was crossing a busy artery (Walden Av) while trying to get to work at the Galleria Mall in Cheektowaga & died in the hospital. The 6 Sycamore bus didn't directly access the mall. The Mall & the NFTA settled a wrongful death suit alleging that the Mall tried to discourage patronage by inner-city minorities, for about $2.5 million.

After being in the national spotlight that followed that incident, the NFTA rerouted its buses to better connect into the Galleria & other suburban malls & the town of Cheektowaga started its decade-plus long "search' to hire its very first minority police officer.

Of course, these issues are not unique to Buffalo. Detroit presents a prime example of an area where racial segregation (black city, white suburbs) & bad transportation (poor bus service, no light rail, etc.) are closely linked. Atlanta & its inner suburbs have a very good bus & rail transit system, MARTA, but it doesn't extend into the outer counties. WMATA around Washington, Metrorail especially which does a good job of connecting DC, & the MD & VA suburbs, seems to be one of the better transit systems.

Cynthia Wiggin's death was covered in Time & Newsweek & ABC Nightline did a couple pieces on that incident. "Just Transportation" a book on transportation justice is dedicated to both Rosa Park & Cynthia Wiggins.

So you might be able to access more details online.

Anyway, good luck with your project!

bjfan82

August 3rd, 2008, 07:13 PM

Excellent questions.

Actually, the modern Civil Rights movement really got started in 1956 when Rosa Parks a black lady in Montgomery AL refused to move to the back of the bus, as was the law then. The blacks in Montgomery organized a bus boycott that led to the desegregation of public transit not only there but across the south. Dr. Martin Luther King, was a minister in Montgomery at that time, & the bus boycott was the first major campaign that he was involved in.

Incidentally, two of the more recent publicized incidents involving lack of transportation access happened around Buffalo.

The first was in 1990, when the NFTA shut-down for several days because of lack of funding. That was only the second time that a city transit agency was forced to suspend service for lack of funding. Birmingham AL had a similar experience in the 1980s. In both cities, one of the main resons for lack of funding was that white suburban politicians didn't see funding transit that carried mostly poor blacks as their concern.

The second was in 1995 when Cynthia Wiggins, a teenage single mom from the East Side, got run over by a truck when she was crossing a busy artery (Walden Av) while trying to get to work at the Galleria Mall in Cheektowaga & died in the hospital. The 6 Sycamore bus didn't directly access the mall. The Mall & the NFTA settled a wrongful death suit alleging that the Mall tried to discourage patronage by inner-city minorities, for about $2.5 million.

After being in the national spotlight that followed that incident, the NFTA rerouted its buses to better connect into the Galleria & other suburban malls & the town of Cheektowaga started its decade-plus long "search' to hire its very first minority police officer.

Of course, these issues are not unique to Buffalo. Detroit presents a prime example of an area where racial segregation (black city, white suburbs) & bad transportation (poor bus service, no light rail, etc.) are closely linked. Atlanta & its inner suburbs have a very good bus & rail transit system, MARTA, but it doesn't extend into the outer counties. WMATA around Washington, Metrorail especially which does a good job of connecting DC, & the MD & VA suburbs, seems to be one of the better transit systems.

Cynthia Wiggin's death was covered in Time & Newsweek & ABC Nightline did a couple pieces on that incident. "Just Transportation" a book on transportation justice is dedicated to both Rosa Park & Cynthia Wiggins.

So you might be able to access more details online.

Anyway, good luck with your project!

sorry I never got a chance to respond to this.

Thanks very much for your input bayviews. I want to focus less on race and more on transportation connectivity with inner-city (which disproportionally effects minority groups) because I want to avoid a potential backlash if it is too race heavy and preachy.

However, I do like the point you make about how cities with poor public transportation and poor connectivity with the suburbs makes for a more segregated metro area. I think that is a topic worth exploring more.

bjfan82

August 4th, 2008, 06:06 PM

(CNN) -- The Rev. Paul Earl Sheppard had recently become the senior pastor of a suburban church in California when a group of parishioners came to him with a disturbing personal question.

They were worried because the racial makeup of their small church was changing. They warned Sheppard that the church's newest members would try to seize control because members of their race were inherently aggressive. What was he was going to do if more of "them" tried to join their church?

"One man asked me if I was prepared for a hostile takeover," says Sheppard, pastor of Abundant Life Christian Fellowship in Mountain View, California.

The nervous parishioners were African-American, and the church's newcomers were white. Sheppard says the experience demonstrated why racially integrated churches are difficult to create and even harder to sustain. Some blacks as well as whites prefer segregated Sundays, religious scholars and members of interracial churches say.

Americans may be poised to nominate a black man to run for president, but it's segregation as usual in U.S. churches, according to the scholars. Only about 5 percent of the nation's churches are racially integrated, and half of them are in the process of becoming all-black or all-white, says Curtiss Paul DeYoung, co-author of "United by Faith," a book that examines interracial churches in the United States.

DeYoung's numbers are backed by other scholars who've done similar research. They say integrated churches are rare because attending one is like tiptoeing through a racial minefield. Just like in society, racial tensions in the church can erupt over everything from sharing power to interracial dating.

DeYoung, who is also an ordained minister, once led an interracial congregation in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that eventually went all-black. He defines an interracial church as one in which at least 20 percent its membership belongs to a racial group other than that church's largest racial group.

"I left after five years," DeYoung says. "I was worn out from the battles."

The men and women who remain and lead interracial churches often operate like presidential candidates. They say they live with the constant anxiety of knowing that an innocuous comment or gesture can easily mushroom into a crisis that threatens their support. Poll: Race and religion in America »

"It's not all 'Kumbaya' and 'We are the World,' " says Sheppard, the pastor of the Northern California church, who was raised by his father, a Baptist preacher, in the black church. "There are plenty of skirmishes."

Can't we just be Christians?

If it's so tough, why bother? That's one of the first questions interracial churches must address.

DeYoung says he encountered many blacks who said they wanted a racial timeout on Sunday.

"They would say, 'I need a place of refuge,'" he says. "They said, 'I need to come to a place on Sunday morning where I don't experience racism.' "

Whites also complained of their own version of racial fatigue, other scholars say.

Theodore Brelsford, co-author of "We Are the Church Together,'' another book that looks at interracial churches, says whites often say that church should transcend race.

"They'd say, 'Can't we just get along without talking about race all the time? Can't we just be Christians?'"

Not really, say advocates for interracial churches. They argue that churches should be interracial whenever possible because their success could ultimately reduce racial friction in America.

American churches haven't traditionally done a good job at being racially inclusive, scholars say. Slavery and Jim Crow kept blacks and whites apart in the pews in the nation's early history. Some large contemporary black denominations, like the African Methodist Episcopal church, were formed because blacks couldn't find acceptance in white churches.

Large denominations like the Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians split over race in the 19th century when their members clashed over the issue of slavery, Michael Emerson, a scholar on interracial churches, recounted in his book, "Divided by Faith."

But interracial church advocates say the church was never meant to be segregated. They point to the New Testament description of the first Christian church as an ethnic stew -- it deliberately broke social divisions by uniting groups that were traditionally hostile to one another, they say.

DeYoung, the "United by Faith" co-author, says the first-century Christian church grew so rapidly precisely because it was so inclusive. He says the church inspired wonder because its leaders were able to form a community that cut across the rigid class and ethnic divisions that characterized the ancient Roman world.

"People said that if Jews, Greeks, Africans, slaves, men and women - the huge divides of that time period -- could come together successfully, there must be something to this religion," DeYoung says.

Biblical precedents, though, may not be enough to make someone attend church with a person of another race. Something else is needed: a tenacious pastor who goads his or her church to reach across racial lines, interracial church scholars say.

The Rev. Rodney Woo, senior pastor of Wilcrest Baptist Church in Houston, Texas, may be such a person. He leads a congregation of blacks, whites and Latinos. Like many leaders of interracial churches, he is driven in part by a personal awakening.

Woo's mother is white, and his father is part Chinese. He attended an all-black high school growing up in Port Arthur, Texas, where he still remembers what it was like to be a minority.

"Everyone understands the rules, the lingo, the mind-set -- except you," he says. "It was invaluable, but I didn't know it at the time."

When he became pastor of Wilcrest in 1992, he was determined to shield his church members from such an experience. But an exodus of whites, commonly referred to as "white flight" was already taking place in the neighborhood and the church.

Membership fell to about 200 people. At least one church member suggested that Woo could change the church's fortunes by adding a "d" to his last name.

"The fear there was people would think I was Chinese," he says. "There would be a flood of all these Asians coming in, and what would we do then?"

Woo kept his last name and his vision. He made racial diversity part of the church's mission statement. He preached it from the pulpit and lived it in his life. He says Wilcrest now has about 500 members, and is evenly divided among white, Latino and black members.

Woo doesn't say his church has resolved all of its racial tensions. There are spats over music, length of service, even how to address Woo. Blacks prefer to address him more formally, while whites prefer to call him by his first name, (a sign of disrespect in black church culture), Woo says.

Woo tries to defuse the tension by offering something for everyone: gospel and traditional music, an integrated pastoral staff, "down-home" preaching and a more refined sermon at times.

But he knows it's not enough. And he's all right with that.

"If there's not any tension, we probably haven't done too well," he says. "If one group feels too comfortable, we've probably neglected another group."

Going from "they" to "we"

Sometimes, though, a determined pastor is not enough. Interracial churches can also implode on issues far more explosive than worship styles -- like sex and power.

One such issue is interracial dating. Some scholars and leaders who deal with interracial issues say it's not unusual for parents in racially-mixed churches to leave when their teenage kids begin dating.

Woo saw that exodus at Wilcrest. Some parents talked about the importance of a multiracial church, until their kid became attracted to someone from another race within the church.

"As kids began to date, some things get revealed," he says. "They didn't want their kids involved in interracial dating -- and that's not just whites."

Accepting black leadership is another touchy subject. Most interracial churches are led by white pastors. A congregation typically becomes all-black if a black pastor is hired, says DeYoung, the "United by Faith" co-author.

"As long as the top person, the senior pastor, is white, power sort of resides with whites," DeYoung says. "But when that shifts, it does something psychologically to people. People usually leave."

Black pastors who do gain the acceptance of interracial congregations still have to watch themselves. Some white parishioners, even progressive ones, get uneasy when a black pastor gets too fiery in the pulpit, says Brelsford, co-author of "We are the Church Together."

"A black church sermon that could be understood as impassioned might be interpreted as angry and defensive by a white congregation," Brelsford says. "It could kick into fear of black men."

Sheppard, the black minister of the church in California, says he modified his style to appeal to all sorts of people.

He says he abandoned the pulpit pyrotechnics he learned growing up in the black church when his congregation's racial mix changed. He also carries his authority lightly, dressing casually in the pulpit and consulting with church committees before making decisions. In conversation, he's relaxed and accessible.

"I'm very aware of how rare this is," he says of being the black minister of an interracial congregation. "I'm humbled by it."

The people in the pews must also do their share of adapting, scholars and ministers say. Only when ethnic groups no longer feel compelled to abandon their entire culture on Sunday morning can a church claim to be interracial, Brelsford says.

An interracial church isn't one in which all the black members act, dress and worship like the church's majority white members to make them feel comfortable, he says.

Interracial churches resist "taking one dominant identity and forcing everyone to fit into it," Brelsford says.

That appears to have happened at Sheppard's church in Northern, California. Since its rocky early days, it has now grown to a multiracial congregation of about 6,000 people. Whites, blacks, Asians, Latinos - all now attend.

"We refuse," Sheppard says, "to be a one-flavor-fits-all church."

Interracial congregations often include people who probably wouldn't have become friends in any other circumstances. They are people like Dwight Pryor, a black man who grew up in segregated Mississippi seeing blacks brutalized by whites. He says he grew up disliking white people.

Today, Pryor says he is best friends with a white member of Wilcrest, a man who grew up in Alabama during segregation in a family that hated blacks.

When Pryor sees his friend on Sunday, he says he no longer sees a "they" or a "them" trying to invade his world.

He sees his brother in Christ.

"We come to love each other," he says. "When I look into his eyes, I can see the love of Jesus Christ. He and I have become friends."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/08/04/segregated.sundays/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

bayviews

August 6th, 2008, 02:59 AM

sorry I never got a chance to respond to this.

Thanks very much for your input bayviews. I want to focus less on race and more on transportation connectivity with inner-city (which disproportionally effects minority groups) because I want to avoid a potential backlash if it is too race heavy and preachy.

However, I do like the point you make about how cities with poor public transportation and poor connectivity with the suburbs makes for a more segregated metro area. I think that is a topic worth exploring more.

Agree, you might want to start a thread on that in the Urban transportation forum so you can get some more feedback from around the country/world.

bayviews

August 6th, 2008, 03:24 AM

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/08/04/segregated.sundays/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

Good post, Interesting article that once again reminds us that sadly, Sunday morning remains is the most segregated time in America.

That's a shame because in other countries (Middle Eastern ones being a prime example) some people might even kill each other over clashing religious beliefs, but yet share the same church, mosque or synagouge with many people of many different skin tones, but of similar religions.

I'd guess that the Muslim pilgramage to Mecca is probably the most diverse gathering of people of vastly contrasting cultures & colors, albeit a single "umbrella" faith. Occasionally the Haj gets disrupted by conflicts between different sects (Sunni vs. Shia, etc.) but not over color.

I wonder which is the mark of a more mature society, one where people sort themselves out by skin color & other physical charecteristics, or a society where they sort themselves out by deeply held beliefs?

At any rate, just as diversity is about immigration & inclusion, its also about integration & interracialism. The good news is that there are growing numbers of churches that are becoming more integrated & interracial like the ones cited in the article, although they are still a decided minority in most places.

bayviews

August 7th, 2008, 04:23 AM

Here's an interesting story about Brockport, a Rochester suburb that has done a lot to make newcomers feel welcome. Brockport provides an excellent model for other suburbs & towns in upstate NY:

Made to feel welcome
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (NY) - June 30, 2008
Author: NICOLE JARRETT staff photographer, Kate Perry

Kate Perry

Staff writer

Tim Martinez arrived in the Brockport area from Honduras 20 years ago as a migrant worker and the people were so friendly he stayed.

Martinez, a Greece resident who now works as a health educator, said finding a good job and meeting his wife also played a role in keeping him here, but he said the welcome in Brockport had a lasting impression on him. He said it has the same effect on other migrant workers that arrive here every year to plant and harvest crops.

"One of the things the migrant workers like about this place besides the good jobs — they have a lot of help. They have the Catholic Church, a migrant education program and the Oak Orchard (Community Health Center)," he said.

The year-round support for workers is highlighted by the annual welcome service or Bienvenida that was held on Sunday. About 200 members of the migrant community — workers and their families — joined community members at the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Main Street in Brockport for the service.

The church has a Spanish language mass every week, but Sunday's mass was bilingual, making it a good meeting place for full-time Brockport residents and the workers. The event also included a gathering of area clergy to welcome the workers, a Mexican dance performance by children in traditional garb, and a dinner hosted by the First Baptist Church of Brockport a few doors down.

Grace Carson, president of the Brockport Ecumenical Outreach Committee, said her organization has hosted the event for 19 years to welcome workers, and she sees it as even more important now that national tension about immigration has increased.

Carson said fewer migrant workers come to the region now and the ones who do might feel isolated.

"We do it to make them feel welcome. They live in camps on the farms, and they aren't as integrated into the village as others," Carson said.

This summer, about 1,000 migrants will come to the region to work and live on farms, according to a proclamation read by Brockport Vice Mayor Connie Castaneda.

Among them is Francisco Santiago, 38, his 34-year-old wife Teodora Hernandez and their three children. Santiago lives in Homestead, Fla., when he isn't working in the Brockport area. He moved to the United States from his native Mexico 15 years ago, but he very much lives the life of a migrant worker.

He speaks little English and spends his summer in the fields and orchards tending peaches, apples and cabbage. Using Martinez as a translator, he said the Bienvenida celebration makes his family feel at home in Brockport , where he's worked for six years. He said the welcoming attitude lasts well through the growing season too.

"I like the way they welcome migrant workers here," he said. "This is the only place I know of that has Bienvenida."

bjfan82

August 9th, 2008, 10:14 PM

"Trading Places" ...a fantastic article about the current changes in the American city...poor and African Americans moving out to the suburbs and richer whiter people moving into the city center...the new trend in American cities, especially in cities like Buffalo.

Thirty years ago, the mayor of Chicago was unseated by a snowstorm. A blizzard in January of 1979 dumped some 20 inches on the ground, causing, among other problems, a curtailment of transit service. The few available trains coming downtown from the northwest side filled up with middle-class white riders near the far end of the line, leaving no room for poorer people trying to board on inner-city platforms. African Americans and Hispanics blamed this on Mayor Michael Bilandic, and he lost the Democratic primary to Jane Byrne a few weeks later.

Today, this could never happen. Not because of climate change, or because the Chicago Transit Authority now runs flawlessly. It couldn't happen because the trains would fill up with minorities and immigrants on the outskirts of the city, and the passengers left stranded at the inner-city stations would be members of the affluent professional class.

In the past three decades, Chicago has undergone changes that are routinely described as gentrification, but are in fact more complicated and more profound than the process that term suggests. A better description would be "demographic inversion." Chicago is gradually coming to resemble a traditional European city--Vienna or Paris in the nineteenth century, or, for that matter, Paris today. The poor and the newcomers are living on the outskirts. The people who live near the center--some of them black or Hispanic but most of them white--are those who can afford to do so.

Developments like this rarely occur in one city at a time, and indeed demographic inversion is taking place, albeit more slowly than in Chicago, in metropolitan areas throughout the country. The national press has paid very little attention to it. While we have been focusing on Baghdad and Kabul, our own cities have been changing right in front of us.

Atlanta, for example, is shifting from an overwhelmingly black to what is likely to soon be a minority-black city. This is happening in part because the white middle class is moving inside the city borders, but more so because blacks are moving out. Between 1990 and 2006, according to research by William Frey of the Brookings Institution, the white population of Atlanta has increased from roughly 30 percent to 35 percent while the black population has declined from 67 percent to 55 percent. In this decade alone, two of Atlanta's huge suburban counties, Clayton and DeKalb, have acquired substantial black majorities, and immigrants arriving from foreign countries are settling primarily there or in similar outlying areas, not within the city itself. The numbers for Washington, D.C. are similar.

Race is not always the critical issue, or even especially relevant, in this demographic shift. Before September 11, 2001, the number of people living in Manhattan south of the World Trade Center was estimated at about 25,000. Today, it is approaching 50,000. Close to one-quarter of these people are couples (nearly always wealthy couples) with children. The average household size is actually larger in lower Manhattan than in the city as a whole. It is not mere fantasy to imagine that in, say, 2020, the southern tip of Manhattan will be a residential neighborhood with a modest residual presence of financial corporations and financial services jobs. What's happening in Lower Manhattan isn't exactly an inversion in the Chicago sense: Expensive condos are replacing offices, not poor people. But it is dramatic demographic change nevertheless.

If you want to see this sort of thing writ large, you can venture just across the Canadian border to Vancouver, a city roughly the size of Washington, D.C. What makes it unusual--indeed, at this point unique in all of North America--is that roughly 20 percent of its residents live within a couple of square miles of each other in the city's center. Downtown Vancouver is a forest of slender, green, condo skyscrapers, many of them with three-story townhouse units forming a kind of podium at the base. Each morning, there are nearly as many people commuting out of the center to jobs in the suburbs as there are commuting in. Two public elementary schools have opened in downtown Vancouver in the past few years. A large proportion of the city's 600,000 residents, especially those with money, want to live downtown.

No American city looks like Vancouver at the moment. But quite a few are moving in this direction. Demographic inversions of one sort or another are occurring in urban pockets scattered all across America, many of them in seemingly unlikely places. Charlotte, North Carolina, is in the midst of a downtown building boom dominated by new mixed-use high-rise buildings, with office space on the bottom and condos or rental units above. Even at a moment of economic weakness, the condos are still selling briskly.

We are not witnessing the abandonment of the suburbs or a movement of millions of people back to the city all at once. But we are living at a moment in which the massive outward migration of the affluent that characterized the second half of the twentieth century is coming to an end. For several decades now, cities in the United States have wished for a "24/7" downtown, a place where people live as well as work, and keep the streets busy, interesting, and safe at all times of day. This is what urbanist Jane Jacobs preached in the 1960s, and it has long since become the accepted goal of urban planners. Only when significant numbers of people lived downtown, planners believed, could central cities regain their historic role as magnets for culture and as a source of identity and pride for the metropolitan areas they served. Now that's starting to happen, fueled by the changing mores of the young and by gasoline prices fast approaching $5-per-gallon. In many of its urbanized regions, an America that seemed destined for everincreasing individualization and sprawl is experimenting with new versions of community and sociability.

Why has demographic inversion begun? For one thing, the deindustrialization of the central city, for all the tragic human dislocations it caused, has eliminated many of the things that made affluent people want to move away from it. Nothing much is manufactured downtown anymore (or anywhere near it), and that means that the noise and grime that prevailed for most of the twentieth century have gone away. Manhattan may seem like a loud and gritty place now, but it is nothing like the city of tenement manufacturing, rumbling elevated trains, and horses and coal dust in the streets that confronted inhabitants in the early 1900s. Third-floor factory lofts, whether in Soho or in St. Louis, can be marketed as attractive and stylish places to live. The urban historian Robert Bruegmann goes so far as to claim that deindustrialization has, on the whole, been good for downtowns because it has permitted so many opportunities for creative reuse of the buildings. I wouldn't go quite that far, and, given the massive job losses of recent years, I doubt most of the residents of Detroit would, either. But it is true that the environmental factors that made middle-class people leave the central city for streetcar suburbs in the 1900s and for station-wagon suburbs in the 1950s do not apply any more.

Nor, in general, does the scourge of urban life in the 1970s and '80s: random street violence. True, the murder rates in cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, and Cleveland have climbed in the last few years, but this increase has been propelled in large part by gang- and drug-related violence. For the most part, middle-class people of all colors began to feel safe on the streets of urban America in the 1990s, and they still feel that way. The paralyzing fear that anyone of middle age can still recall vividly from the 1970s--that the shadowy figure passing by on a dark city street at night stands a good chance of being a mugger--is rare these days, and almost nonexistent among young people. Walk around the neighborhood of 14th and U streets in Washington, D.C. on a Saturday night, and you will find it perhaps the liveliest part of the city, at least for those under 25. This is a neighborhood where the riots of 1968 left physical scars that still have not disappeared, and where outsiders were afraid to venture for more than 30 years.

The young newcomers who have rejuvenated 14th and U believe that this recovering slum is the sort of place where they want to spend time and, increasingly, where they want to live. This is the generation that grew up watching "Seinfeld," "Friends," and "Sex and the City," mostly from the comfort of suburban sofas. We have gone from a sitcom world defined by "Leave It to Beaver" and "Father Knows Best" to one that offers a whole range of urban experiences and enticements. I do not claim that a handful of TV shows has somehow produced a new urbanist generation, but it is striking how pervasive the pro-city sensibility is within this generation, particularly among its elite. In recent years, teaching undergraduates at the University of Richmond, the majority of them from affluent suburban backgrounds, I made a point of asking where they would prefer to live in 15 years--in a suburb or in a neighborhood close to the center of the city. Few ever voted for suburban life.

I can't say that they had necessarily devoted a great deal of thought to the question: When I asked them whether they would want to live in an urban neighborhood without a car, many seemed puzzled and said no. Clearly, we are a long way from producing a generation for whom urban life and automobile ownership are mutually exclusive. In downtown Charlotte, a luxury condominium is scheduled for construction this year that will allow residents to drive their cars into a garage elevator, ride up to the floor they live on, and park right next to their front door. I have a hard time figuring out whether that is a triumph for urbanism or a defeat. But my guess is that, except in Manhattan, the carless life has yet to achieve any significant traction in the affluent new enclaves of urban America.

Not that cars and the demographic inversion aren't closely related; they are. In Atlanta, where the middle-class return to the city is occurring with more suddenness than perhaps anywhere in the United States, the most frequently cited reason is traffic. People who did not object to a 20-mile commute from the suburbs a decade ago are objecting to it now in part because the same commute takes quite a bit longer. To this, we can add the prospect of $5-per-gallon gasoline. It's impossible at this point to say with any certainty just what energy costs will do to American living patterns over the next decade. Urbanists predicted a return to the city during previous spikes in the cost of gasoline, notably during shortages in the 1970s. They were wrong. Gas prices came down, and the suburbs expanded dramatically. But today's prices at the pump are not the result of political pressures by angry sheiks in the Persian Gulf. They are the result of increased worldwide demand that is only going to continue to increase. Some suburbanites will simply stay where they are and accept the cost. But many will decide to stop paying $100 every few days for a tank of gasoline that will allow them to commute 40 or 50 miles a day, round-trip.

Ultimately, though, the current inversion is less the result of middle-aged people changing their minds than of young adults expressing different values, habits, and living preferences than their parents. The demographic changes that have taken place in America over the past generation--the increased propensity to remain single, the rise of cohabitation, the much later age at first marriage for those who do marry, the smaller size of families for those who have children, and, at the other end, the rapidly growing number of healthy and active adults in their sixties, seventies, and eighties--have combined virtually all of the significant elements that make a demographic inversion not only possible but likely. We are moving toward a society in which millions of people with substantial earning power or ample savings can live wherever they want, and many will choose central cities over distant suburbs. As they do this, others will find themselves forced to live in less desirable places--now defined as those further from the center of the metropolis. And, as this happens, suburbs that never dreamed of being entry points for immigrants will have to cope with new realities. It should come as no surprise that the most intense arguments about hiring and educating the undocumented have occurred in the relatively distant reaches of American suburbia, such as Prince William County, Virginia.

The reality of demographic inversion strikes me every time I return to Chicago, the city in which I was born and grew up. My grandfather arrived there in 1889, found his way to the Near West Side, and opened a tailor shop that remained in business for 50 years. During that time, the neighborhood was a compact and somewhat culturally isolated enclave of Jewish and Italian families. (It was also the location of Hull House and the original home of the Chicago Cubs.) The building that housed my grandfather's store was torn down in the 1960s when the University of Illinois built its Chicago campus in the neighborhood. The street corner where the store stood now houses part of the university science complex.

The UIC campus is, to my eyes, one of the ugliest in America. But I have made my peace with that. What interests me is what is going on all around that neighborhood, now called University Village. For a while after the school was built, its environs were a sort of residential no-man's-land, dangerous at night and unattractive to the young academics who taught there. Today, assistant professors at UIC generally don't live there either, but for a different reason: They can't afford it. Demand for the townhouses and condominiums on the Near West Side has priced junior faculty out of the market. One can walk a couple of blocks down the street from where my grandfather's shop once stood and order a steak for $24.

You might respond that there is nothing especially noteworthy in this. A college setting, liberal academics, houses close to the city's cultural attractions: That's garden-variety gentrification. What else would you expect?

If you feel that way, you might want to ride an elevated train going northwest, to the lesser-known Logan Square, a few miles beyond the Loop. Whatever Logan Square might be, it is not downtown chic. It is a moderately close-in nineteenth-century neighborhood with a history fairly typical for a city that A.J. Liebling once called "an endless succession of factory-town main streets." Logan Square was developed primarily by Scandinavian manufacturers, who lived on the tree-lined boulevards while their workers, many of them Polish, rented the cottages on the side streets. By the 1970s, nearly all the Poles had decamped for suburbia, and they were replaced by an influx of Puerto Ricans. The area became a haven for gangs and gang violence, and most of the retail shopping that held the community together disappeared.

Logan Square is still not the safest neighborhood in Chicago. There are armed robberies and some killings on its western fringe, and, even on the quiet residential streets, mothers tell their children to be home before dark. But that hasn't prevented Logan Square from changing dramatically again--not over the past generation, or the past decade, but in the past five years. The big stone houses built by the factory owners on Logan Boulevard are selling for nearly $1 million, despite the housing recession. The restaurant that sits on the square itself sells goat cheese quesadillas and fettuccine with octopus, and attracts long lines of customers who drive in from the suburbs on weekend evenings. To describe what has happened virtually overnight in Logan Square as gentrification is to miss the point. Chicago, like much of America, is rearranging itself, and the result is an entire metropolitan area that looks considerably different from what it looked like when this decade started.

Of course, demographic inversion cannot be a one-way street. If some people are coming inside, some people have to be going out. And so they are--in Chicago as in much of the rest of the country. During the past ten years, with relatively little fanfare and surprisingly little press attention, the great high-rise public housing projects that defined squalor in urban America for half a century have essentially disappeared. In Chicago, the infamous Robert Taylor Homes are gone, and the equally infamous Cabrini-Green is all but gone. This has meant the removal of tens of thousands of people, who have taken their Section 8 federal housing subsidies and moved to struggling African American neighborhoods elsewhere in the city. Some have moved to the city's southern suburbs--small suburbs such as Dixmoor, Robbins, and Harvey, which have been among the poorest communities in metropolitan Chicago. At the same time, tens of thousands of immigrants are coming to Chicago every year, mostly from various parts of Latin America. Where are they settling? Not in University Village. Some in Logan Square, but fewer every year. They are living in suburban or exurban territory that, until a decade ago, was almost exclusively English-speaking, middle-class, and white.

There are responsible critics who look at all this and see a lot being made out of very little. They argue that, in absolute numbers, the return to the urban center remains a minor demographic event. They have a point. In most metropolitan areas, in the first few years of the twenty-first century, many more people have moved to the suburbs than have moved downtown. A city of half a million that can report a downtown residential population of 25,000--5 percent of the total--can claim that it is doing relatively well. Charlotte, for all the local excitement it has generated about upscale in-town living, still has no more than about 12,000 residents downtown. Moreover, these 12,000 are not representative of the area's populace; there are few families with school-age children. Downtown Charlotte is mostly attracting the familiar gentrification cohort: singles, couples, older people whose children have left home. The bulk of the married-with-children middle-class has not only been living in the suburbs, it has been moving to the suburbs. Joel Kotkin, perhaps the most prominent of the downtown debunkers, declares flatly that, until families begin turning up in significant numbers on downtown streets, we are talking about a blip rather than a major cultural phenomenon.

But it's not just a blip. The evidence from most American cities--carefully presented by Christopher Leinberger, the real estate developer and University of Michigan urban planning professor, in his recent book, The Option of Urbanism--suggests that the number of downtown residents these days depends more on supply than demand. Few in Charlotte dispute that, if there were 30,000 upscale residential units in the center of that city, there would be 30,000 people living in them before long. The residential population of lower Manhattan has not just increased substantially since 2001; it has all but exploded in the last 18 months. And the strollers have reached Wall Street. Take a walk down there some Saturday morning, and you will see for yourself.

But, even if the critics are mostly right--even if the vast majority of cities never see a downtown residential boom of massive proportions--there is no doubt that a demographic inversion, in which the rich are moving inside and the poor are moving outside, is taking place. The crucial issue is not the number of people living downtown, although that matters. The crucial issue is who they are, and the ways in which urban life is changing as a result.

What would a post-inversion American city look like? In the most extreme scenario, it would look like many of the European capitals of the 1890s. Take Vienna, for example. In the mid-nineteenth century, the medieval wall that had surrounded the city's central core for hundreds of years was torn down. In its place there appeared the Ringstrasse, the circle of fashionable boulevards where opera was sung and plays performed, where rich merchants and minor noblemen lived in spacious apartments, where gentlemen and ladies promenaded in the evening under the gaslights, where Freud, Mahler, and their friends held long conversations about death over coffee and pastry in sidewalk cafes. By contrast, if you were part of the servant class, odds were you lived far beyond the center, in a neighborhood called Ottakring, a concentration of more than 30, 000 cramped one- and two-bedroom apartments, whose residents--largely immigrant Czechs, Slovaks, and Slovenes--endured a long horse-car ride to get to work in the heart of the city.

Paris was a different story. It had always had a substantial inner-city working class, the breeding ground for political unrest and violence over and over again in French history. But the narrow streets that housed the Parisian poor were largely obliterated in the urban redesign dictated by Baron Haussmann in the 1850s and '60s. The Paris that Haussmann created was the city of fashionable inner-ring boulevards that remains largely intact a century and a half later. The poor and the newly arrived were essentially banished to the suburbs--where they remain today, though they are now mostly Muslims from North Africa rather than peasants from the south of France.

Nobody in his right mind would hold up the present-day arrangement of metropolitan Paris, with its thousands of unemployed immigrants seething in shoddily built suburban high-rise housing projects, as a model for what twenty-first-century urbanism ought to look like. Indeed, in the worst case, demographic inversion would result in the poor living out of sight and largely forgotten in some new kind of high-rise projects beyond the city border, with the wealthy huddled in gated enclaves in the center. But I think this is an unlikely scenario. The people who are moving to the downtowns of American cities today are doing so in part to escape the real or virtual "gated-ness" of suburban life. The condos that house them in the coming years may feature elaborate security systems, but the inhabitants will not be walled off from the street. They want to be in contact with the street. Nor do we have to worry about the return of the idea of warehousing the poor in vertical Corbusian ghettoes. That is one beast we have managed to slay.

Less dystopian are the prophecies of Leinberger, who believes that a dramatic increase in middle-class central-city population will in fact take place, and that one consequence will be the deterioration of today's car-dependent, suburban tract homes into the slums of 2030. I don't think this will happen either, at least not in such extreme form. There simply are not enough lofts and town-houses to double or triple the number of people living in the center of a mid-sized American city. As the central-city population continues to grow, so will the demand for skyscrapers--something cities are sure initially to resist. Nor does it seem likely that exurbia will turn into a wasteland. The price of the houses will go down and render them more attractive for newcomers trying to rise in the U.S. economy and society. Urbanists have complained for years that immigrants and poor people in the inner city have a hard time commuting to the service jobs that are available to them in the suburbs. If they live in the suburbs, they will be closer to the jobs. Transportation will remain a problem, but not one that can't be solved.

Somewhere in between, there lies the vision of Jane Jacobs, who idealized the Greenwich Village of the 1950s and the casual everyday relationships that made living there comfortable, stimulating, and safe. Much of what Jacobs loved and wrote about will not reappear: The era of the mom-and-pop grocer, the shoemaker, and the candy store has ended for good. We live in a big-box, big-chain century. But I think the youthful urban elites of the twenty-first-century are looking in some sense for the things Jacobs valued, whether they have heard of her or not. They are drawn to the densely packed urban life that they saw on television and found vastly more interesting than the cul-de-sac world they grew up in. And, by and large, I believe central cities will give it to them. Not only that, but much of suburbia, in an effort to stay afloat, will seek to urbanize itself to some extent. That reinvention is already taking place: Look at all the car-created suburbs built in the 1970s and '80s that have created "town centers" in the past five years, with sidewalks and as much of a street grid as they can manage to impose on a faded strip-mall landscape. None of these retrofit efforts look much like a real city. But they are a clue to the direction in which we are heading.

In the 1990s, a flurry of academics and journalists (me among them) wrote books lamenting the decline of community and predicting that it would reappear in some fashion in the new century. I think that is beginning to happen now in the downtowns of America, and I believe, for all its imperfections and inequalities, that the demographic inversion ultimately will do more good than harm. We will never return--nor would most of us want to return--to the close-knit but frequently constricting form of community life that prevailed 50 years ago. But, as we rearrange ourselves in and around many of our big cities, we are groping toward the new communities of the twenty-first century.

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=264510ca-2170-49cd-bad5-a0be122ac1a9&p=1

bayviews

August 10th, 2008, 02:19 AM

Evergrey

August 10th, 2008, 03:37 AM

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/cityregion/s_581981.html

Georgian refugees give thanks for peace in new homes

By Andrew Conte
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Saturday, August 9, 2008

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/photos/2008-08-08/0809-geog-a.jpg
Navrasta Islamova, a Meskhetian Turk, is in the family apartment in Mt. Lebanon, on Friday. Islamova's family is originally from Georgia, where fighting is taking place against Russia.
Andrew Russell/Tribune-Review

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/photos/2008-08-08/0809-geog2-a.jpg
Leyla Islamova, 13, talks with her grandmother, Sana Kibarova, 79, and their neighbor, Gulsara Veisalova, in her home in Mt. Lebanon on Friday.
Andrew Russell/Tribune-Review

Generations of Leyla Islamova's family have suffered from conflicts between Russians and Georgians in the Caucuses.

So when fighting erupted there Friday, her family members gathered in their Mt. Lebanon apartment -- with its flat panel TV, spartan furniture and bare walls -- and gave thanks for the peace they have found since coming as refugees to the United States nearly three years ago.

"It's calm," Islamova, 13, said as she translated the words of her father, Telman Tashtan. "People have been so kind to us."

The fighting ran along familiar ground. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said "war has started" over the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia, while Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili accused its neighbor of a "well-planned invasion."

Saakashvili said his nation of 4.6 million people is "fighting to secure its borders" amid a "full-blown military aggression" involving thousands of Russian troops. Aerial bombings and widespread fighting in and around the region killed an unknown number of civilians and wounded "scores" more, Saakashvili said.

About 150 Meskhetian Turks have settled here, mainly in the South Hills, since 2005. They arrived through a State Department program for refugees, with help from Catholic Charities of Pittsburgh.

The families were escaping Russian persecution then, as they had for decades.

Islamova's grandmother, Sana Kibarova, 79, lived in Meskhetia, a mountainous region of southwestern Georgia bordering Turkey, until 1944, when Soviet leader Josef Stalin ordered the Meskhetian Turks to relocate into nearby Uzbekistan.

When ethnic tensions arose in 1989, they moved again, this time to Russia -- but ran into more hostility.

Since coming to Pittsburgh, Islamova, who was born in Russia, has learned to speak English and has started to make friends outside the families of former refugees who live in her apartment building along Bower Hill Road.

Andrew Conte can be reached at andrewconte@tribweb.com or 412-320-7835.

bjfan82

August 10th, 2008, 06:34 AM

I've seen that article posted elsewhere on this forum. That's been happening in places like Boston, Washington DC, Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, & the SF Bay Area, (& to a degree around NYC & Chicago) but not to any big extent around cities like Buffalo or Detroit. Sure more African Americans are moving to to a few suburbs (Amherst, Cheektowaga around Bflo) & few white yuppies are moving into the city, but not in any really significant numbers.

yeah I saw this article on the Chicago forums, and scooted it over here to Buffalo. I agree that it isn't happening here as fast as other places, but for someone who has lived in the city recently and throughout many stages of my life...I can credibly claim to have seen significant progress on the ground in Buffalo in this direction. There are tons of great things going on in our peers Detroit, Rochester, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, etc. too. I've visited them all in the last year and there are is housing going up in the city limits, gentrification, and a hope for the future of each of them that didn't exist 5-10 years ago.

Just in the last few years Buffalo has had a couple thousand new residents injected near the city center where there was previously noone or the extremely poor living. I wish the gentrification of neighborhoods would go a little quicker and spread more to the east & west sides but it is a relatively slow process to fundamentally change the make-up and purpose of the American city.

The bottom line, imo, is that Buffalo is noticably moving in the right direction and it is exciting to watch! But I'm a huge urban planning dork and I'm starting to ramble, I can go on and on for hours on this topic. Just remember that on paper most cities are losing population still, many of the them much worse than B-lo, but as they say...'the night is always darkest just before the dawn'

bayviews

August 11th, 2008, 01:14 AM

bjfan82

August 11th, 2008, 05:16 PM

bayviews, I can't find your post but I remember fairly recently you posted about Obama and how you believe he needs a good solid 5% lead in the polls to make up for people lying to pollsters. I absolutely agree, as a matter of fact I've always felt that a Democrat needs to win by atleast 2% to overcome the inherent disadvantage in the electoral college (small Republican states are over represented in the e.c.)...and because of race I figure another 2% or 3% for Obama.

Here is an article about the Bradley effect, I know it doesn't have to do with Buffalo specifically, but its still pretty relevant to a lot of our discussions. What's interesting is that the author of this article, 'proves' that in the primaries, voters went to the polls more for Obama than the polls showed. Only in the northeast did voters unexpectedly vote for Hillary more.

Maybe this article will ease our fears about people lying to pollsters and that Obama's 4%-6% lead is for real.

Many commentators -- the preponderance of them conservative but also some liberals -- take it as an article of faith that the current polling numbers overstate Barack Obama's position because of the so-called Bradley Effect: the notion that some material number of voters will lie about their intentions to pollsters, claiming that they will vote for a black candidate when in fact they will vote for the white guy.

A fairly typical example comes in the form of a blind quote from a Democratic strategist this morning at The Politico:

A huge challenge for Obama, insiders say, is simply determining how much skin color will matter in November. Race is nearly impossible to poll – no one ever says “I’m a racist” – and no campaign wants it revealed they are even asking questions on the issue.

“It’s the uncertainty that kills me – we know it’s going to be factor, but how big a factor?” asks a Democratic operative with ties to the Obama camp. “How do you even measure such a thing?"
Is there really so much uncertainty as this "operative" implies? Black candidates run races every cycle for the Congress and for the Governor's Mansion, and academics have spent copious time dissecting those results. And while we've never before had a major party nominate a black man for President, we did just finish an exceptionally competitive primary campaign in which a black candidate ran against an extremely popular white candidate with more than 35 million voters participating.

As we have described here before, polling numbers from the primaries suggested no presence of a Bradley Effect. On the contrary, it was Barack Obama -- not Hillary Clinton -- who somewhat outperformed his polls on Election Day.

The table below reflects 31 states in which at least three separate polls were released within 14 days of that state's primary or caucus. We compare the final trendline estimate from Pollster.com against the actual results from that state:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3248/2753226020_77840e5146_o.png

On average, Barack Obama overperformed the Pollster.com trendline by 3.3 points on election day.

There are some important differences by region. Using regions as defined by the US Census Bureau, Barack Obama overperformed his polls by an average of 7.2 points in the South. This effect appears to be most substantial in states with larger black populations; I have suggested before that it might stem from a sort of reverse Bradley Effect in which black voters were reluctant to disclose to a (presumed) white interviewer that they were about to vote for a black candidate.

Obama also outperformed his polls in the Midwest and the West (although there is not much data to go on in the latter case). The one region where Hillary Clinton overperformed her numbers was in the Northeast, bettering the pre-election trendline by 1.8 points. Recall that the Bradley Effect phenomenon describes covert rather than overt manifestations of racism. It may be that in the Northeast, which is arguably the most "politically correct" region of the country, expressions of racism are the least socially acceptable, and that therefore some people may misstate their intentions to pollsters. By contrast, in the South and the Midwest, if people are racist they will usually be pretty open about it, and in the West, which is nation's most multicultural region, there may be relatively little racism, either expressed or implicit.

The good news for Barack Obama is that, among the Northeastern states, only New Hampshire appears to be competitive -- and Obama would gladly trade a Bradley Effect in New Hampshire for a reverse Bradley Effect in a state like North Carolina. (Pennsylvania, it should be noted, is also defined by the Census Bureau as being in the Northeast, but in terms of political demography, it shares far more in common with the Midwest).

So why do we keep hearing so much about the Bradley Effect? Apart from the fact that it is a good way to fill column space on a slow news day, it seems that there are three or four reasons why the myth perpetuates itself:

1. Misunderstanding the Bradley Effect. Denying the existence of the Bradley Effect does not mean denying that some people vote on the basis of race. I have no doubt that some people will vote against Barack Obama because he is black. Indeed, I suspect that almost all of us either know such people, or know people who know them (friends and relatives of friends). I also have no doubt, by the way, that some people will vote for Barack Obama because he is black.

But the Bradley Effect is not an argument about whether people vote based on race. It's an argument about whether people will lie to pollsters. So long as race-based voters are honest about their intentions, Barack Obama's position is no worse than it appears to be in the polls.

2. Confusing Past with Present. There is fairly strong academic evidence that the Bradley Effect used to exist back in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, the evidence is just as strong that it does not exist any longer. The people who vouch for the existence of the Bradley Effect are not wrong so much as they are relying on dated evidence.

3. Confusing Exit Polls with pre-Election Polls. Unlike the normal, pre-election polls, exit polls conducted on the day of the election did substantially overstate Barack Obama's margins throughout the primaries. This is something to keep in mind at about 5 PM on November 4, when Matt Drudge and Jim Geraghty begin to leak exit poll results. It is not anything to worry about now, when we are trying to forecast the outcome from pre-election polling.

Nor is it clear the the discrepancies in the exit polls have anything to do with race; John Kerry, somewhat infamously, also underperformed his exit polls. The mechanics of conducting an exit poll are rather haphazard, involving a bunch of college kids and temp workers running around outside a polling place with clipboards and attempting to pass out survey forms to every Nth voter who leaves the ballot booth. This is not much easier than it sounds, and introduces a lot of human error and other forms of sample bias. For this reason, exit polls are not really intended to be used as they so frequently are in the panicked hours before ballot counting begins -- the results need to be calibrated and weighted, and exit polling firms rely on comparing their polls against actual voting results in order to do so.

4. Cherry Picking Results. The notion of the Bradley Effect gained a lot of currency after the New Hampshire primary, when Hillary Clinton did much better than anyone expected and won the state. However, the 8.9-point gap separating the pre-election polls and the actual results in New Hampshire represented only the seventh-largest error in the primaries. There were bigger discrepancies in Iowa, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Wisconsin and Mississippi, all of which favored Barack Obama. These discrepancies did not receive as much attention as New Hampshire because they did not change the outcome of the election. But mathematically speaking, they were just as important.

A related phenomenon is that the media often cherry-picks polling results within a given state. The Zogby poll that had Barack Obama ahead by 13 points in California received widespread attention; the SurveyUSA result that had Clinton 10 points ahead did not. Over the course of the primaries, polling results that had Barack Obama performing well generally made for better copy, since until at least mid-February, Obama was considered the underdog. But an informed reading of the polls, such as the Pollster.com method, reveals that Clinton did not overperform in states like California and Ohio nearly so much as the media tried to imply.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/08/persistent-myth-of-bradley-effect.html

bayviews

August 12th, 2008, 04:49 AM

Evergrey

August 15th, 2008, 06:31 AM

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_583022.html

Somalis get new start, new hope, in Pittsburgh

By Andrew Conte
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Friday, August 15, 2008

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/photos/2008-08-14/0815-dance1-a.jpg
Mariamo Mada, 10, performs traditional African dancing at Arco Field in Lawrenceville during a youth program. The camp, made possible through nearly $70,000 in federal Weed & Seed money, largely caters to the Somali immigrant population in Lawrenceville.
Sean Donnelly/Tribune-Review

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/photos/2008-08-14/0815-bike1-a.jpg
Ali Mbera, 8, rides his bike at Arco Field.
Sean Donnelly/Tribune-Review

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/photos/2008-08-14/0815-cheese1-a.jpg
Rammazari Mugaza, 4, bites into a grilled cheese sandwich during lunch.
Sean Donnelly/Tribune-Review

Kickball has been a common denominator at Lawrenceville's Arco Field this summer.

It started in early July with Somali refugee children playing soccer in the outfield, and a group of American kids -- white and black -- playing baseball on the infield. When the adults were not looking, the two groups picked up a game of kickball with about 30 kids scattered around the field.

Moments of interaction like that have become more common in the four years since about 200 Somalis started arriving in Pittsburgh, both children and adults said.

"When we first came in here, we didn't get along with nobody," said Fatuma Muya, 14, who was born in a Kenyan refugee camp and looks after the group's younger children. "Now, we get along, at least, with somebody."

Starting in 2004, Catholic Charities helped bring the Somali refugees to Pittsburgh over 18 months, settling many of them in Lawrenceville. This summer, Lawrenceville United -- with federal and city support -- has been helping the youngest immigrants make Pittsburgh their home.

They learned American sports, painted a mural on the Arco Field concession stand and swam at the Polish Hill pool. Each weekday the children received a free lunch -- sandwiches with boxes of chocolate milk or orange drink -- and an afternoon snack.

At the city's urging, Lawrenceville United extended the summer program for two weeks, through Aug. 22.

Pittsburgh allocated $69,821 in federal Weed & Seed money for several Lawrenceville youth programs, which included the summer day camp and an evening drop-in center with a flat-panel television and video games. The goal was to attract at least 20 kids a day to Arco Field, but the program pulled out more than twice that number on its first day and about 60 a day by the second week, said Tony Ceoffe, executive director of Lawrenceville United.

About 35 kids played at the field near the intersection of Butler and 57th streets on a recent weekday. Girls in colorful scarves danced to Somali pop music around a CD player while boys in jeans and T-shirts played basketball. The children have been painting a green-and-blue mural on the cinder block concession stand.

Neighborhood children are more accepting of the immigrants, but it remains a challenge getting them to interact, Ceoffe said.

"The kids are starting to get along with each other now," Ceoffe said. "We're breaking down the walls of communication so they can find out they're not that much different from each other."

The refugees came to Pittsburgh as part of a U.S. State Department program to relocate about 11,000 Somalis throughout the United States. Many fled Somalia's civil war, which started in 1991, often walking hundreds of miles to camps in Kenya, where many remained a decade or longer, getting married and starting families. Many of the children who have relocated to Lawrenceville were born in the temporary refugee camps.

The hardest transition to American life, said Abdullahi Mada, 13, has been making friends. He marvels at having enough to eat and a soft bed for sleep.

Taking a break from riding his bike around the Arco Field slides and swings, Mada talked about the home he left in Kenya, with its mud-brick walls and tin roof. Its one room had a dirt floor, and he slept on a dirt bed. His family -- mother and father, his two brothers who died in the civil war, and four other siblings -- lived there.

Now, the family lives in a Lawrenceville brick house. His father cleans houses and his mother works in a laundry.

"There was never enough food for more than five days," Mada said of his life in Kenya. "Now we have food for more than a year."

Opportunities for play have changed, too. For fun, boys in the refugee camp bundled plastic bags together and melted them just a bit to form a ball for soccer, he said.

This summer in Pittsburgh, the children participated in a clinic hosted by a nonprofit called Soccer in the Community, and they escorted players on the field for a Riverhounds game.

Although just one American child played among the group of Africans at midday this week, Mada said the neighborhood kids have been coming around more often. Sometimes they play American football; other times, soccer. Both sides are still learning.

"They just copy the way we play," Mada said, "and they're getting good."

Andrew Conte can be reached at andrewconte@tribweb.com or 412-320-7835.

Xusein

August 16th, 2008, 07:15 PM

Somali Bantus.

That's my only conflict with this article.
Hopefully they do well, although that must be one hell of a culture shock.

bayviews

August 16th, 2008, 11:55 PM

Updating the immigration data, here's the net international migration inflows (immigrant increases versus decreases) between 2000 & 2005 for Northeast & MidAtlantic metros with additions of two thousand or more.

Albany, NY= 7,177
Allentown-Bethlehem, PA-NJ= 8,366
Atlantic City, NJ= 6,830
Baltimore, MD= 27,625
Boston, MA-NH= 132,759
Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT= 35,546
Buffalo-Niagara, NY =7,792
Harrisburg, PA =4,278
Hartford, CT=20,208
Ithaca, NY= 4,290
Lancaster, PA= 2,919
Manchester-Nashua, NH= 6,719
New Haven, CT=15,916
New York City, NY-NJ-PA= 865,533
Norwich-New London, CT= 2,261
Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD= 75,799
Pittsburgh, PA=12,951
Portland, ME =2,617
Pougheepsie-Newburgh-Middleton, NY= 8,349
Providence-New Bedford-Fall River, RI-MA= 23,285
Reading, PA =3,556
Rochester, NY= 10,932
Springfield, MA =10,123
Syracuse, NY=6,065
Trenton, NJ =12,030
Utica-Rome, NY= 4,260
Vineland-Millville-Bridgeton NJ, =2,579
Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV= 200,031
Worcester, MA= 14,029

As usual, the metros that pulled in the most immigrants generally increased their populations, while those that pulled in the least declined. Metros like Philadelphia, Baltimore, & Pittsburgh that have recently started working to attract more immigrants seem to have seen significant increases in their immigrant flows.

bjfan82

August 17th, 2008, 12:31 AM

I don't think we need any more proof that + immigrants = + population. That's almost like stating 'statistics prove that humans need air to live.' The issue is how do we improve the economy to attract more people from around the country and around the world to our city.

Personally, I think that the 13k (Pitt), 11k (Roch) and 8k (Buff) are equally lame and equally negligible when some of the cities on that list are gaining 75k, 132k, 200k, and 865k immigrants. So Pittsburgh really shouldn't be the poster child for excellent immigration attraction (twice the size metro of Buffalo but less than twice the immigrants) especially since they've lost a lot more people than Buffalo and those 5k more immigrants than Buffalo still come nowhere near offsetting the overall net loss.

I want to know what some of the real successful places, at attracting immigrants, have done differently than Buffalo...cities that appear from that list to have overachieved (e.g. Hartford, Boston, New Haven, and Baltimore) for some reason other than being around NYC?

Xusein

August 17th, 2008, 07:50 PM

I don't remember ever hearing anything about Hartford having some kind of strategy to attract immigrants. :dunno:

And I believe, at least compared to places like Fairfield County, CT and Providence, Hartford isn't attracting as much immigrants as it can. It only looks good compared cities in Upstate and PA.

Well, other than location, I think the main reason that there are more immigrants coming here is because there is more draw here. Hartford's Hispanic population is probably bigger than Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Rochester's combined. A lot more Hispanics that are not Puerto Rican here lately. The metro also has one of the largest Caribbean populations in the nation. There seems to have been an huge boom in the Indian population too...always seeing them downtown now.

There's more of an added base here compared to certain cities to the west. Above all except jobs, places with high immigrant populations like New York continue to be so because they have the communities there already. That puts cities like Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Hartford (at a lesser extent) at a disadvantage to attract immigrants. Most will, at first, go to where there is a large community of their nationality present.

bjfan82

August 17th, 2008, 09:25 PM

Right, as I suspected most of these cities don't have 'strategies' to attract immigrants specifically. Hartford is part of Megapolis in general, which is naturally going to attract more immigrants anyways. Immigrants tend to gravitate toward the large cities/urban regions because there is more opportunity.

bayviews

August 18th, 2008, 01:27 AM

Well, just to plug, Hartford, it's pulling 3 times as many new immigrants as similarly-sized Buffalo!
Yeah, with its large Puerto Rican & Jamaican communities, Hartford's a culturally & socially freindly place for more recent Latino & Caribbean immigrants.

For sure, places like Pittsburgh are just starting up the path that other metros have been taking for decades, they have a long way to go, but at least their business leadership, that has been promoting more immigration, acknowledge that.

Yea, geography matters to some degree, the metros along the East Coast are attracting a lot more of the immigrant overflow from NYC than those in places like upstate NY & western PA.

But take the case of Baltimore. Its less than an hour from immigrant rich Washington & not that far from Philly that's also attracted more immigrants. Up until recently, Baltimore wasn't very welcoming to newcomers & suffered one of the biggest population declines, in the 1990s. That's when the mayor established an immigrant-freindly sactuary policy & now its slowly but surely becoming more of a destination.

True larger metros tend to attract larger percentages on immigrants than smaller ones. But in NY State, Buffalo, the largest upstate metro attracts fewer immigrants per capita than most of the smaller upstate metros. Of course, Schenectady & Utica have made particular efforts to attract immigrants & refugees. Tiny Ithaca attracts more than half the immigrants of big Buffalo!

That Rochester consistently attracts a few thousand more immigrants (albeit not a sufficient inflow) than somewhat larger Buffalo may have something to do with it being 70 miles closer to NYC.

But I think that has a lot more to do with the area having more of an "immigrant freindly" attiude exemplified by its suburban Brockport NY (see earlier post) rather than the "lets call the immigration patrol on those damm Mexicans" attitudes (& actions) that prevalis around Buffalo!

bayviews

August 20th, 2008, 03:41 AM

More on Baltimore's approach:

Baltimore opens arms, outreach to immigrants - Shrinking away for years, city seeks to expand base
Sun, The ( Baltimore , MD) - January 20, 2004
Author: SUN STAFF ; Laura Vozzella

Jose Portillo left his native El Salvador 20 years ago for Baltimore and a better life. When his daughter followed 10 years later, she opened a business in the city's Spanish Town, but chose to live in Baltimore County.

"Here [in the city] the houses are too close," said Sinia Zelaya, 30, who has been trying to persuade her father to move out of the city and in with her since he was robbed at gunpoint three months ago. "It's not too safe."

Long a magnet for immigrants , Baltimore has failed to attract them in recent decades as the suburbs and other cities have become more appealing.

That's a problem, say local leaders, who believe immigration would bring more businesses, diversity and people to a city that has been shrinking for the past half-century.

To help change that, the city recently hired someone whose job description reads something like the inscription on the Statue of Liberty: Bring us your tired, your poor, your entrepreneurial population-boosters.

Elizabeth Beery Adams is the city's immigrant support and outreach coordinator, a position that falls under the Mayor's Office of Community Investment.

"If cities want to grow and expand, they need to appeal to immigrants ," said David Costello, director of the Office of Community Investment. "They often come with resources and tremendous amounts of energy, and they do often come with skills. Communities really grow and develop around these new residents."

Baltimore is hardly the only shrinking city that sees immigrants as a key to its salvation. The faded mill town of Utica, N.Y., has been getting an infusion of people and diversity since 1979, when a group of clergy opened a refugee resettlement center, said Ellen Kraly, a Colgate University demographer who has been studying the phenomenon.

More than 10,000 refugees - Indo-Chinese, Russians, Poles, Haitians, Bosnians - have settled in the city of 61,000. Their arrival has presented challenges for schools and social services, Kraly said, but the benefits have been greater: reclaiming more than 500 homes in a distressed part of town and persuading some small manufacturing firms to stay because the refugees are stable, motivated workers.

"It really dramatically changed the learning experience and the culture and the feel of this place," she said. "It's great."

Not everyone is convinced that immigration is the answer.

James Gimpel, an associate professor of government at the University of Maryland, College Park who has written several books on immigration, said Baltimore should concentrate on helping its many poor, unemployed citizens.

"What about the native workers that are unemployed there?" he said. "It's not like you've got full employment. I am astonished that they would do this."

People involved in the effort, which could include home-buying workshops, social service outreach and recruitment of immigrants who live in the Washington area, say it will do nothing to hurt people who already live in Baltimore .

"There's enough [work] to go around," said Cindy Fickes, who directs immigration legal services for Catholic Charities.

City leaders hope to attract more people like Enrique Tapia, a native of Ecuador and father of three, who recently opened La Cazuela restaurant on Eastern Avenue.

After washing dishes and cooking in area restaurants for eight years, Tapia, 45, felt he was ready to open a place of his own. Tapia and his wife, Marina, opened a small restaurant that features native dishes in November.

But it wasn't easy.

It took Tapia eight months to convert a vacant rowhouse into a restaurant, with city health and building inspectors dragging out the process, he said.

"It's a little bit difficult to open a business in this city," Tapia said. "It's not like New York. It's not like New Jersey."

When Tapia was about to open, he called to arrange a health inspection and was told that no one would be available for three weeks.

Tapia called Jose O. Ruiz, Mayor Martin O'Malley's liaison to the Hispanic community. Ruiz got an inspector out that day, Tapia said.

That kind of support is what Adams will offer to immigrants of all backgrounds. By helping immigrants who are already here, she will try to get the word out that Baltimore is a good place to settle.

That has not been the message for many years.

Less than 6 percent of Baltimore 's population is foreign-born, about half the national average. The number of immigrants who make their home here has held fairly steady at about 30,000 for the past 30 years, according to 2000 census figures.

But the number of immigrants living in Baltimore suburbs increased from about 30,000 in 1970 to 117,000 in 2000, said Audrey Singer, visiting fellow at the Brookings Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, part of The Brookings Institution in Washington.

Part of the reason is the suburbanization of immigration nationwide, with newcomers bypassing many cities. Concerns about urban crime and schools are behind the trend, along with the shift of many jobs from central cities and the presence of affordable housing in suburbs, she said. Some of the more recent immigrants , particularly Asians, have greater financial resources than newcomers who arrived at the turn of the last century.

"Europeans moved to central cities. Now we're getting people going straight to the suburbs," Singer said.

That could change in Baltimore if immigrants such as Tapia tell others that the city is a good place to live. It's hardly paradise, he said. He feels he has to send his children to Catholic schools because he thinks the local ones are poor.

But he believes Baltimore is a good place for his family. He does not regret selling his house and small farm in Ecuador to buy the restaurant. He had held onto the property for years for the sake of his children, but he believes that need no longer exists.

"The future for them is here," he said.

bayviews

August 21st, 2008, 04:28 AM

As it's mentioned in the Baltimore article, here's an article on how attracting immigrants has helped Utica to reduce its decline. Its about the same size as Niagara Falls with similar problems, minus any of the tourist draw, yet its beginning to turn around.

Immigrants eased region's population drop
Observer-Dispatch ( Utica , NY) - March 16, 2006
Author: Staff, Allissa Kline

By ALLISSA KLINE

Observer-Dispatch

akline@ utica .gannett.com

Oneida County newcomer Abdelshakour Khamis didn't have a choice when he resettled eight months ago in Utica .

He couldn't return to his native Sudan and he couldn't stay in Egypt under political asylum.

So he and his wife moved to the United States. Now, the father of one said he plans to stay for good.

"I don't think that now I'm thinking of going back," Khamis, 33, said Wednesday. "I'm here to do all my best and be part of the Utica population and do whatever I can to improve the Utica community."

Khamis is part of an influx of refugees and immigrants who, over the past five years, have helped Oneida County avoid a steeper drop in population, according to U.S. census estimates. While about 5,000 people have moved out of the county since 2001, about 4,100 refugees and immigrants have moved in, census estimates show.

The impact of the refugee and immigrant population is particularly significant to Utica , which lost about 12 percent of its population between 1990 and 2000, said Colgate University geography Professor Ellen Kraly, who studies international migration and refugees.

"Even though the city lost just under 12 percent in population, it would have been a much larger deficit without refugee resettlement, and I think one could speculate that that could characterize the last five years," Kraly said.

Had refugees and immigrants not come to Utica between 1990 and 2000, Kraly estimates, total population loss for Utica would have been as high as 20 percent.

In addition to adding sheer numbers to the population base, the refugee and immigrant population also has affected the local economy, said Peter Vogelaar, executive director of the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees.

"You can drive through East Utica and parts of Cornhill and you see where homes have been purchased, renovated and cleaned up," Vogelaar said. "There have been entire neighborhoods that have been reclaimed through former refugees taking homes."

Vogelaar also notices a growing connection between the refugee and immigrant population and longtime residents.

"I see the local community and emerging Bosnian community where businesses owned by Bosnians are beginning to cater to the local community," he said. "That's indicative of a combined ownership in the future of the community."

Market owner thrives in Utica

UTICA - Samir Ruznic knew he'd have a solid customer base when he opened an international food market on Albany Street.

"We're the kind of people who communicate with a lot of people here," said Ruznic, 34. "We knew there were like 6,000 people at that time."

Ruznic, a Bosnian native, is part of the largest refugee group to resettle in the city. He moved to Utica in 1997 from Germany, where he lived after war broke out in his homeland.

When he decided to open Ruznic Market four years ago, Ruznic stocked his shelves with fresh bread, European chocolate and other foodstuffs from Germany and Austria, he said. Most of his customers are fellow Bosnian refugees or Russians.

"If they stop buying, I'd have to change to something else," Ruznic said. "This kind of business really is for some groups of people."

He said he also might open a second market in the future.

Refugee: Bosnians boost area's morale

UTICA - Ramo Sabanovic had one choice when it came to leaving war-torn Bosnia: relocate in the United States.

"The only way to get out of the country was to come here," said Sabanovic, 25, of Utica .

The Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees has resettled about 4,500 Bosnians since the first family arrived in 1993. Bosnian resettlement ended last year, refugee center officials have said.

Sabanovic said he feels welcome in Utica , where he attended college and now works as a medical records specialist at the St. Luke's campus of Faxton-St. Luke's Healthcare.

Besides offsetting general population loss in Oneida County, the Bosnian population has improved city neighborhoods and boosted morale, Sabanovic said.

"Bosnian people, they really are working people and they like to renew their houses," Sabanovic said. "It's doesn't matter if the house is OK. They still want to do something on it."

bayviews

August 22nd, 2008, 04:29 AM

I don't remember ever hearing anything about Hartford having some kind of strategy to attract immigrants. :dunno:

Well, this is new, Hartford has joined the long list of cities offering sanctuary, that should help attract even more immigrants to Hartford. New Haven has had a similar law, & they have attracted enough immigrants to start regrowing.

Buffalo would be taking the first step toward halting its decline if that city's mayor signed a similar law, but I'm sure not holding my breath on that. Around Buffalo not only are lots of Federal ICE agents deployed to stop & detain the very few undocumented immigrants that come thru, but local police depts seem to go out of their way to arrest them them too.

IMMIGRATION ORDINANCE SIGNED - MAYOR PEREZ BACKS RULES FOR CITY THAT DEAL WITH IMMIGRANTS ' STATUS
Hartford Courant, The (CT) - August 19, 2008
Author: JEFFREY B. COHEN; Courant Staff Writer

Hartford Mayor Eddie A. Perez signed an ordinance Monday that stops police from arresting or detaining anyone solely because of their immigration status.

The ordinance, passed last week by the city council, also prohibits other city employees from asking anyone seeking services about their immigration status.

Perez was previously lukewarm to the idea, maintaining that an order issued by Hartford Police Chief Daryl K. Roberts in March was adequate. It said that city police would not make immigration arrests unless there was also a criminal investigation.

In a letter to the city council, Perez also expressed concern about "codifying standards for internal police matters in the city code."

But whatever concerns he had were not enough to keep him from signing the ordinance. Once he had, Perez stressed that it would not affect how the city deals with potential criminals.

"Our obligation to comply with federal law has not changed," Perez said in a press release Monday. "The ordinance requires that the police notify federal authorities if an arrestee turns out to be undocumented. It also requires that city employees deny any federally funded services to illegal immigrants if required to do so under federal law."

City Councilman Luis Cotto, of the Working Families Party, introduced the bill and was surprised to hear from reporters that Perez had signed it.

That said, Cotto was pleased.

The new ordinance simply puts into the law what is already police procedure, Cotto said.

"We're just jumping on the side of saying, 'Hey, this is not our jurisdiction. Hartford has way too many things to worry about,' " Cotto said.

"If you are a law abiding resident of the City of Hartford, you should have no fear of reporting a crime to police and you should be able to utilize the city 's services," he said. "People are here. We can't do anything about that."

rockin'.baltimorean

August 23rd, 2008, 02:46 PM

bjfan82

August 23rd, 2008, 04:26 PM

Evergrey

August 23rd, 2008, 04:46 PM

I would assume Buffalo benefits from Canadian immigration being that it's on the border and is one of the primary international gateways from Canada.

bayviews

August 23rd, 2008, 09:03 PM

Also, remember immigration numbers tail off the further from the coast you get. Boston, Washington, and New York are all the usual entryways into the USA. It's less about people not wanting to go to Buffalo and more about Buffalo's geographical location.

Did you see the recent post on Baltimore? That's in the Northeast metropolis but has only recently made itself more immigrant freindly, with some results.

Nope its not necesarily that immigrants don't want to come to Buffalo, its that Buffalo (the city & metro, including Nigara Falls) doesn't seem to want them. Each year, one to two thousand immigrants get deported from the Buffalo immigration district. Adding up, that's 10 to 20 thousand each decade, enough to end the population decline. Their not on welfare or on social services, most are picked up right from their workplaces.

All the "smart" cities, places like NYC, Chicago, Boston, your Washington DC, New Haven & now Baltimore & Hartford, have immigrant sanctuary policies. That is they have told ICE (ex INS) that they are not going to help the Feds depopulate their cities.

It's not done just out of charity, they understand the demographic & economic benefits that come thru immigration. That's why they've been able to regrow their populations. Take away the immigrant growth & they'd all look a lot more like Buffalo, Cleveland, or Detroit.

One would think that by now Buffalo (maybe it just suffers from hardness of hearing) would have gotten the message: Either you make yourself immigrant friendly or (no matter how many hundreds millions of $$$s are pumped in for all kinds of dubious "economic development" schemes) will just continue to wither away!

Or could it be that Buffalo is waiting for all those people buried in the Forest Lawns to rise up from the dead & come back to life!

bayviews

August 23rd, 2008, 11:15 PM

I would assume Buffalo benefits from Canadian immigration being that it's on the border and is one of the primary international gateways from Canada.

Yes, how right you are. In fact a significant share of Buffalo's immigration comes from Canada. Take away the few thousand Candians moving across the Niagara River (mostly from around Ft. Erie, Niagara Falls, Welland, & St. Catherines on the Ontario portion of the Niagara Penisula) each decade & Buffalo's modest immigration numbers would probably be cut by at least a third.

But attracting Canadians from St. Catherines hasn't exactly add to Buffalo's global connections! And of course, Canada isn't a major source of immigration. Given the high quality of life in Canadian cities as compared to Buffalo & Canada's better social saftey net, their aren't many incentives for Canadian immigrants to move to rust-belt cities like Buffalo.

Buffalo has drawn almost nothing from Toronto's huge (circa 75,000 annually) inflow of immigrants, partly owing to the differences in US & Canadian immigration policies. On the other hand, at least 50,000 refugees have traveled right thru Buffalo, on their way to resettlement in Toronto & other cities in Canada, which has much more liberal refugee policies.

Had Buffalo declared itself a sanctuary city & had those refugees been settled in & around Buffalo, the metro's population might have stabilized rather than declined & the city's population might have stayed over 300,000.

Yet, somehow, that never seem to have occured to Buffalo's enlightened leaders!

bjfan82

August 24th, 2008, 01:03 AM

Did you see the recent post on Baltimore? That's in the Northeast metropolis but has only recently made itself more immigrant freindly, with some results.

Nope its not necesarily that immigrants don't want to come to Buffalo, its that Buffalo (the city & metro, including Nigara Falls) doesn't seem to want them. Each year, one to two thousand immigrants get deported from the Buffalo immigration district. Adding up, that's 10 to 20 thousand each decade, enough to end the population decline. Their not on welfare or on social services, most are picked up right from their workplaces.

All the "smart" cities, places like NYC, Chicago, Boston, your Washington DC, New Haven & now Baltimore & Hartford, have immigrant sanctuary policies. That is they have told ICE (ex INS) that they are not going to help the Feds depopulate their cities.

It's not done just out of charity, they understand the demographic & economic benefits that come thru immigration. That's why they've been able to regrow their populations. Take away the immigrant growth & they'd all look a lot more like Buffalo, Cleveland, or Detroit.

One would think that by now Buffalo (maybe it just suffers from hardness of hearing) would have gotten the message: Either you make yourself immigrant friendly or (no matter how many hundreds millions of $$$s are pumped in for all kinds of dubious "economic development" schemes) will just continue to wither away!

Or could it be that Buffalo is waiting for all those people buried in the Forest Lawns to rise up from the dead & come back to life!

Baltimore is basically on the east coast.

While I personally agree that Buffalo should be a "sanctuary city" like a bunch of other cities. I don't think we should be relying on illegal immigrants to increase our population. If hypothetically Buffalo became a 'sanctuary city,' after the Federal Government finally dealt with border security and immigration, it would be a completely moot policy. We would then be back to square one, not luring legal immigrants and now not luring illegal immigrants too.

As I read the rest of your post it keeps bringing me back to the same question...How does Buffalo make itself more immigrant friendly? or relocation friendly for current American citizens? We can't go and kidnap and drag here a bunch of immigrants kicking and screaming if they don't wanna move to a cold ass city with a lackluster job market.

Buffalo has drawn almost nothing from Toronto's huge (circa 75,000 annually) inflow of immigrants, partly owing to the differences in US & Canadian immigration policies. On the other hand, at least 50,000 refugees have traveled right thru Buffalo, on their way to resettlement in Toronto & other cities in Canada, which has much more liberal refugee policies.

Its not an apples to apples comparison since the USA and Canada have different immigration policies, as you mentioned. I think the best metric would be to compare Buffalo to it's peer inland USA cities.

bjfan82

August 24th, 2008, 02:42 AM

bayviews, a little update on what I posted a couple weeks ago about possibly working on something that involves the relationship between transportation and innercity poor & minorities. Well it turns out that there has been extensive research in this area already by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Acadamies of Science. So I've decided to join TRB's committee on "Environmental Justice in Transportation" This is the description of the committee:

"Scope: The Committee on Environmental Justice identifies, advances and publishes research to expand understanding of the effects and implications of transportation policies, procedures and actions on minority and low-income populations (EJ populations), and seeks to improve evaluation tools and methodologies."

I'll let you know over the coming months what comes out of this. I haven't read any of their publications yet or really discussed any issues with them yet, but I'll be very interested to see what the status of institutional racism is with regards to transportation. For example, as you posted a few pages back about the bus lines from the east side not going all the way to the Galleria to keep the innercity people out...or if poorer/blacker neighborhoods live on streets in worse condition than more afluent & white neighborhoods...or if transportation projects avoid pooer/blacker neighborhoods, etc...

Xusein

August 25th, 2008, 09:04 PM

Well, this is new, Hartford has joined the long list of cities offering sanctuary, that should help attract even more immigrants to Hartford. New Haven has had a similar law, & they have attracted enough immigrants to start regrowing.

Yeah, I have heard of this. It was actually big news in Hartford. I think the main reason was because, a while back, there was a big raid that arrested a lot of illegal Brazilian immigrants which made a giant furor. The city stopped arresting people because of status...I guess this made it official.

I don't believe that it was done to make the population grow or to attract immigrants. I think it was because the government and police were irked when that raid happened, and they don't want to be immigration officers, they want to deal with bigger problems...like Hartford's resurgent crime problem.

bayviews

August 25th, 2008, 10:08 PM

Yeah, I have heard of this. It was actually big news in Hartford. I think the main reason was because, a while back, there was a big raid that arrested a lot of illegal Brazilian immigrants which made a giant furor. The city stopped arresting people because of status...I guess this made it official.

I don't believe that it was done to make the population grow or to attract immigrants. I think it was because the government and police were irked when that raid happened, and they don't want to be immigration officers, they want to deal with bigger problems...like Hartford's resurgent crime problem.

Yea, that terrible incident that happened on Park Street not long ago, shed light on Hartford's problem. Check out the NYC numbers thread on on city murder rates, in citytalk & urban issues in the world forum, the homicide DROP in the South Bronx (somewhat similar mix as Hartford) has been incredible!

BTW, great to learn of your personal contribution to the repopulation of the Buffalo area. As you no doubt can see, one of the few new immigrant groups that Buffalo must have more of than Hartford are Somalis. And then one of the biggest Somali communities in North America is just a couple of hours away!

bayviews

August 25th, 2008, 11:00 PM

Baltimore is basically on the east coast.

While I personally agree that Buffalo should be a "sanctuary city" like a bunch of other cities. I don't think we should be relying on illegal immigrants to increase our population. If hypothetically Buffalo became a 'sanctuary city,' after the Federal Government finally dealt with border security and immigration, it would be a completely moot policy. We would then be back to square one, not luring legal immigrants and now not luring illegal immigrants too.

Well, I take it we more or less agree on at least one step, adding Buffalo to the very long list of "sanctuary cities". (not that I have the slightest impact on anything that happens in Buffalo!) No sense in waiting for any immigration deal coming out of Washington, that's all tied up in election year politics, & will be for awhile.

As for the "illegality" issue, actually the "sanctuary city" policy began in response to the hypacritical policies during the Reagon administration in the 1980s. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans were granted refugee status because Regan didn't like Castro, while Central American refugees fleeing much more deadly right-wing death squads & contras were deemed "illegal".

Of course, a few hundred thousand of these Central Americans "illegals" ended up settling around Washington DC. Along with South Americans & Mexicans, many of them also "illegals" they've added a lot more streetlevel vitality & revitalization to those areas where they've settled, in parts of Washington DC & moreso in the Virginia & Maryland.

Those same types of neighborhoods & suburbs around Buffalo, despite many millions expended on all kinds of "economic revitalization" schemes, without that immigration flow, their moribound & fading.

bayviews

August 25th, 2008, 11:33 PM

We can't go and kidnap and drag here a bunch of immigrants kicking and screaming if they don't wanna move to a cold ass city with a lackluster job market.

I think we've discussed this, but the vast majority of the tens of thousands of those arrested & deported from the Buffalo ICE district have been picked up from workplaces, farms, nurseries, factories, resturants, etc. Their not involved in criminal activities (those that are, yes, they should be deported) or on welfare or taping into government programs, their self-supporting.

Really, if these types of immigration raids had been the norm in Chicago, NYC, Boston, Washington, etc, they'd still be like they were a few decades ago, or Buffalo today: Losing employers, & people, with emptying out neighborhoods, & stagnant economies.

As this article about a raid on a greenhouse shows, it's not that immigrants are being dragged kicking & streaming TO Buffalo, the shame is that their being dragged OUT!

Crackdown targets illegal aliens - 34 workers arrested in North Tonawanda
Buffalo News, The (NY) - August 31, 2006
Author: Dan Herbeck - NEWS STAFF REPORTER

A government crackdown on illegal aliens targeted a hydroponic tomato greenhouse in North Tonawanda on Wednesday, as federal agents made 34 arrests.

Authorities said they expect that most of the men and women arrested at the Fortistar tomato facility on Shawnee Road will be deported to Mexico within a week.

They also were required to plead guilty to misdemeanor criminal charges, under a tougher government policy on illegal immigration. In the past, government attorneys in Buffalo deported thousands of illegal aliens but rarely prosecuted them criminally.

"Illegal immigration poses an increasing threat to our security, public safety and economy, and hard-hitting interior enforcement will reinforce the strong stance we already take at the border," U.S. Attorney Terrance P. Flynn said after the arrests.

A defense attorney, though, said the federal government was acting unnecessarily harshly.

"They're throwing the book at people, but it seems a rather harsh punishment for people who are only here because they're trying to start a new life in America," responded David G. Jay, an attorney for one of the Mexican men arrested. "Many of us have ancestors who came to this country to start a better life, and in the old days, our country welcomed them with open arms."

The Bush administration has said it has to try new tactics to stop the flow of illegal aliens into the United States. More than 11 million undocumented aliens -- many of them farm workers -- reportedly live in the United States.

Prosecutor John E. Rogowski, who presented the cases in federal court, said most of the people arrested on Wednesday immediately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of entering the country without an inspection.

"They will be deported," said Peter J. Smith, a supervisor of immigration investigations for Homeland Security in Buffalo . "All the people who are being prosecuted criminally are people who were found to have false identification, including false Social Security numbers."

Two men, including Jay's Mexican client, Ruben Baltazar, 24, will face more serious felony prosecutions for illegally entering the country.

"The government has said he is charged with a felony because he was already deported once before -- from El Paso [Texas] in June of 2001," Jay said of Baltazar.

Rogowski said the second man charged with a felony could not be found on Wednesday and is considered a fugitive.

The arrests were made at the 12.5-acre Fortistar hydroponic greenhouses , where company officials said 3.5 million pounds of tomatoes are grown annually. The company also runs a power co-generation plant in North Tonawanda.

A manager at the greenhouse referred a reporter's questions about illegal aliens to a company official in White Plains, but that official was not available.

In recent months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from the Department of Homeland Security have made three of the largest roundups of illegal aliens in Western New York history.

On May 19, agents raided a Springville nursery, apprehending 29 Mexican nationals. They were deported.

Forty-one alleged illegal aliens were arrested earlier this month at America's Fair in the Town of Hamburg, where they had been hired for janitorial duties. The alleged operators of an Atlanta-based cleaning company, America and Rafael Miranda, are charged with felony charges of transporting illegal aliens .

The U.S. Labor Department's office of Labor Racketeering and Fraud Investigations also worked on the Fortistar case, as did the Social Security Administration's inspector general's office.

Defendants were taken from North Tonawanda by bus to downtown Buffalo , where they were processed at an immigration office before being moved to federal court. Many appeared nervous or confused as they listened to an interpreter explaining the proceedings before U.S. Magistrate Judge Hugh B. Scott.

bjfan82

August 25th, 2008, 11:42 PM

We must be using different definitions of "sanctuary city" because the list I'm thinking of is much shorter, ya know, the cities that drive Lou Dobbs and Bill O'Reilly crazy on a nightly basis. My definition must be stricter and only includes cities that have told the Federal Government that they 100% refuse to waste local taxpayer dollars and refuse to tie up other local resources rounding up illegal immigrants. Not only that, these cities also go out of their way to tell illegal immigrants that they will get shelter and protection if they reach the city limit. With that being said, I think Buffalo should do it but not from an 'increased population' standpoint but a moral standpoint.

But like I said, I think this policy is short sighted, once all the illegal immigrants become legal immigrants then there would be no benefit to being a 'sanctuary city.' There's no question the City has missed the boat by not doing this already, it would've reaped great benefits if they were out infront of the curve. Announcing now, people would just say 'whatever, just another city giving protection to illegals.'

Also, slightly off topic...I always wished New York State would've been ahead of the curve on gay rights because if we were one of the first states to legalize gay marriage we could've reaped those benefits of the gays moving to the state from other states. Specifically for Buffalo, if Byron Brown announced tomorrow that he would be signing gay marriage certificates (like Gavin Newsome in S.F.) then Buffalo would undoubtedly benefit for being a "gay sanctuary city." To me this is the same principle as with illegal immigrants like I mention in my two previous little paragraphs.

bjfan82

August 25th, 2008, 11:44 PM

I think we've discussed this, but the vast majority of the tens of thousands of those arrested & deported from the Buffalo ICE district have been picked up from workplaces, farms, nurseries, factories, resturants, etc. Their not involved in criminal activities (those that are, yes, they should be deported) or on welfare or taping into government programs, their self-supporting.

Really, if these types of immigration raids had been the norm in Chicago, NYC, Boston, Washington, etc, they'd still be like they were a few decades ago, or Buffalo today: Losing employers, & people, with emptying out neighborhoods, & stagnant economies.

As this article about a raid on a greenhouse shows, it's not that immigrants are being dragged kicking & streaming TO Buffalo, the shame is that their being dragged OUT!

gotcha! I've been more focused on getting them here, rather than retaining them. My previous post (last post, prev page) is heavily about getting them here. Retaining them is definitely half the battle.

bjfan82

August 27th, 2008, 02:55 AM

I know this isn't WNY, but I saw this article and seemed relevant to our discussion...took place in Mississippi.

Feds detain nearly 600 in Miss. plant raid
Sweep of suspected illegal immigrants is the largest single-workplace raid
LAUREL, Miss. - The largest single-workplace immigration raid in U.S. history has caused panic among Hispanic families in this small southern Mississippi town, where federal agents rounded up nearly 600 plant workers suspected of being in the country illegally.

One worker caught in Monday's sweep at the Howard Industries transformer plant said fellow workers applauded as immigrants were taken into custody. Federal officials said a tip from a union member prompted them to start investigating several years ago.

Fabiola Pena, 21, cradled her 2-year-old daughter as she described a chaotic scene at the plant as the raid began, followed by clapping.

"I was crying the whole time. I didn't know what to do," Pena said. "We didn't know what was happening because everyone started running. Some people thought it was a bomb but then we figured out it was immigration."

Some released for humanitarian reasons
About 100 of those detained were released for humanitarian reasons, many of them mothers who were fitted with electronic monitoring bracelets and allowed to go home to their children, officials said.

Another 475 workers were transferred to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Jena, La. Nine who were under 18 were transferred to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

John Foxworth, an attorney representing some of the immigrants, said eight appeared in federal court in Hattiesburg on Tuesday because they face criminal charges for allegedly using false Social Security and residency identification.

He said the raid was traumatic for families. "There was no communication, an immediate loss of any kind of news and a lack of understanding of what's happening to their loved ones," he said. "A complete and utter feeling of helplessness."

The superintendent of the county school district said about half of the district's approximately 160 Hispanic students were absent Tuesday.

Roberto Velez, pastor at Iglesia Cristiana Peniel, where an estimated 30 to 40 percent the 200 parishioners were caught up in the raid, said that's because parents were afraid immigration officials would take them.

"They didn't send their kids to school today," he said. "How scared is that?"

Those detained were from Brazil, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and Peru, said Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE spokeswoman.

Elizabeth Alegria, 26, a Mexican immigrant, was working at the plant Monday when ICE agents stormed in. When they found out she has two sons, ages 4 and 9, she was fitted with a bracelet and told to appear in federal court next month. Her husband, Andres, was not so lucky.

"I'm very traumatized because I don't know if they are going to let my husband go and when I will see him," Elizabeth Alegria said through a translator Tuesday as she returned to the Howard Industries parking lot to retrieve her sport utility vehicle.

"We have kids without dads and pregnant mothers who got their husbands taken away," said Velez's son, Robert, youth pastor at the church. "It was like a horror story. They got handled like they were criminals."

Policy to hire only citizens and legal immigrants
Howard Industries is in Mississippi's Pine Belt region, known for commercial timber growth and chicken processing plants. The tech company produces dozens of products ranging from electrical transformers to medical supplies, according to its Web site.

Gonzalez said agents had executed search warrants at both the plant and the company headquarters in nearby Ellisville. She said no company executives had been detained, but this is an "ongoing investigation and yesterday's action was just the first part."

A woman at the Ellisville headquarters told The Associated Press on Tuesday that no one was available to answer questions.

In a statement to the Laurel Leader-Call newspaper, Howard Industries said the company "runs every check allowed to ascertain the immigration status of all applicants for its jobs."

"It is company policy that it hires only U.S. citizens and legal immigrants," the statement said.

The Mississippi raid is one of several nationwide in recent years.

On May 12, federal immigration officials swept into Agriprocessors, the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant, in Iowa. Nearly 400 workers were detained and dozens of fraudulent permanent resident alien cards were seized from the plant's human resources department, according to court records. In December 2006, 1,297 were arrested at Swift meatpacking plants in Nebraska and five other states.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26410407

bayviews

August 27th, 2008, 09:17 PM

I know this isn't WNY, but I saw this article and seemed relevant to our discussion...took place in Mississippi.

Yeah, interesting...Of course Old Miss is another place one doesn't necesarily associate with being an immigrant magnet, unlike Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennesse & other southern states that've attracted lots a new immigrants lately.

Its intriguing though the places where these raids are taking place, very few in California, which has the largest undocumented immigrant population. Of course, California's not in play in the Presidential election either.

Not around cities like NYC or Washington DC, which also have large numbers of illegal immigrants, not a chance those places are voting GOP. So they've been making raids in states like West VA, Miss, & Iowa, that like Buffalo need all the new immigrants, aliens or not that they can get.

Let's face it, while they've got lots of talented, hardworking career professionals on board, "Homeland Security's" also dumping ground for lots of incompetent political patronage hacks. Rather than re-deploying some of their personal from places like Buffalo, where their not needed, to Charlotte, Atlanta, Chicago, etc. they spent a month waiting for a million or so aliens to turn themselves in & I think something about 4 showed up.

OH NO, these raids can't be about presidential politics!

One thing though about the article from Miss, at least they have some immigrants rights advocates down there, speaking up, that's more than can be said for Buffalo!

bayviews

August 27th, 2008, 09:48 PM

Speaking of immigrants, here's some recent comments by Jack Davis, who's running in the Democratic primary in a suburban Buffalo district..This redneck doesn't even know what he's taking about, he certainly doesn't fit under the same banner as Obama. Ted Reynolds was better than this!

Davis warns of a new civil war with Southern states - Sees possibility of secession due to Mexican immigrants
Buffalo News, The (NY) - August 23, 2008
Author: Jerry Zremski - NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF1

WASHINGTON -- Congressional candidate Jack Davis , in a speech earlier this

year, warned that increasing immigration from Mexico could lead to a new civil

war between northern states and Mexican-influenced Southern states that may

want to secede from the United States.

"In the latter part of this century or the next, Mexicans will be a

majority in many of the states and could therefore take control of the state

government using the democratic process," Davis said in the speech. "They

could then secede from the United States, and then we might have another civil

war."

A supporter of one of Davis' rivals for the Democratic nomination in the

26th district, Jon Powers, posted the video to YouTube. The Powers campaign

alerted The Buffalo News to the Davis video.

The YouTube video is labeled as a speech Davis gave at the Center for

Inquiry in Amherst on Feb. 1, but a center press release indicates that he

spoke there on March 19.

No matter when he spoke, Davis could not have made his point of view on

Mexican immigrants any clearer.

"They have an allegiance to Mexico, where they were taught the U.S. fought

an unjust war with Mexico and took this territory," Davis said. "They believe

the territory of these states belongs to Mexico."

Davis did not name specific states that might be prone to succession.

But he appeared to be referring to Texas -- which seceded from Mexico,

briefly became an independent republic and then joined the United States --

and the territories Mexico lost as a result of the Mexican-American War of

1846-48. California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and much of Colorado

were all once Mexican territory, only to become U.S. states after the war.

Asked this week about his speech, Davis said he no longer believed
Southern states would be prone to leaving the union in order to assert Mexican

control over what is now U.S. territory.

"I think they'll do it without a civil war," he said. "They'll take control

of the state governments and start voting themselves anything they want."

The video of the Davis speech was posted to YouTube on April 14 by Robert

Harding, a blogger at the Albany Project blog who supports Powers. He said the

video was provided to him by someone who attended the speech.

Powers' campaign manager, John Gerken, said the speech was very telling.

"I think Jack Davis ' rant says it all: He thinks we are going to go to war

with California and Arizona," Gerken said. "This is probably why his handlers

won't let him debate and hide him from the press."

Alice Kryzan, an environmental lawyer who is also running for the

Democratic nomination to face Republican Christopher Lee in the race to

replace retiring Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds, R-Clarence, was equally critical of

Davis.

"Many of these comments are wrong and offensive," she said. "We should

address our illegal problems thoughtfully, not by demonizing anyone."

Meanwhile, a top official at the National Council of La Raza, the nation's

leading Hispanic organization, termed Davis' comments "extremely offensive."

"He's feeding an environment of intolerance that doesn't distinguish

between legal and illegal immigrants," said Clarissa Martinez, director of

immigration and national campaigns for the organization. "He's presenting our

whole community as invaders -- people who want to take over the country."

In fact, Davis in his speech, said: "Our country has been invaded, occupied

and settled by 10 million illegal aliens."

Davis issued a statement Friday, trying to clarify his earlier comments.

"My remarks at the Center were designed to bring urgency to the

conversation," he said in the statement. "I believe passionately in protecting

our homeland and securing our borders. If my language was hyperbolic, the

danger it described certainly is not."

In the Thursday interview where he discussed the speech, Davis said he

didn't recall everything he had said in the speech.

But among the topics he discussed in the speech was his solution for the

illegal immigration problem.

"I think building a double wall long the southern border is the least

expensive long-term solution to maintaining the heritage of our fathers,"

Davis said in the speech on YouTube.

Davis, a 75-year-old Akron industrialist who has vowed to spend $3 million

of his own money on the congressional race, plans to stay on the ballot in

November -- on his new "Save Jobs and Farms Party" line -- even if he loses

the Democratic primary.

Many Western New York farmers rely on migrant workers from Mexico to bring

in the crops.

After hearing quotes from Davis' speech, John Lincoln, the president of the

New York Farm Bureau, said: "The farmers overall would be really concerned

about his statement."

Told what Lincoln said, Davis replied: "He's not a regular farmer. He's one

of these big guys . . . I'd call him a multinational farmer."

Lincoln, 70, is a dairy farmer with 200 head of cattle in Bloomfield, a

village of 1,258 in Ontario County, southeast of Rochester. Asked if he had

ever met Lincoln, Davis said he had not.

bjfan82

August 27th, 2008, 09:51 PM

Aren't these federal agents? We can't control where these raids take place. If they raid in Buffalo, well there's nothing anyone in WNY can do about it, ICE get its orders from Washington. It definitely is interesting that there proportionally aren't as many in California where the "problem" is the biggest. I'd like to know more about the process of how ICE decides where to raid...they probably get a lead or a tip from some anonymous source. Well, whatever the case is, it is what it is. I guess all we can do, if these federal raids are an important issue to us, is demand that the federal government change its policy. I often watch Barack Obama's stump speeches throughout the day while I'm at work, and he often gets questions from the audiance about these ICE raids that terrorize illegal immigrants across the country...I believe he wants them brought to an end as part of a whole 'border security and comprehensive immigration reform' package.

bayviews

August 27th, 2008, 10:00 PM

bjfan82

August 27th, 2008, 10:01 PM

bjfan82

August 27th, 2008, 10:12 PM

Yeah, I'm just curious, I haven't followed it closely, but have their been a lot of these types of raids around Washington, there are obviously hundreds of thousands of undocumented aliens living in DC, MD, VA?

I found these ones from around here:

ICE Raid Intensifies Fear in the Prince William County Latino Community

This past Monday morning, an Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE ) raid was conducted with the assistance of Prince William County authorities. According to John Steinbach of Mexicanos Sin Fronteras,“This raid has only served to inflame and intensify the fear in the Latino community.” The thirty four families impacted by the raid have been desperate trying to locate the husbands, brothers and sons who left for work in the morning and never returned. Calls to ICE generated little information that could be of use to the families.

On Aug. 13, ICE agents set up a checkpoint at a service gate at Washington Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Va., and questioned more than 200 people who attempted to enter the airport grounds. Most of those questioned were working on construction projects at the airport. ICE arrested 42 Latin American construction workers who were found to be ineligible to work in the US. The workers were detained administratively on immigration violations, said Mark X. McGraw, Special Agent in Charge of ICE's Office of Investigations at the Washington field office. Federal officials were trying to determine whether criminal charges were warranted against the workers and their employers. (ICE news release, Aug. 13; Washington Post, Aug. 14)

Evergrey

August 27th, 2008, 10:14 PM

I would be more fearful of Germany taking over the U.S.... since German is the No.1 ethnicity in the U.S.

bayviews

August 27th, 2008, 10:16 PM

I watched the Youtube video of Jack Davis...he makes good general points about illegal immigrants not paying taxes and using social services that they aren't paying for. But what strikes me as strange is 1) he's from the northeast where illegal immigration is not even a top 10 concern of people, why would he be giving speeches on this topic? 2) more importantly, what is with his extreme paranoia that Mexico wants the southwest back? I don't even think Pat Buchanan believes this...maybe Tom Tancredo, but that's about it!

Its understandable why someone like Tancredo, a conservative Republican from Colorado, a state with a large undocumented Mexican population might campaign against "illegal aliens". But the 2000 census counted less than 400 Mexican-born residents in all of Eire County, no doubt an undercount, but far less than in any other major metropolitan area, even Rochester or Pittsburgh.

I wonder if Davis has ever talked to a real Mexican, there's not a single resident born in that country living in his town. Obviously, he's doesn't know much about Texas, the state has long had a very good relationship with Mexico & Mexican-Americans & other Texans (including Republicans) get along very well there.

Those who do interact with real Mexicans in that congressional district, farmers, understand very well their contributions to the WNY agricultural economy.

bjfan82

August 27th, 2008, 11:11 PM

Its understandable why someone like Tancredo, a conservative Republican from Colorado, a state with a large undocumented Mexican population might campaign against "illegal aliens". But the 2000 census counted less than 400 Mexican-born residents in all of Eire County, no doubt an undercount, but far less than in any other major metropolitan area, even Rochester or Pittsburgh.

I wonder if Davis has ever talked to a real Mexican, there's not a single resident born in that country living in his town. Obviously, he's doesn't know much about Texas, the state has long had a very good relationship with Mexico & Mexican-Americans & other Texans (including Republicans) get along very well there.

Those who do interact with real Mexicans in that congressional district, farmers, understand very well their contributions to the WNY agricultural economy.

Exactly, he's definitely pandering. Just look at where his district is - rural counties east of WNY and south of Rochester. Even still, that's an odd issue to pander to in New York State, where there isn't the perception of "too many illegal Mexicans."

bayviews

August 27th, 2008, 11:29 PM

I found these ones from around here:

Yea, those articles suggest that aside from occasional sweeps around airports & other high-security areas, Homeland Security ICE doesn't seem too visible around the beltway!

Along with the political timing, seems like that ICE realizes that the beltway's growth & economic prosperity is highly dependent on a steady inflow of immigrants, documented & otherwise.

I did a quick check up on the numbers & there's an incredible variation in the levels of ICE enforcement, as opposed to consistency. The last census counted 981,000 immigrants around Washington-Baltimore compared with just 52,000 around Buffalo-Niagara!

Of the population born in Latin America & the Caribbean, those most likely to be here undocumented, Wash-Balt had 354,000 compared to less than 5,000 around Buf-Nia, a huge difference, even after factoring in that the former has 6-7 times the population of the later.

Kinda hypocritical that the same politicians like Tancredo who comeback to their home districts to campaign against immigrants enjoy the lifestyle of an area where the economy, especially services, construction, etc. is very reliant on immigration, yet there's very little real immigration enforcement.

Seems if we're really concerned with real "Homeland Security", it would just make a whole lot more sense if ICE at least got rid of the backlog of gangsters & other criminal aliens that need to be deported from the Beltway, before reaking havoc on farms, greenhouses, plants, etc. in places like Buffalo, WVa, or Miss, that are struggling for lack of immigrants.

bjfan82

August 27th, 2008, 11:41 PM

Yea, those articles suggest that aside from occasional sweeps around airports & other high-security areas, Homeland Security ICE doesn't seem too visible around the beltway!
I don't know if you can really come to that conclusion based on my two little clips. If anything, I think those two little clips show that ICE is most definitely present in the DC area.

Along with the political timing, seems like that ICE realizes that the beltway's growth & economic prosperity is highly dependent on a steady inflow of immigrants, documented & otherwise.
I bet ICE doesn't give a rats a$$ about DC's growth and prosperity. They're concerned with the much bigger national illegal immigration issue and raiding companies that hire illegal immigrants. I doubt they care about one metro area's growth.

I did a quick check up on the numbers & there's an incredible variation in the levels of ICE enforcement, as opposed to consistency. The last census counted 981,000 immigrants around Washington-Baltimore compared with just 52,000 around Buffalo-Niagara!

Of the population born in Latin America & the Caribbean, those most likely to be here undocumented, Wash-Balt had 354,000 compared to less than 5,000 around Buf-Nia, a huge difference, even after factoring in that the former has 6-7 times the population of the later.

Based on these stats Buffalo would then have about 47,000 legal immigrants not from Latin America and Wash-Balt would have 600,000+...that's not too shaby for either city.

Kinda hypocritical that the same politicians like Tancredo who comeback to their home districts to campaign against immigrants enjoy the lifestyle of an area where the economy, especially services, construction, etc. is very reliant on immigration, yet there's very little real immigration enforcement.

Yeah agreed. Like Mitt Romney and many of these other Conservatives that are publicly anti-latino but then have their undocumented latino nannies at home.

Seems if we're really concerned with real "Homeland Security", it would just make a whole lot more sense if ICE at least got rid of the backlog of gangsters & other criminal aliens that need to be deported from the Beltway, before reaking havoc on farms, greenhouses, plants, etc. in places like Buffalo, WVa, or Miss, that are struggling for lack of immigrants.

Maybe ICE should be focusing on illegal immigrants that have committed crimes first, where ever they may be...Buffalo, LA, DC, NYC, where ever. And not wasting their resources and energy on peaceful non-criminal immigrants, that while technically illegal and not paying taxes, are nonetheless valuable to their respective regions.

Sabretooth

August 28th, 2008, 03:53 AM

^^ Funny (well, more like obvious) how it all comes down simply to our lack of a consistent immigration policy. Perhaps second only to a real energy policy, this is something that I don't think many people (at least the 20% or so who always need to be told what to think) will disagree needs to be dealt with immediately. Or at least beginning in the last week of the coming January.

I would be more fearful of Germany taking over the U.S.... since German is the No.1 ethnicity in the U.S.
The Germans (Hitler anyways) were actually taken aback when the US did not support them prior to WWII - since the Aryan/eugenics movement had actually had its roots in the US, as I've understood it Hitler actually thought the US would be something of a natural ally. There have been quite a few stark similarities between the countries over the years as well - it's obvious there's a history between the two. Therefore I would contend that Germany would not need to take over the US. Watch out when those blue eyes sail out of the north, I suppose...

Not to sound negative towards Germans, I am part German, took 5 years of it in high school (and not remember a damn thing) and wouldn't mind travelling over there at some point. Probably rather go there than anywhere else in Europe besides perhaps England or Greece.

rockin'.baltimorean

August 28th, 2008, 03:59 AM

in baltimore, it's about 20%....

bayviews

August 28th, 2008, 09:26 PM

I don't know if you can really come to that conclusion based on my two little clips. If anything, I think those two little clips show that ICE is most definitely present in the DC area.

I bet ICE doesn't give a rats a$$ about DC's growth and prosperity. They're concerned with the much bigger national illegal immigration issue and raiding companies that hire illegal immigrants. I doubt they care about one metro area's growth.

Immigration Agency Arrests 34 Workers At Construction Firm
Washington Post, The (DC) - March 25, 2008
Author: N.C. Aizenman, Washington Post Staff Writer

Federal immigration authorities converged on a Prince William County construction company just before sunrise yesterday, arresting 34 Latin American nationals for being in the country illegally.

Workplace raids are rare in the Washington area, and the roundup at CMC Concrete Construction in the Manassas area appears to be the largest in the region in nearly two years, according to a review of news releases on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Web site.

The workers -- who come from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica and El Salvador -- are being charged administratively and are in ICE custody undergoing deportation proceedings, said Ernestine Fobbs, a spokeswoman for the customs agency.

News of the arrests spread quickly through an immigrant community already on edge after a county law took effect this month allowing Prince William police to check the immigration status of people stopped for other infractions.

Fobbs said the agency had executed two search warrants in connection with the operation. Because those warrants were under seal, Fobbs said, she could not discuss how or why the company had drawn federal attention, nor confirm that CMC Concrete Construction was the agency's target.

James Rybicki, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia , said no employers had been charged. But he added, "Obviously, we'll be reviewing the case for possible criminal charges."

Public records identify Felisberto J. Magalhaes as the president of CMC and Maria Brandao Magalhaes as its secretary and treasurer. A relative of the owners who entered the company's administrative suite in a Manassas office complex yesterday afternoon to meet with several ICE agents declined to comment.

A few miles away, at a large lot where CMC workers come to pick up equipment before heading out to job sites each day, about a dozen remaining workers stood in groups discussing the morning's events.

A 32-year-old Mexican man, who asked that his name not be published for fear of retaliation from his bosses or the government, said he and three others had driven off the lot in one of the company's pickup trucks when they noticed a silver van behind them flashing police lights.

"We thought maybe we had run a light or there was something wrong with the plates -- we figured at worst we were going to get a traffic ticket," he said.

Instead, the man said, an armed immigration agent leaned in the window and demanded identification.

"Everyone grew very quiet. We were horribly sad, but more than anything, resigned," the man said.

He said agents were able to retrieve records demonstrating that CMC had successfully sponsored him for legal permanent residency years ago. But he said two colleagues in the truck had no such proof to offer and were handcuffed, along with five workers riding in a pickup behind them.

Minutes after the roadside detentions, other workers said, immigration agency vehicles entered the lot and more than a dozen agents fanned out in pursuit of several fleeing workers.

When the Mexican worker finally reached the lot, he learned that his younger brother was among those taken away.

"You feel so impotent, to see someone you know, who is just trying to work, go through this and to not be able to help him," he said.

Actually, this article (above) about about an immigration raid earlier this year netting just 34 workers in suburban Washington, which apparently created a big stir, confirms that this was the BIGGEST raid around the Beltway in 2 years.

That's about the same numbers, if not less, than the numbers picked up ICE raids that have been ongoing around the Buffalo area for years. Just in that one article posted re WNY raids (there are many, many, more) there were more than 100 picked up.

Add in the the huge gap between the very large numbers of immigrants around Washington & the tiny number around Buffalo, & the chances of an undocumented immigrant being picked up around Buffalo are many, many times more than around Washington, with 70 or so times as many illegal aliens.

No sense in running through all the math, I'm sure you must get the picture: There's simply a HUGE disparity between the levels of immigration enforcement in the two areas: Very STRICT enforcement around Buffalo discouraging immigrants from settling there, very LAX enforcement around Washington encouraging immigrants to settle around our nation's capital.

As to whether or not ICE has minimized raids around the capital of Homeland Security to keep the areas's economy growing, well, I'm sure like any good Bush Administration bureacracy they'd deny it. Just as I'm sure they'd deny that the timing & sequence of immigration raids has anything to do with influencing elections!

But just contrast the economic impact of that LAX enforcement policy in creating a booming Beltway, with the negative impact of STRICT policy in keeping Buffalo struggling.

Clearly letting immigrants, including many undocumented ones, stream into Washington hasn't hurt its booming job market, while keeping them out of Buffalo hasn't jump started its abysmal job market.

BOTTOM LINE: Here's about the only group of people, immigrants coming legally or otherwise, that have answered the Buffalo area's'desperate plea for newcomers coming to halt its seemimngly eternal decline, & their working. Why let ICE (or local police doubling as immigration agents) drag them away kicking & screaming?

Evergrey

August 28th, 2008, 11:24 PM

perhaps enforcement is greater in Buffalo due to its status as an international gateway

Sabretooth

August 29th, 2008, 12:03 AM

bayviews

August 29th, 2008, 12:43 AM

^^ I was thinking that, combined with maybe the fact that they are generally fewer in number so the "problem" can be more easily completely nipped in the bud. They're not going to get a stranglehold on the Arizona border, for instance; it's impossible.

On top of the fact that I don't think they care how well the relative metros are doing. And if they did, federal policy regarding anything affecting urban areas in the past 50 years has almost universally favored "newer" southern and southwestern metros.

That may be true, but maybe its time that the movers & shakers around Buffalo stopped thinking of undocumented immigrants as "problems". Just to take one example, an area like Chicago, far from the Sunbelt, has over a million residents of Mexican ancestry, many of them recent immigrants & many of those "illegal". Rather than being a problem, they've done wonders for repopulating older neighborhoods in the city & older suburbs.

By contrast, the kind of areas around Buffalo are depopulated & moribound. Interesting though how many places that have little first-hand experience with Mexicans or other immigrant groups see them as "problems". While those who have lots of real experience with them (including the agricultural sectors around WNY) see them as "solutions".

bayviews

August 29th, 2008, 12:51 AM

perhaps enforcement is greater in Buffalo due to its status as an international gateway

Yeah, that's certainly a significant factor, being physically along a border. But that very same heavy-handed immigration enforcement has prevented Buffalo from becoming a real demographic-economic "international gateway", in terms of inflows of immigrants like inland cities like Columbus OH or Minneapolis-St. Paul MN.

Evergrey

August 29th, 2008, 01:02 AM

Isn't a big part of Columbus's inflow due to a massive resettlement of Somali refugees?

Kwame

August 29th, 2008, 01:12 AM

I guess that program where turning yourself in if you're illegal, was a warning sign for this stuff. I can't say I have sympathy for any illegal immigrants, because people like my Dad who came to this country legally, who have worked so hard to receive their visa's, paid their taxes, learn ed the language, and followed the path to citizenship! Sorry for the rant, but I think it's so unfair how people try to "cheat" their way into this Country. :ohno:

Sabretooth

August 29th, 2008, 02:59 AM

^^ I certainly agree, but the issue is larger than that, though. How many of those who are technically "illegal", so because of the ineffective system itself and not because they're actively trying to cheat the system?

When I lived in NH I worked with and was best friends with two immigrants (well, we always called them "foreign bastards", in good nature :)), one was from Ireland (who after a couple years returned to Scotland) and the other who is Indian (and talks and talks of leaving NH but no result yet). I know they were both legal, but the Indian one has had to jump through hoops with alot of things, notably getting his PE license, getting his "semi-arranged" wife here, etc. The system does seem to cause quite of bit of undue hardship on these people.

At least that's where I draw the line. Of course it's subject to judgment and it may not see eye to eye with what everyone else thinks.

bjfan82

August 29th, 2008, 09:57 PM

That may be true, but maybe its time that the movers & shakers around Buffalo stopped thinking of undocumented immigrants as "problems".

By contrast, the kind of areas around Buffalo are depopulated & moribound. Interesting though how many places that have little first-hand experience with Mexicans or other immigrant groups see them as "problems". While those who have lots of real experience with them (including the agricultural sectors around WNY) see them as "solutions".

As I argued before, illegal immigration isn't seen as a major "problem" in WNY because we don't have very many compared to the cities close to the Mexico border.

It isn't the movers & shakers in Buffalo...its the policy and decision makers in Washington. If we have a problem with federal agents randomly raiding agricultural farms in different areas of the country, we need to take it up with the Federal Government...aka Obama, McCain, Hillary, Schumer, or whoever our House representative is.

Here's about the only group of people, immigrants coming legally or otherwise, that have answered the Buffalo area's'desperate plea for newcomers coming to halt its seemimngly eternal decline, & their working. Why let ICE (or local police doubling as immigration agents) drag them away kicking & screaming?

We most certainly shouldn't be dragging them away kicking and screaming, I'm one of the rare few that think they should be giving "amnesty" (as Lou Dobbs calls it) without having to go touch home base and come back.

However, do you think the Federal Govt cares what the people of one city in one state think? Do you think the Federal Govt cares if it lowers one city's metro population? Hell no, they have their whole illegal immigration agenda they're focused on. They're not gonna stop because people of WNY want them to stop, that's why we have have elections, to hold the Fed Govt accountable.

bayviews

August 30th, 2008, 02:26 AM

Isn't a big part of Columbus's inflow due to a massive resettlement of Somali refugees?

Yes, very true. Columbus has the second-largest Somali community in the US, other Africans, & also big communities of Latinos & Asians. There were hardly any of these groups in Columbus several decades ago, it was just a white & black American midwestern city. While most other Ohio cities are declining, Columbus has grown, thanks largely to the immigration inflow. Here's an interesting article about the outreach that the city has been making to immigrants.

City's effort strives to help new Americans acclimate - Effort aims to link immigrants with social services
Columbus Dispatch, The (OH) - June 8, 2006
Author: Sherri Williams ; THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

A city initiative created to assist Columbus ' newest neighbors is growing along with the immigrant community.

Two staff members have been hired to help run Mayor Michael B. Coleman's New Americans Initiative, which helps immigrants make a smooth transition here and links them to social services in other government offices.

Guadalupe Velasquez, who previously was a field executive at the Girl Scouts Seal of Ohio Council, is the coordinator of the initiative. She replaces Lillian Williams, who had held the position since July 2004, when the effort was launched.

Abdirizak Y. Farah is the outreach coordinator. His position was specifically created to connect with Somalis and other Africans in Columbus , said James Stowe, executive director of the Community Relations Commission.

Coleman created the initiative to provide immigrants with access programs. Columbus has residents from 113 countries representing 79 different languages, including at least 35,000 Somalis and 45,000 Latinos.

The New Americans initiative is part of the city's Community Relations Commission, which enforces the city's civil-rights code, promotes diversity and works to end racism.

Farah, a native of Somalia who has lived in Columbus since 1999, said he previously worked as a political officer with United Nations peacekeeping operations and most recently ran a private trucking business.

One of his first duties is assisting with tonight's forum for the Somali community with Columbus police and Fire Division employees, at St. Stephen's Community House, 1500 E. 17th Ave. The forum begins at 6 p.m. It is the first in a series being held for Columbus residents.

The forum comes six months after Franklin County Deputy Sheriff Jason Evans fatally shot Somali native Nasir Abdi, 23. The sheriff's office said Abdi threatened four deputies with a 6-inch knife when they attempted to take him to a psychiatric center.

The shooting prompted protests and a lengthy mediation process with Somali leaders and law-enforcement officials.

"It's going to be a huge undertaking eliminating misunderstanding with the police and fire departments," Farah said.

The commission hopes to add a third staff worker to work with Columbus ' Asian community by the end of the year, Stowe said.

In the past two years, New Americans has helped translate city material for immigrant groups.

It also has assisted with cultural-competency training for city workers who interact with the public, including fire, police and code-enforcement employees, Stowe said.

City Hall signs in Spanish and Somali are also planned to help the city's two largest immigrant groups get around the building.

The initiative is developing a newcomer's guide and class to help immigrants and native-born Americans navigate the city, Stowe said. The first class is tentatively planned for September.

Also, classes will be offered to help native-born Americans understand their new neighbors, Stowe said.

"This cannot be an us-and-them environment," he said. "It can be an all-of-us environment and we can truly make this work."

bayviews

August 30th, 2008, 03:36 AM

As I argued before, illegal immigration isn't seen as a major "problem" in WNY because we don't have very many compared to the cities close to the Mexico border.

It isn't the movers & shakers in Buffalo...its the policy and decision makers in Washington. If we have a problem with federal agents randomly raiding agricultural farms in different areas of the country, we need to take it up with the Federal Government...aka Obama, McCain, Hillary, Schumer, or whoever our House representative is.

We most certainly shouldn't be dragging them away kicking and screaming, I'm one of the rare few that think they should be giving "amnesty" (as Lou Dobbs calls it) without having to go touch home base and come back.

However, do you think the Federal Govt cares what the people of one city in one state think? Do you think the Federal Govt cares if it lowers one city's metro population? Hell no, they have their whole illegal immigration agenda they're focused on. They're not gonna stop because people of WNY want them to stop, that's why we have have elections, to hold the Fed Govt accountable.

Oh I beleive you, that you've become more pro-immigration.

No most buracracies don't care, they just try to show that they are meeting whatever targets they have. But they are certainly responsive to political presure.

Most smart cities, the ones that have sanctuary policies, places like NYC, Chicago, LA, Washington, Boston, Seattle, etc, they don't have many ICE raids, certainly not in comparison to the much higher levels of immigrants they have. Those that do happen in those places are mostly roundups of criminal aliens, which is fine with me.

Maybe Jack Davis doesn't qualify as a local mover & shaker as he's not elected yet & hopefully won't be. But the attiudes he expresses that's seems pretty much in line with what I see coming from other local politicians, union boses, police authorities, etc.

You sure don't ever see them marching in an immigrants rights parade, like Mayor Daley in this article, he's a smart guy, he knows where Chicago's growth comes from! Of course it's not the whole story. But the HUGE difference in new immigration attitudes/policies/levels has a lot to do the differences in the recent trajectories of these two cities.

True, a lot of the immigrants to Chicago come from Mexico & other relatively poor countries. But you don't see Chicago ranking near the top of the lists when it comes to indices like poverty levels. Most of the cities that do, are places like Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, where most of the residents are life-long natives, born in the USA!

'We are not aliens': marchers - Immigrants say momentum squandered when politicians backed off
Chicago Sun-Times (IL) - May 2, 2008
Author: Rummana Hussain, The Chicago Sun-Times

Enthusiastic cries of "si se puede" drowned out the din of downtown traffic and the CTA trains.

And the proudly defiant marchers hoisted flags and colorful signs proclaiming "we are not aliens" and "stop racist fear."

But the 10,000- to 15,000-strong crowd at Thursday's pro- immigration "May Day" rally was significantly smaller than last year's throng of 150,000 and the 400,000 that captured national attention in 2006.

"It makes sense if people are disappointed. There's all this momentum and then nothing happens," 19-year-old Cecilia Real shrugged, speculating why interest may have waned.

Real's sentiments echoed the fears of many demonstrators who believe politicians have thrown issues such as workers' rights and legalizing 12 million undocumented workers on the back burner.

"Right now, I don't think it [immigrant rights] fits into the agenda of mainstream established politics," said Alan Goodman, 55. "Last year, the Democrats actively supported it. This year, they don't find it expedient."

Rally organizers said Thursday's turnout was much larger than expected and pointed out that many community groups have been spending their time on the heated presidential primaries.

"The people are still here," Rainbow-PUSH Coalition's Latino chapter's Salome Amezcua said, eyeing the diverse crowd.

Thousands, including activist Saul Arellano, gathered at the Near West Side's Union Park and marched two miles to Federal Plaza where they were given an impromptu concert by a gaggle of rock stars, including Ben Harper, Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello and Lollapalooza mastermind Perry Farrell. When Morello urged the crowd to "jump the f--- up and down" as the group sang Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land," a giddy Mayor Daley "pogoed" like a teenager in a mosh pit.

Daley took the mic shortly after and kept the masses pumped.

"Look up at all the high-rises and see people up there. They are immigrants. They are no different from you. They came here generations ago. Everyone is an immigrant," the mayor said.

bjfan82

August 30th, 2008, 11:21 PM

Oh I beleive you, that you've become more pro-immigration.

I've had the exact same stance on immigration for probably 5 years, when it first became a 'hot button' political issue...not sure why you mentioned this.

I agree with the rest of your post. It sure would be something to see, the mayor or local leaders marching in immigrant parades as well as gay pride parades.

bayviews

September 13th, 2008, 08:20 PM

Interesting article on the role that Mexican immigrants have played in the revitalization & repopulation of many NYC neighborhoods. Mexicans, are now the third largest immigrant group in NYC.

New shape of the city As NY's 3rd largest immigrant group, Mexicans revive old neighborhoods as they make a life here
Newsday (Long Island, NY) - June 12, 2007
Author: ROLANDO PUJOL AND MARLENE PERALTA. amNewYork

When Geraldo Sanchez left Mexico 12 years ago, he said

farewell to his parents and siblings - and his graphic-designer aspirations - to begin an arduous life in the United States, all to keep his struggling relatives afloat back home.

Beat up during a stint in Texas, he soon found himself in New York, walking from LaGuardia Airport until he found a room to stay in the city.

Today, Sanchez, 29, lives with many of his countrymen in the Sunset Park neighborhood in Brooklyn, where he works at a music shop. But his bones bear the scars of his dangerous resume - a knee and arm broken doing construction work.

"When one doesn't have papers, it is very difficult," Sanchez said. "We take jobs other people won't dare take."

New life, old neighborhoods

Peek into virtually any bustling restaurant kitchen or scan any of the city's construction sites and you will find Mexican immigrants. Hundreds of thousands have navigated a treacherous path to the city in the past 15 years, reshaping neighborhoods and changing the economics of industries.

Their numbers soared from around 62,000 in 1990 to more than 400,000 by estimates of several city demographers, with economic and agricultural crises in Mexico spurring the exodus. (The city's Department of City Planning said the population is about 250,000.) So great has the growth been that the Mexican consul general's office in Manhattan is looking to establish an annex in Queens.

The community is now New York's third largest immigrant group, after Dominicans and Chinese. "Hard work is probably the overarching characteristic," said cultural anthropologist Alyshia Galvez.

The Mexican influx has revitalized neighborhoods such as El Barrio, or Spanish Harlem, where the Mexican presence is vivid even as the one-time Puerto Rican stronghold remains that community's symbolic heart.

Nilda Perez, a Puerto Rican , is married to a Mexican and has Mexican colleagues at the florist, 116 Flowers Shop, in El Barrio. She feels a great kinship with Mexicans, and the well-trod immigrant footsteps they are following.

"They came to do what they really wanted to do. It was to work hard, to get money to send to their families." said Perez, who remembers when the shop's block between Second and Third avenues was barren, until the Mexican influx began.

Indeed, the Mexican presence in New York before 1990 was far from palpable. Back then, New York was hardly renowned for its authentic Mexican cuisine and Cinco de Mayo was not a household phrase.

A sense of kinship

"You'd see a Mexican and you'd think they were your brother," said Guadalupe Aguirri, 50, a Mexican immigrant speaking of the old El Barrio. Her shop, Little Mexico Meat Grocery on Third Avenue, began as a Dominican bodega before its Mexican metamorphosis.

Those changes began to happen quickly in the mid-1990s, Galvez said, prompted by forces such as instability at home and economic changes resulting from the 1994 NAFTA free trade agreement. "What we saw was people being displaced from the countryside without having anywhere else to go but the United States," she said.

The road to America, often facilitated by "coyotes" who ferry immigrants across the border in exchange for high fees, is notoriously dangerous, while the challenges of setting up a new life in New York can be overwhelming.

Some Mexicans who have settled in the city don't even speak Spanish, but rather use indigenous languages, making acclimation even more difficult.

Risks and challenges

The soaring cost of housing also puts undocumented immigrants in a delicate position. Juan Haro, leader of Movement for Justice in El Barrio, said that since December 2004, his group has been working with hundreds of Mexican tenants.

"Landlords have been threatening them by calling immigration, attempting to illegally evict them, offering money," Haro said.

The breathtaking birth rate among Mexican women in New York could alone ensure the population's continued expansion, even if immigration were to ebb, said Laird Bergad of the CUNY Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies.

Adding to the population growth could be a new wave of immigration prompted by the lifting of protections on Mexico's corn industry set for next year. "We're going to see a massive exodus of people from the countryside who can no longer grow corn," Galvez said.

Ultimately, observers see the community on steady path toward finding its voice, much as previous groups such as Dominicans, who now enjoy considerable political clout in the city, did.

Minerva Flores 44, a home health attendant, came to the United States 22 years ago. She still misses her life in the Puebla state of Mexico.

"I miss those mornings waking up to the singing of the roosters," Flores said. "Here in the mornings, you have to get up because you have to go to work and worry about not being late."

The Mexican New Yorkers

250,000 plus people of Mexican descent live in the city.

150,000 plus are foreign-born.

More than 30% entered the United States after 2000.

Source: NYC Department of City Planning

Places they call home

Notable Mexican neighborhoods by borough.

Manhattan: El Barrio (East Harlem)

Queens: Jackson Heights, Corona, Elmhurst, Astoria

Brooklyn: Sunset Park, Bushwick , Williamsburg

Bronx: Mott Haven

Evergrey

September 15th, 2008, 06:31 AM

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08259/912297-53.stm

City Police Bureau earns praise for its new policies on immigrants

Monday, September 15, 2008
By Jerome L. Sherman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Local immigrant advocacy groups are praising the Pittsburgh Police Bureau's improving relationship with the city's expanding Latino community, just a year after a tense meeting with police Chief Nate Harper in the mayor's office.

At the time of the meeting, the Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network and other groups were concerned about racial profiling and reports of city officers questioning immigrants about their legal status.

Chief Harper quickly made changes. He now instructs officers not to ask about immigration status in routine situations where no crime has been committed, such as traffic stops. He appointed Detective Julie Stoops of police headquarters and Officer Julie Snyder of the West End station, both fluent Spanish speakers, to serve as liaisons to the Latino community. Both are on call as translators for other officers.

The chief also hopes to begin hiring more Hispanic officers. As of August, the city's Police Bureau had 612 white officers, 109 black officers and five Hispanic officers.

Chief Harper, who is black, said he sympathizes with Pittsburgh's newest immigrants.

"We've all been racially profiled," he said. "You can't penalize people for trying to get a better life. They're not criminals."

Sister Janice Vanderneck, who works with immigrants for the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, thanked the chief for responding to the complaints, and she said there's been a noticeable change in the city.

At a meeting last week in Oakland, several immigrants stood before top police officials and shared stories of city officers stopping their cars for minor traffic violations, giving them citations and then sending them on their way.

"They get treated just like everyone else," Sister Janice said.

But problems haven't disappeared. Officer Juan Polanco of the University of Pittsburgh police department told the Oakland meeting that city officers stopped him near his Shadyside home several weeks ago and asked for his identification.

"I provided them with the necessary documentation," said Mr. Polanco, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic who has lived in the U.S. for 40 years. "I didn't even tell them I'm a police officer. It shouldn't matter. I'm a citizen."

...

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08259/912299-455.stm

Suburban police accused of race profiling of Latinos

Monday, September 15, 2008
By Jerome L. Sherman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/images/200809/20080915jh_luchuck_500.jpg
John Heller/Post-Gazette
Melody Luchuck sits in her apartment with her wedding dress across her lap, holding a photo of herself with her fiance, Eduardo Vielma, who's awaiting deportation.

Four years after meeting at a Robinson restaurant, Melody Luchuck and Eduardo Vielma decided to marry, planning a simple ceremony at the Phipps Conservatory.

But two weeks before the Aug. 15 event, Robinson police detained Mr. Vielma and his brother, Alberto, both undocumented Mexican immigrants. They now face deportation.

The brothers were taken into police custody after an employee at Kohl's department store accused Alberto Vielma of shoplifting. He called Eduardo Vielma, who came to the store with his boss from nearby Pizza Milano.

Robinson officers asked both Vielma brothers for identification, even though Eduardo Vielma hadn't been accused of anything, according to a police report. Officers didn't ask Eduardo Vielma's boss, Ercan Yali, for identification.

The Vielmas admitted to being in the country illegally, the report said. Robinson Officer Matthew Maritz called U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and turned the pair over.

Local immigrant advocates describe the case as a blatant example of racial profiling involving some Allegheny County police departments and the region's small but growing Latino community. They argue that local police shouldn't contact federal authorities unless they are doing a background check on a criminal suspect -- and Eduardo Vielma was not a suspect at the time of his arrest.

"Only the brown person was asked for ID," said Jacqueline Martinez, a Downtown immigration attorney who is representing Eduardo Vielma and Ms. Luchuck. "The police have no business asking anyone about immigration status unless they ask everyone."

Sister Janice Vanderneck, director of social service ministry at the Latino Catholic Community, a diocesan-sponsored center in Oakland, said suburban police departments are stopping Latino immigrants for "doing nothing" at least several times a week. She cited actions by officers in Robinson, Monroeville, Coraopolis and Moon.

Police officials express sympathy with the region's newest immigrants. But they say they can't turn a blind eye to illegal activity, and they deny any systematic effort to target Latinos.

Robinson Police Chief Dale Vietmeier, president of the Allegheny County Chiefs of Police Association, said local police departments need more training on how to deal with immigration issues. But he defended his 26-officer department against charges of racial profiling.

"We don't just go out and look for somebody minding their own business," he said. "We don't harass them, we don't go after them."

Moon Police Chief Leo McCarthy said he had received no complaints about his officers.

"We never question someone's citizenship for just walking down the street," he said.

Still, both chiefs have noticed a significant increase in encounters with illegal immigrants in the last several years. Chief McCarthy said his department now calls ICE about once a month. On Sept. 4, an immigrant was arrested and handed over to federal officials after he caused a three-car pile-up in Moon.

Police departments can participate in an ICE program that trains local officers to enforce immigration laws. But no Pennsylvania departments are part of the program, according to ICE's Web site.

"Let the professionals handle this. We don't need Robinson Township officers doing this," Ms. Martinez said. "They don't know what they're doing."

ICE officials don't offer local departments advice on how to handle suspected illegal immigrants, according to Michael W. Gilhooly, the agency's northeast regional communications director. The departments set their own policies.

"It's not something ICE has control over," he said. "We're certainly available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to respond. We'll check the immigration status of any foreign-born person in their custody if they request it."

Since May of last year, Ms. Martinez said, she has taken on about 20 cases involving immigrants who were stopped by police and inappropriately questioned about their legal status. One immigrant was pulled over for having a broken taillight. Another was walking down the side of a highway. Yet another was painting a house.

Such encounters, Ms. Martinez said, could lead to lasting tensions between law enforcement officials and immigrants, both legal and illegal.

Deportations already have broken up local immigrant families, sometimes separating parents from children who have citizenship, advocates say.

Vidal Sanchez, a Mexican immigrant who lives in Pittsburgh, said he is now afraid to go near Robinson after police there picked up his cousin, Efrain Sanchez, and a female friend Aug. 17 while they were sitting in a parked car on Campbells Run Road.

Around 9:30 p.m. that evening, Robinson's Officer Maritz -- who had been involved in detaining the Vielma brothers -- approached the car and asked Efrain Sanchez to roll down the window, according to a police report. Mr. Sanchez handed over a Mexican identification and an international driver's license. The woman had no identification.

According to Efrain Sanchez's cousin, Officer Maritz told the pair, "You have no right to be in this country."

The officer then called ICE and put an agent on the phone with Mr. Sanchez and his companion. The agent told Officer Maritz they were in the U.S. illegally. He said ICE would detain them.

Chief Vietmeier defended the officer's actions: "Is it unusual for an officer to check on something like that? I don't think so."

But he did express regret about Ms. Luchuck's situation.

When she told her story last week at an Oakland meeting between police officials and Latino immigrants, he was visibly moved. He addressed the group and put his arm around the bride-to-be.

"I couldn't help but think of this young lady missing her wedding. It happened in my community," he said. "I apologize and will make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else, and we will work through this together."

The meeting room, with about 100 people, erupted in applause and cheers.

Ms. Luchuck met Eduardo Vielma when she first moved the Pittsburgh about four years ago and found a job waiting tables at Bahama Breeze in Robinson. Mr. Vielma was a dishwasher there.

She had studied some Spanish in school, and they soon started dating. During one of their early dates, he made a confession to her: "You know I'm a '*******,' right?"

He told her how he had crossed illegally into the U.S. in search of a better life. He stayed briefly with family in Los Angeles and then came to Pittsburgh after a relative told him it was a good place.

Ms. Luchuck still wanted to pursue the relationship.

"I wasn't happy how he got here," she said, "but I was really glad he was here."

The day of Mr. Vielma's detention, Ms. Luchuck was planning to pick up her future brother-in-law, Alberto Vielma, and take him to get his tuxedo for the wedding. She said Alberto Vielma hadn't been trying to steal anything from Kohl's; he was carrying around a pair of shoes that had been on display, looking for a store employee who could give him a box.

According to a police report, a Kohl's employee accused Alberto Vielma of taking the shoes, three pairs of shorts and four t-shirts.

The shoplifting charges were later dropped against Alberto Vielma, who is being held at a detention center in Texas. This month, an immigration judge in York said Eduardo Vielma could be released on a $5,000 bond and gave him 90 days to leave the U.S. on his own.

He was freed from a York prison on Thursday night, Ms. Luchuck said. They plan to marry before his deportation deadline, Dec. 2.

Her lawyer said Mr. Vielma may have to wait about two years before he can return to the U.S. legally. He officially faces a 10-year ban on entry, but he and Ms. Luchuck may be able to bypass that if they claim the separation causes family hardship.

Ms. Luchuck said she never doubts her choice to be with Mr. Vielma. And, if they can't figure out a way for him to return to the U.S., she's willing to leave her own country behind.

"I would go to the end of the Earth for him," she said. "If it means having to move to Mexico or Spain or Canada, or anywhere, that's what I'm going to do."
Jerome L. Sherman can be reached at jsherman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1183.

bayviews

September 25th, 2008, 08:15 AM

HAMTRAMCK: CITY EMPLOYEES BARRED FROM PROFILING - ORDINANCE AIMS TO EASE IMMIGRANTS ' FEARS
Detroit Free Press (MI) - January 24, 2008
Author: CECIL ANGEL, FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

The Hamtramck City Council has passed an ordinance that forbids police and other city employees from profiling and discriminating against people based on their race, religion and appearance and from asking about a person's immigration status.

It is the latest in a string of changes the city has made over the years as it has adapted to a wave of immigration that made what was once an overwhelmingly Polish enclave one of the most ethnically diverse communities in the state.

"We're fortunate to have an influx of immigrants," said Robert Zwolak, a former city councilman and a supporter of the ordinance. "Anything we can do to sustain and maintain that attraction for Hamtramck is going to be a win-win situation."

The Community-Participation In Local Government and Local Law Enforcement Ordinance passed Tuesday on a 5-1 vote.

The Detroit-based group Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength lobbied city officials to pass the ordinance because of concerns that immigrants who are victims of crime or witnesses would avoid the police because of their illegal status. It also would curb profiling based on national origin, sexual orientation, manner of dress and physical characteristics.

The City of Detroit has a similar ordinance, but what makes Hamtramck's unique is the city's racial and ethnic makeup.

According to the 2000 U.S. census, at least 41.1% of the city's population of 22,976 people was foreign-born and less than half of all residents speak English at home. The 2006 estimate by the census shows the population at 21,615, but the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments estimates the population jumped to 25,849 by this year.

The 2.1-square-mile city is a blend of immigrants from Poland, Bosnia, Bangladesh, Yemen and other countries who are neighbors with U.S.-born whites, African Americans and Asians.

Some smaller cities around the nation, such as Hazelton, Pa., have passed laws to crack down on illegal immigrant workers. But Hamtramck, a city established by Polish immigration, is learning to embrace the recent immigrants who have been key to its revival.

City Councilwoman Cathie Gordon said Tuesday that she was against the ordinance originally.

"I never experienced this, and maybe I was being a little narrow-minded," she said.

This amounts to a goodwill ordinance, she said.

"We have a wonderful police force and I don't think they'd dream of doing anything like that, but you never know," she said.

Police Chief James Doyle said he supports the ordinance because he didn't want people who are being abused or victimized to not seek help.

The lone dissenting council member, Alan Shulgon, said he believed the council was acting rash and that the city could face legal problems.

Hamtramck City Attorney James P. Allen Sr. said the ordinance doesn't tie the hands of police or interfere with federal immigration policy. Police can still ask about immigration status if they have probable cause.

The ordinance also requires the city to provide diversity training every year. An employee who violates the ordinance could lose his or her job depending on the nature of the offense, Allen said.

Bill Meyer, the chairman of the city Human Relations Commission, said, "This is an ordinance that's supposed to protect citizens, regular citizens - not criminals."

He said the law will make the city more appealing.

The city's image has taken a beating. There was a furor when a mosque wanted the city's permission to broadcast the call to prayer from outdoor speakers. For several years, the U. S. Justice Department monitored elections after voters who were legal immigrants from Bangladesh and the Middle East had their citizenship challenged at the polls.

bayviews

September 29th, 2008, 08:36 AM

Immigrants make it all work
Daily Gazette, The (Schenectady, NY) - August 3, 2008
Author: SARA FOSS and JILL BRYCE ; Gazette Reporters

When Marco Tomakin met his wife-to-be, El Bandalan, she had already signed a contract to become a nurse at Albany Medical Center.

So he signed one, too.

The couple moved to Albany from the Philippines in 2003. They had both trained in government-run nursing schools in their home country, and the idea of making more money in the U.S. appealed to them.

They weren't alone.

Since 2002, 341 Filipino nurses have come to work at Albany Medical Center, and there are 250 Filipino nurses now on staff. This hasn't happened by accident; the hospital has actively recruited nurses from the Philippines. It's just one of Albany Medical Center's strategies for dealing with a chronic, nationwide shortage in nurses, according to Greg McGarry, a spokesman for the hospital. "At any given time, we have 60 to 70 open positions," he said.

Hospitals throughout the country have successfully recruited nurses from the Philippines, which is why Albany Medical Center decided to give it a try, McGarry said. "We were aware that in the Philippines there are a number of well-trained nurses looking for work," he said. "They're fluent in English. They assimilate quite readily. Most of them have adjusted well with our homegrown staff."

Immigrants can be found working in almost every sector of the Capital Region's labor force. Many of them occupy low-wage, low-skill jobs, but there's another group of immigrants, one that's highly educated and well-paid, who are recruited to work here by businesses and schools unable to find enough qualified Americans to fill their work force. Though only 5 percent of the upstate population is foreign born, about 20 percent of the professors in upstate universities are immigrants. In health care, the fastest growing sector of the upstate economy, immigrants make up 35 percent of physicians and surgeons. Immigrants also comprise 20 percent of computer software engineers.

recruiting Scientists

The University at Albany aggressively recruits scientists from overseas.

Lynn Videka, vice president for research at the University at Albany, said building and maintaining a high-caliber science program requires a global perspective. "Science today is an international enterprise," she said. "No longer is the science of the world being solely produced by the United States."

Videka said the University at Albany identifies promising scientists based on their work, and then begins the process of recruiting them. "If we're looking for someone with experience in cancer biology, we'll look at the top journals and identify people who are doing the best work," she said. "Sometimes those people are U.S. nationals, and sometimes they're people [from other countries]."

After Sept. 11, it became tougher to recruit scientist from overseas, Videka said. "The level of scrutiny and restriction is higher," she said. "The Department of Homeland Security has quite a backlog. It's harder to recruit faculty and staff because of the restrictions." As a result, the University at Albany has hired a full-time administrative staff person to help their overseas recruits get the H-1B Visas they need to come to America and work. Sometimes, she said, the scientists also hire private attorneys to help them with this process.

Still, some scientists have opted not to come. Recently the University at Albany wanted to hire a Canadian chemist whose wife was about to have a baby. Unsure whether he would be able to obtain visas for his family, and concerned that travel between the U.S. and Canada was becoming more difficult, he decided to stay in Canada, Videka said.

There's a shortage of U.S. scientists, Videka said, and so it's not as if scientists from overseas are displacing Americans. Even without the tougher restrictions, it would still be more difficult to recruit from overseas, as other countries, such as China and India, as well as the European Union, have made major investments in science. China, for instance, has announced that it is creating 200 research universities. "Science is a worldwide economic engine," Videka said.

Albany Medical Center has also felt the effects of tighter immigration policies. "There's a real backlog," McGarry said. As a result, the hospital's recruitment has slowed; so far, only one nurse has come from the Philippines this year, though staff met with about 60 interested nurses in January. McGarry said Albany Medical Center is waiting to see whether things change under a new presidential administration before it steps up recruiting from the Philippines again.

Overseas recruiting is particularly common in high-tech jobs, such as engineering and biotechnology, said Jonathan Grosso, communications chair for the Capital Region Recruiters' Network. There's a shortage of skilled workers throughout the world, but it's particularly acute in the U.S., he said. "It's become even more of an issue because the labor market is tighter, and it will become even more of an issue as the baby boomers retire," he said.

Work is the biggest reason why immigrants come to the Capital Region.

Singh, who owns a gas station near Albany, said he and his family moved from Punjab, India, to the United States when he was 18. Like millions of immigrants, they saw this as the land of opportunity.

"It is a way to better your life, better your education. It really is the land of opportunity," said Singh, who asked that his full name be withheld. Singh said many people assume he has little education. Yet he earned a business degree at the University at Albany, and was a buyer at General Electric Power Systems. He said his family came to the United States so he could get the best education he could. Six years ago, he became a U.S. citizen. He says he's assimilated into the culture and considers himself more American than Indian.

Talk to a dozen immigrants and they'll each have their a unique story of why they came to the U.S.

Juan G. George moved to New York City, where his father's sisters lived, from the Dominican Republic when he was just 15. Eventually he moved to Albany. Today he lives in Albany, and is the operations manager at the Desmond Hotel.

Debra Cole moved to the United States from Trinidad for a better life. After five years, she earns $12.15 an hour as a nanny.

agriculture

Several industries in the Capital Region, including horse racing and agriculture, rely on immigrants for seasonal labor. In recent years, these industries are having more trouble finding workers because of federal crackdowns on illegal immigrants. In farming, immigrants with visas and undocumented workers together make up 80 percent of seasonal workers in upstate New York, according to a report by the Fiscal Policy Institute in Latham.

About 8,000 workers are needed to pick the apple crop in New York, and it's uncertain whether there will be enough workers this year.

"They are crucial to the apple industry," said Jim Allen, president of the New York Apple Association. "With [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] raids stepped up, there is no extra available help at this time." The workers' biggest crime, Allen said, is that they might not be 100 percent legal. But they are law-abiding, and they work hard. "No Americans want these jobs," he said. "I can boldly say that. It's seasonal work from Sept. 1 to Nov. 1. It's for three months. It's hard work, and as many hours as they can legally work. It's difficult work. Not too many want to do it."

The state Department of Labor wants farmers to consider domestic workers before hiring foreigners, and is trying to facilitate connections between New York farmers and workers in Puerto Rico. If farmers can't find U.S. citizens to cover their labor needs, they can hire through a federal program, the H-2A Temporary Foreign Worker Program, which allows foreign agricultural visas for seasonal work. To participate in the program, growers have to pay an average rate of $9.80 an hour and are required to pay transportation for workers, round trip, from their home country.

horse racing

The majority of people who work on the backstretch at Saratoga Race Course are immigrants, said NYRA spokesman John Lee.

"Could we operate without them? No. They are essential to racing at Saratoga," Lee said, adding that immigration issues are causing a shortage of backstretch workers.

The New York State Racing Association doesn't employ the backstretch workers; they are employed by the trainers. NYRA gives them credentials, and they must be licensed by the New York State Racing and Wagering Board. There are cases when someone provides false information to a trainer, but the overwhelming majority of the backstretch workers are here legally, Lee said.

The backstretch workers are the grooms, who provide hands-on care of the horses, clean up stalls, carry out used bedding and walk the horses after they're exercised to cool them down. Most backstretch workers come from Mexico and Central America.

"It's a heavily Spanish speaking group," Lee said. "I have been here 17 years. I haven't seen a big change."

Luis Gonzalez, 38, has been coming to Saratoga Springs from Santiago, Chile, to work the backstretch for the past six years. He comes, he said, "for opportunity. Everybody comes here for money." A commercial engineer by training, he said that the glut of engineers in his home country makes it difficult to find work there, and that working the backstretch is more lucrative.

"It's better money," Gonzalez said.

The people of Saratoga Springs have been welcoming, Gonzalez said. "The people are nice," he said. "I don't think anybody is racist or dangerous." But he said he has no plans to move to the U.S. permanently, and that his wife, who is pregnant, and 6-year-old daughter still live in Chile. "I love my country," he said.

This summer Gonzalez is attending English classes at Saratoga Springs United Methodist Church. These classes are sponsored by the Latino Community Advocacy Program at the Saratoga County Economic Opportunity Council. Many of the students work at the track, but others work in restaurants and other local businesses.

Like Gonzalez, Bandalan's earnings support family at home; she regularly sends money to her mother in the Philippines. Most of the Filipino nurses do this, Tomakin said.

"We send money home and it has a tremendous impact on the economy," Tomakin said. "It keeps it afloat." A nurse in the U.S., he said, earns more than a specialist in the Philippines. "In a private hospital in the Philippines, a nurse can make about $220 a month. At Albany Medical Center, nurses earn $220 a day," he explained.

"There's more opportunity here," Bandalan said.

Tomakin and Bandalan said it's easy for Filipinos to adjust to life in the U.S. "The Philippines were a colony of the states for so long, that there's a well-entrenched relationship between the U.S. and the Philippines," Tomakin said.

Bandalan still works as a nurse at Albany Medical Center. Tomakin, however, is now an immigration attorney with an office in Delmar; the vast majority of his clients are Filipinos. He said he became an attorney in the Philippines after finishing nursing school. "I wanted to do something worthwhile, so in my free time I went to law school," he recalled. When one of his patients at Albany Medical Center learned of his legal background, the patient, who happened to be an attorney, encouraged Tomakin to take the bar exam and become an attorney in the U.S.

The relationship between doctors and nurses is a little different in the U.S., Bandalan said. "In the Philippines, we looked up to the doctors and we always had to call them doctor," she said. "Here, the attendings are open to being called by their first names. They want to encourage teamwork."

Overall, Bandalan and Tomakin are happy here.

"You miss certain foods, certain things," Tomakin said. "I feel homesick at times. But here it's a new experience, and I also enjoy it."

bayviews

October 2nd, 2008, 06:48 AM

SISTERS PRAY FOR IMMIGRATION REFORM AT RALLY
Post-Standard, The ( Syracuse , NY) - August 9, 2008
Author: RENEE K. GADOUA RELIGION NOTEBOOK

Members of the Syracuse -based Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities were among about 300 people who prayed for immigration reform last month during a rally outside Buffalo's St. Joseph Cathedral.

"Singing could be heard for blocks," reported the Buffalo News.

"Our commitment to Catholic social teaching impels us to stand with the poor and vulnerable, to welcome the stranger among us -- including immigrants seeking work, a safe home, education for their children, and a decent life for their families," Sister Patricia Burkard, general minister of the Franciscans said in a news release.

The July 16 event came during the community's quadrennial meeting in Buffalo. During that meeting, which brought together members from Central and Western New York, Hawaii and Peru, Sister Burkard was re-elected to lead the group of 550 Franciscan women.

Since the early 1980s, the religious community that traces its roots to St. Francis and St. Clare has worked with other faith-based groups to minister to refugees.

The Buffalo event isn't the first time the Roman Catholic women's religious community took to the streets calling for immigration reform. Members participated in a similar event in Syracuse in April 2006.

Cardinal urges reform

Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony, of Los Angeles, urged presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain to make immigration reform a top-level priority.

In a keynote address to the National Migration Conference in Washington, D.C., on July 28, called the nation's attitude toward immigrants "dangerous and unwelcoming."

"A human being's worth is defined by their God-given dignity, not by what papers they carry," Mahony said, according to Religion News Service.

In December, Mahony sent a letter to the presidential candidates asking them to tone down their rhetoric against undocumented immigrants, and in 2006, Mahony instructed his priests to ignore a federal immigration bill if it passed into law.

"While we acknowledge the right and need for our government to enforce the law, we must remind our fellow Americans that man-made law does not permit the violation of God's law," Mahony said.

Election issues

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops this week posted several articles on the church's view of issues relevant to the upcoming elections. Read experts' analyses of issues including the environment, poverty, Iraq and stem cells at www. faithfulcitizenship.org/.

Immigration is also on the list of issues church leaders hope Catholics will study before going to the polls.

"Above all, immigration is a humanitarian, and, ultimately, a moral issue," writes J. Kevin Appleby, director of the Office of Migration and Refugee Policy for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"Each day in parishes, social service programs, hospitals, and schools the human consequences of an inadequate immigration system are apparent. Families are separated; migrant workers are exploited by smugglers and unscrupulous employers; and human beings, desperate to survive, perish in the American desert," Appleby continues. "As our nation benefits from the hard work of undocumented workers, we fail to extend to them basic workplace and legal protections. Worse, some scapegoat immigrants for our social ills."

Building a fence along the border is not an answer, he says.

It is imperative that both parties and both chambers of Congress work hard to produce legislation that creates an immigration system predicated on the rule of law and that upholds values all Americans cherish -- hard work, opportunity, and compassion, Appleby concludes.

bayviews

October 9th, 2008, 03:35 AM

These are the kinds of immigration raids, targetting criminal aliens, that DO make good common sense.

Nationwide Gang Sweep Brings More Than 1,700 Arrests
Los Angeles Times (LATWP News Service) (CA) - October 2, 2008
Author: Cynthia Dizikes

WASHINGTON -- More than 1,700 alleged gang members and associates, many of them illegal immigrants , were arrested during a four-month nationwide crackdown that spanned 53 cities , federal officials said.

"We've inflicted significant damage on various violent street gangs in every part of the country, from Wichita to Sheboygan," said Julie L. Myers, assistant secretary of homeland security for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "And that has made our communities immeasurably safer."

California led the arrest totals with 430 during the course of the law-enforcement initiative, which ran from June 1 to Sept. 30 and included 28 states. Of those arrests, 168 were made in Los Angeles. Texas was second among the states, with 271 arrests.

Operation Community Shield mostly targeted Latin and Central American street gangs, including Surenos, MS-13, 18th Street Gang and the Latin Kings, Myers said during a news conference Wednesday. The alleged gang members were mostly foreign-born, with many involved in serious crimes such as robbery, extortion, rape or murder, according to immigration officials.

"These gangs, and others like them, prey on our neighborhoods, prey on our communities, (and) take advantage of the individuals who live there," Myers said.

The Surenos street gang, a loose organization that originated in the California prison system, had the largest number of arrests.

Of the 1,759 people arrested, 1,029 were charged with immigration violations and face deportation proceedings. The remaining 730 face criminal charges such as assault, drug possession or re-entering the country after deportation.

Among those arrested for criminal violations were 392 U.S. citizens. "The problem is not limited to one nationality," Myers said. The arrests this year represent a 34 percent increase from a similar 2007 operation, which resulted in 1,313 arrests. Myers called the latest crackdown a success and attributed the increase in arrests to continued cooperation between federal and local officials, some of whom find immigration enforcement to be a delicate issue in their communities.

"Any victim, witness or other person not engaged in criminal activity has no reason to fear our police department," said police Chief Charles Everett, of the Union City Police Department in New Jersey, one of the local authorities involved in the arrests. "However, habitual criminals, street-gang members, members of drug-dealing cliques, sexual predators and anyone else who poses a significant threat to the people that we are charged to protect is not welcome in our city."

Since 2005, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has arrested more than 11,100 alleged members and associates of hundreds of gangs. Of those arrested, 3,997 have been criminally charged and 7,109 have been charged with immigration violations and processed for deportation.

bayviews

October 9th, 2008, 04:01 AM

Immigrants as well as upstate NYers have contributed to Charlotte's growth

NEW TO COUNTY, NEW TO NATION - 1 IN 3 OF CHARLOTTE'S NEWEST RESIDENTS CAME FROM OUTSIDE U.S.
Charlotte Observer, The (NC) - August 16, 2006
Author: FRANCO ORDOñEZ, FORDONEZ@CHARLOTTEOBSERVER.COM

Immigrants drove much of the population growth in the Charlotte -Mecklenburg region over the last five years.

Foreign-born residents accounted for more than one-third of the 85,164 new residents, according to new U.S. Census data released Tuesday.

The new numbers signal growing diversity in an area that historically missed out on many of the immigration waves experienced in other parts of the country.

"We talk about Charlotte being a global place," said Owen Furuseth, a geography professor and associate provost for metropolitan studies at UNC Charlotte. "What we're seeing is that it's no longer bravado. It's really occurring."

Today, approximately 1 out of 8 Mecklenburg county residents was born in another country, the statistics show.

The Mecklenburg numbers reflect national statistics: 12.4 percent of U.S. residents are foreign born. In comparison, New York City's immigrant community has grown to 37 percent of the city. The vast majority of immigrants come from Mexico and other Latin American countries. Thousands have also arrived from India, China, Vietnam and throughout the world.

"Back home, the U.S. is still considered the land of gold," said Kartik Mirani, 27.

Mirani is owner of an uptown Roly Poly sandwich shop and part-time taxi driver from Rajkot, India. He moved to the United States 12 years ago. He said his middle-class family sent him to live with an aunt in New Jersey hoping that he could make a better life for himself. He moved to Charlotte six years ago.

"When you see the hardships and struggles in India, you see you don't have the same opportunities. Here, if you work hard, you can succeed."

The population findings represents the most detailed data since the 2000 U.S. Census. Previously, such in-depth findings were released only once a decade.

The data helps government agencies and businesses plan for growth and economic development.

North Carolina, like many Southeastern states, continues to be a big draw for immigrants in search of jobs and more affordable living conditions. At 30.4 percent growth , the state continues to have one of the fastest growing immigrant communities. South Carolina experienced 48 percent growth in the same period.

The Census does not account for illegal immigration. The Washington-based Pew Hispanic Center has estimated that 390,000 illegal immigrants live in North Carolina and 55,000 live in South Carolina.

Around Charlotte, immigrant communities saw even larger percent increases. Cabarrus County, for example, saw a 47.8 percent over the last five years. Union County saw its immigrant community rise 73 percent.

Recent large-scale immigration is relatively new in Charlotte.

In the past century, thousands of immigrants were hired, for example, to help build cars in Detroit, work in steel factories in Pittsburgh and in meatpacking in Chicago, according to Tom Hanchett, historian at the Levine Museum of the New South.

"Except for a small number of Greeks and a small number of Germans, immigrants were almost unheard of here," he said. "I can remember in 1981 when I came here, there wasn't even a Mexican restaurant."

bayviews

October 12th, 2008, 04:30 AM

Montserrat immigrants are thriving in Boston
Boston Globe, The (MA) - September 29, 2008
Author: Brian R. Ballou ; Globe Staff

On most weekends, a few dozen people from the tiny island nation of Montserrat converge at the Montserrat Aspirer's Community Center in Dorchester to catch a taste of home from a pot of goat water stew.

They play dominoes and discuss politics and dream of the half-destroyed homes they left behind for Boston, where they make up one of the city 's smallest and most distinctive immigrant groups.

While other Caribbean countries such as Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti are more widely known and have significantly larger communities in the United States, Montserrat is a relative unknown and has just a few thousand of its native sons and daughters living in Boston, sprinkled anonymously in Roxbury, Mattapan, and Dorchester.

"We're just a little island, and nobody seems to know about us," said Jean Lee, 56.

But they have found a larger, and seemingly unlikely, immigrant group with which they share a historic bond, the Irish.

A group of Irish settled on the island in the early 1600s, and Thomas Keown, spokesman for the Irish Immigration Center of Boston, said the Irish influence is strong.

"There are plenty of folks to this day with Irish last names and a bit of an Irish twang," Keown said.

Montserrat, a British overseas territory, is the only country outside of Ireland that recognizes St. Patrick's Day as a national holiday, he said.

"In Montserrat, the celebration lasts for a week," he said.

The Irish Immigration Center and the Aspirer's Club organize the Black and Green Celebration every St. Patrick's Day, an event recognizing both cultures and their relation. The event features traditional dance and food from both countries.

Three years ago, the center rallied around hundreds of Montserratians who received temporary visas in 1995 after Montserrat's Soufriere Hills volcano erupted, burying the capital in mud and ash and rendering half the 10-mile-long island unin habitable. Nearly half the country's 13,000 residents fled, many to Britain and others to the United States. The volcano has quieted down, but remains active. US authorities called an end to the temporary visas in 2005.

"It was a very difficult time for them because most of the island was still covered in about 3 feet of ash," Keown said. "There was no home to go back to."

Instead of leaving, as they were ordered to do by immigration officials, many of the former visa holders have remained in the United States, illegally.

The Dorchester community center, tucked between a Caribbean shipping company and a Baptist church, is home away from home for many Montserratians. On weekends, dozens of them go for Friday night dances with calypso and reggae music or for dinners of goat water, a spicy national favorite made with papaya and dumplings.

About twice a month, the center has a meeting with members to discuss operational matters and events.

A "Cultural Day Celebration" is scheduled for the community Saturday, at the Glad Tidings Pentecostal Assembly Church on Norfolk Street in Dorchester. The event will kick off at 4 p.m., and will include traditional food and people wearing traditional dress.

Patrick Lee, 53, said he is reminded of home when he stops in to play dominoes or watch sports on the television while discussing politics with fellow Montserratians.

Lee arrived in the Boston area in 1985 to go to college. Most of his family was already here. "I started working a month after I got here, doing survey work on construction sites," said Lee, a construction site safety officer for JF White Contracting for the last 20 years. "It was so cold, sometimes I just wanted to quit and go home."

Lee has visited his homeland several times since leaving. "When I went back in '97 and I saw the area where I grew up, I felt like something had been taken away from me. It was completely covered in thick ashes. In spite of all the destruction, some people still remain, but there is very little left there, very few jobs or opportunities to make a life."

Many Montserratian men work in construction, which comes in handy whenever someone in the community purchases a home. Ernestine Sydney, 52, from Roxbury said, "we help each other find homes, and then all the men pitch in to help fix them up. It's a lot of work, but it's also a chance for everyone to get together."

Jennifer Daley arrived in the United States about 30 years ago after her sister won a beauty pageant with a grand prize of a vacation in Boston. During the trip, Daley's sister fell in love with the city and decided to stay. The rest of the family followed. Daley now works as a receptionist at the Boston Medical Examiner's Office.

"At first, it took a while to get adjusted to the weather in the winter," she said. "It was so cold. I think that is the first thing that a lot of people from my country have difficulty with. But almost everyone I know loves it here. There much more of an opportunity to make a better life, and the city , it's beautiful."

Daley said she would like to open a Montserratian restaurant in the Roslindale area. "It would be the first one," she said. "I already have the name, 'Taste of the Emerald Isle."'
Caption: John Bohn/Globe Staff William Edmeade, 76, a native Montserratian, generated a hearty laugh from Audrey Frederick, a fellow Montserratian.

bayviews

October 17th, 2008, 08:23 AM

Orleans legislator seeks support for farmworkers
Daily News, The (Batavia, NY) - August 9, 2008
Author: Tom Rivers ; trivers@batavianews.com

ALBION -- Stepped-up immigration enforcement over the past three years, has put local farms at risk of having far too few workers to harvest their crops, Orleans County Legislator Gary Kent said.

The enforcement also has hit other businesses hard that rely on the workers to patronize their businesses, including grocery stores, Laundromats and convenience stores.

Kent next week will introduce a resolution in the County Legislature, "affirming the importance of migrant farm labor to agriculture in Orleans County." He wants local police to back off immigration enforcement, leaving that role to federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

He also wants the farmworkers to be guaranteed due process under law, and not be subject to police searches unless there is probable cause they are breaking the law.

"I'm just asking for a simple acknowledgement of the importance of migrant labor to the Orleans County economy and the agricultural economy," he said.

Congress has increased the number of ICE officers the past two years while talks of immigration reform continue to be stymied. Without an overhaul in the immigration system, farms have not been able to bring in enough legal workers to plant and harvest crops, making the agricultural industry vulnerable to having their workers seized by ICE.

Agriculture accounts for about $75 million in annual sales in Orleans County, with the fruit, vegetable and dairy farms heavily dependent on migrant workers.

Many of the Orleans farms have switched from some of the more labor-intensive crops to less lucrative corn, which can be harvested by machine.

Border Patrol and ICE vehicles have become a common sight in Orleans County, particularly at grocery stores on Friday evenings and on the weekends. Jerome Pawlak, owner of Pawlak's Save-A-Lot in Albion, said his business has suffered from the immigration enforcement and frequent presence of police and immigration officials in his parking lot. He said Laundromats and convenience stores also have lost many of their farmworker customers.

Many farms have stopped bringing their workers into Albion and Orleans County stores, instead taking them to Brockport destinations, where Pawlak said immigration authorities and police aren't as aggressive in stopping and questioning workers from Mexico.

That has resulted in fewer customers for Orleans County businesses and lost sales tax revenue for the county government, Pawlak said.

"They are afraid of their weekly shopping trip," said Ami Kadar, director of CITA, an organization in Albion that serves farmworkers. "They are avoiding Albion, I can tell you that."

Workers have tried to reduce their shopping trips, and many have stopped going to church after an immigration raid at a Catholic church in Sodus , she said.

"They have become more isolated," she said about the workers. "They try to get people to shop for them. It's not a life. You work and then you just sit home. Everyone is really scared to go anywhere."

Kadar said she appreciates Kent's willingness to press the Legislature for a public statement of support for the workers. She said several church leaders and other community members also want to create a more welcoming community for the workers.

"It's been wonderful for me to see the support and it's wide-ranging," she said.

The resolution affirming farmworkers and their contribution to the local economy is on the Legislature's agenda for Wednesday. The meeting begins at 4:30 p.m. at the County Clerk's Building at 3 South Main St.

Evergrey

November 16th, 2008, 11:19 PM

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20081116_As_U_S__economy_sours__immigrants_head_for_home.html

As U.S. economy sours, immigrants head for home

By Michael Matza

Inquirer Staff Writer
Francisco "Frank" Santos, a Brazilian immigrant living in Trenton, prospered as a busy laborer pouring concrete foundations back when home builders ruled.

"I had a lot of dreams, oh, my God. To buy some house, a car, a motorcycle," said Santos, 32, who came to the United States in 2000.

When the construction market tanked six years later, he found himself sidelined. With part-time jobs, he made $440 a week, a third of his former pay, and struggled to meet his $800-a-month rent.

Rather than tough it out, Santos decided to go back to Brazil. With his construction earnings, he had invested in a small car wash and an Internet cafe, which he plans to run there.

"I can't continue here," he said just before his recent departure. "I want to eat."

The unrelenting blows to the U.S. economy have landed even harder on other immigrants in the region, whose low wages, lack of nearby family, and ineligibility for welfare make riding out tight times difficult - so difficult that increasing numbers of them are returning home.

The Brazilian consulate in New York, which keeps tabs on the Mid-Atlantic region, recently dispatched diplomats to the Philadelphia area to help expedite the unusual volume of passport renewals for Brazilians wanting to go back.

And they are not the only group in which experts are noticing reverse migration hastened by the economy.

Mexican immigrants tend to flow back and forth across the border as U.S. labor demands wax and wane, said Enrique Ruiz Sanchez, Mexican consul in Philadelphia.

However, Mexico City reportedly is expecting the imminent return of 30,000 more immigrants than usual because of America's slumping economy. The U.S. Border Patrol says apprehensions for illegal crossings are down nearly 40 percent from 2005.

"So many immigrants in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania are connected to the middle-class service sectors," said Janice Fine, an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University and an expert on immigrant employment. "When executives and the middle class are affected by the downturn, they are less likely to use child care, landscapers, or go out to eat."

In Montgomery County, the Latino population is estimated at 24,000. Most Latinos live in the Norristown area, where Adamino Ortiz is watching jobs disappear and immigrants with them.

"They say the door is closing every day more and more," said Ortiz, interim executive director of ACLAMO - Accion Comunal Latinoamericana de Montgomery County, an agency providing employment assistance to Hispanic immigrants in the county seat.

His service-sector clients, he said, have been losing about 25 jobs a week.

In the past, "every month there were new families coming, and they were able to find jobs - sometimes two jobs - to survive," he said. "Right now they can't even get one job.

Some are facing homelessness, Ortiz said, but "the ones that have the means, a great number of them are returning to their countries of origin: Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala."

While those economies are hard-pressed, too, he said, "at least they are with their own families there."

Guatemalan-born Manuel Portillo, executive director of the Open Borders Project, a North Philadelphia job- and language-training program, attended a community meeting where he met two Mexicans and a Cuban who lost jobs at Center City restaurants.

"Remember," he said, "these are survival jobs."

An analysis released last month by the Pew Hispanic Center found that the "economic slowdown has taken a far greater toll on noncitizen immigrants" than on the U.S. population as a whole. Median annual income for immigrant households in 2007 fell 7.3 percent from 2006 while it grew 1.3 percent for all other households.

Not only do immigrants lack rainy-day reserves, but also most of their social networks probably are inadequate for the current crisis, said Peter Cappelli, an expert on the economic aspects of immigration at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

"You need to take into consideration the poverty that comes from your social capital," he said, "not just your physical capital."

Santos, the Brazilian laborer who went home, settled first in Philadelphia, married an American woman in 2003, and got a green card authorizing him to work, he said. For six years, the couple lived in the Castor section of Northeast Philadelphia, home to many Brazilians.

When the building bubble burst, he tried working as a paver, a landscaper and a bartender, but couldn't earn enough. The pressure on his marriage, he said, contributed to his divorce last year.

Of nearly one million Brazilians in the United States, about 250,000 live in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Delaware, according to Brazilian deputy consul Erika Watanabe in New York. Although the consulate does not keep track of how many have returned to Brazil, she said she had seen "a significant increase" in people asking for "certificates of residence," which prove they lived abroad. The certificates are required when taking personal effects back to Brazil.

Celso DeSouza, 59, head of the nonprofit Brazilian Organization for Social Services in Greater Philadelphia, said Brazilians were indeed leaving the region - even though their nation of 190 million people is beginning to feel the effects of the global financial crisis.

In the last year, DeSouza said, he helped 20 to 30 families plan their return to Brazil.

"They tell me, 'I have been here for five years. I can't make ends meet these days. I don't speak English. I'm not legal. I don't make enough to send money back to Brazil. Why should I stay here in the U.S. with all this pressure on?' " he said.

Because Victoria Truong, owner of Ong's restaurant in Philadelphia's Chinatown, is feeling the effects of fewer people eating out, so is her staff. An ethnic Chinese who came to America from Vietnam, Truong, a U.S. citizen, is well-established here. But several of her employees are not, including one she recently let go because business is off.

"Now I mop the floor myself," she said in a room of mostly empty tables during a lunch hour.

For recent immigrants, the problems brought on by job loss are compounded by the unavailability of public benefits, said Jonathan Blazer, a lawyer for the National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy group.

"In order to get food stamps as an adult in Pennsylvania," Blazer said, "you have to have had your green card, or some other 'qualified alien' status, for at least five years."

Ronaldo Empke, branch president of Harvest Institute, a national English-as-a-second-language school with chapters in Philadelphia and Delran, said his clientele had fallen off because so many Brazilians had gone home.

"Most of the men used to work in construction," he said. "Now they are not able to maintain themselves."

Edvaldo Ferneda cannot - at least not in his preferred trade. He came to the United States from Brazil in 1998; settled in Riverside, Burlington County; and worked as a carpenter building houses. At first, his weekly pay was $380. In the best of times, it shot to $2,000. By 2006, he was lucky to make $600 a week.

The burly Ferneda, 46, is a laborer at heart, so he swallowed hard before joining Cecilia Cleaning Services, which his wife, Terezinha, started and named for her mother.

Working as hard as ever, he and his wife earn just about what he used to make on his own. It means pushing a vacuum at night over beauty salon and doctor's office carpets, a far cry from construction. But, he said, he had "bills to pay, meals to eat, kids to support," and parents and a stepdaughter in Brazil counting on his help.

Born in Brazil, Mariza Demelo has lived in Philadelphia for 33 years. Married with children born here, Demelo has no intention of returning to Brazil to live.

But her youngest son, 23-year-old Andrew, takes a different view.

A student at Community College of Philadelphia, he works part time for an ambulance service. His mother tells him the economy will get better, but he's not so sure. That's why he wants to add Brazilian citizenship, in case he wants to seek work there.

"He doesn't know which way [the U.S. economy] is going," Demelo said. "He said, 'I think I should have other options.' I told him, 'It will rebound.' He tells me, 'No. You're wrong. It's never been this bad.' "

Contact staff writer Michael Matza at 215-854-2541 or mmatza@phillynews.com.

bjfan82

December 12th, 2008, 07:47 PM

bayviews, I want your opinion!

You know I'm not one to 'blame racism first' but when I saw this the other day, I immediately thought it was racist (at worst, insensitive at best) and am considering bringing it to the attention of the appropriate person to change.

I'm planning on going to a conference in the early spring, and as I was constructing my program of sessions I came across this following title:

Travel In the ’Hood: Ethnic Neighborhoods and Mode Choice

Many urban planners promote mixed-use developments as one component of a broader sustainable development strategy. Scholars and advocates argue that these neighborhoods have the potential to reduce congestion by promoting fewer trips, shorter travel distances, and alternative modes of travel. With their mix of ethnic residents, businesses, services, and community institutions, ethnic enclaves share many of the characteristics of these mixed-use neighborhoods. We hypothesize, therefore, that residents living in these ethnic neighborhoods will exhibit different travel behavior than those living outside of ethnic neighborhoods. Drawing on data from the 2000 U.S. Census, we examine whether residents of ethnic neighborhoods are more likely to commute by carpool and public transit than other workers. We find a relationship between residential location in ethnic clusters and travel behavior. The findings provide insight into the relationship among social networks, land use, and travel behavior.

It is a very valid issue and one that is very important issue to me in the field of urban planning called "environmental justice." I'm sure the content will be very professional presented and of good quality. However, to me the title seems a little offensive to the people that live in ethnic enclaves of a city...to broadly refer to them as the slang word - "hood." I'm not going to post the two authors names, but they are from UCLA.

What are your thoughts?

bayviews

December 13th, 2008, 04:42 AM

bjfan82

December 13th, 2008, 04:56 PM

Both the title & subject sound fine to me, I'm not very "PC".

Oh ok, well I guess I was just recalling a time when Joel Giambra referred to a neighborhood in the city as the "hood" and there was an uproar from the residents. Their argument was that there were real hard working people trying to make ends meet living there, and that it was looking down upon them to call it the 'hood'. Oh well, thx.

bayviews

December 14th, 2008, 03:05 AM

Oh ok, well I guess I was just recalling a time when Joel Giambra referred to a neighborhood in the city as the "hood" and there was an uproar from the residents. Their argument was that there were real hard working people trying to make ends meet living there, and that it was looking down upon them to call it the 'hood'. Oh well, thx.

Well, a lot has to do with who says it & the context.

I hadn't heard of that incident with Giambra. But he wasn't known as being very inclusive to the kinda folks who predominate in the ghettos or barrios aka "hoods". Plus he WAS at that time one of the most powerful politician, so yeah I can imagine that would sound demeaning.

On the other hand for an academic or someone from a think tank who's doing a study that sounds like it might benefit a database & improve transportation, that's very different.

BTW, good luck on your environmental justice work! One of the early EJ groups, the Toxic Avengers started a drive to clean up the Brooklyn waterfront in the early 90s.

bayviews

December 24th, 2008, 01:26 AM

Dozens protest raids on migrants
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle (NY) - Thursday, December 11, 2008
Author: JAMIE GERMANO staff photographer, Gary McLendon

Gary McLendon

Staff writer

Nearly 60 people from organizations across the state rallied Wednesday in front of the U.S. Border Patrol Station in Irondequoit against laws affecting migrant farm workers.

The rally was held to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

"We are not protesting the individual border patrol agents. It's their methodologies and their mandate," said rally organizer John Ghertner of Sodus, Wayne County.

Protesters say that while trying to enforce the law, agents are rounding up migrants through warrantless raids, and using racial profiling and questioning.

U.S. Border Patrol Buffalo sector spokesman A.J. Price, via phone from Grand Island, said to the contrary, the most common comment the border patrol hears is that its agents are acting in a professional manner.

"We actually think it's a positive. It means they are doing their jobs better," he said. "We're catching more people who are in the U.S. illegally."

Price said the Buffalo sector ( Buffalo , Erie, Pa., Niagara Falls, Rochester, Oswego and Wellesley Island) has hired more than 100 agents in the past two years, and apprehended more than 3,000 illegal immigrants , 900 more than a year ago.

"They (migrants) are overstaying their visas, coming over the border illegally, or violating the law while here, invalidating their legal immigration status," he said.

Protesters also discussed equal rights for farm workers.

Migrant farm work is dangerous, with workers facing the dangers of chemical exposure, unsafe work equipment and transportation, and squalid living conditions.

"They are not safe at work. They are not safe at home. They are not safe in-between home and work. Where are they safe? They are not safe anywhere," said lawyer Michael Bersani of Geneva. "A lot of people that are undocumented think they don't have any rights. We're talking about human rights."

In addition, said protesters, the economic reality of farm work — there are not enough local people to do the difficult, low-paying work of harvesting fruit and vegetables and working on dairy farms — creates the need to enforce workers' rights.

"To spend the money to arrest and deport them is not helpful to anybody," Bersani said. "... There are local institutions like dollar stores, clothing stores and Laundromats that depend on people for their enterprise. They are not getting that business now."

Evergrey

January 15th, 2009, 12:00 PM

This is what bayviews talks about all the time... immigrants starting businesses in our cities

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09015/941799-34.stm

Deli brings Polish tasty treats to the Strip

Fresh Find
Thursday, January 15, 2009
By Bob Batz Jr., Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/images/200901/xrombach_food_deli_1_500.jpg

A couple emigrates from Poland to Western Pennsylvania and after getting established opens a storefront to sell to fellow immigrants and others many of the Polish foods they dearly miss from home.

It sounds like a story from the turn of the last century, but it's actually one for the turn of the New Year: Just before Christmas, Slawomir and Dorota Pyszkowski opened the S&D Polish Deli in the Strip District.

It's a treasure trove of tasty treats, whether you're Polish or just interested in unusual foods.

As Ms. Pyszkowski puts it, "It's a lot of heart put into the place."

The couple, who wed in their native Wloclawek, moved seven years ago to Scottdale, Westmoreland County, to be near family there. They started a residential construction company. But several years ago, they began to think about also opening a store, if only so they didn't have to go to New Jersey and Cleveland and Detroit and Chicago for certain specialties.

Because of how strongly Pittsburgh identifies, and is identified, with Eastern European heritage, the couple were surprised at the relative lack of Polish foodstuffs.

They hurried to remodel the rental space (next door to Penn Avenue Fish Co.) and open in time for the holidays when peopleï¿ 1/2wanted this stuff on their Christmas tables -- everything from plum butter to kielbasa and much more.

There are other places that sell Polish food -- Alfred's Deli Plus just reopened on neighboring Polish Hill, and don't forget Forgotten Taste in Moon and Pine -- but not this much Polish food.

There's a case full of Polish sausages (including rarities such as krakowska, or ham sausage), hams and cold cuts, much of it from Joe & Frank's Sausage Co. in Chicago, which provides a poster key to what's what, and a little case of imported cheeses and butters and fish.

There's a whole row of candy, which has a special place in the Polish heart, including ptasie mleczko, or bird's milk -- soft marshmallow coated in chocolate -- and delicje cookies.

It's a delight to visually scan both sides of the other aisle and take in the jewel-like preserved fruits and syrups, jarred sauerkrauts and salads, unusual vegetables such as sorrel, and of course Polish dill pickles, plus everything from borscht and other soup mixes to dried mushrooms to baby foods, even periodicals and pharmaceuticals, not to mention red and white "Polish Pittsburgh Fan" mugs.

Last week, they fired up a hot food bar, from which they serve, for eat-in or takeout, pierogies (savory and sweet), halushki, sausages, stews (such as hunters stew), soups and dumplings.

"This store is heaven," said Jim Sidick of Robinson last week. His Polish wife, Aleksandra, was out of the country, so he stopped in to get himself three huge pierogies, a pack of Polish coffee and a Quattro candy bar.

The Pyszkowskis -- he's 34, she's 36, and they have four children, including twin boys, 9; a daughter, 10; and another son, 12 -- are active in the region's Polish community.

But even they have been surprised at all the Polish people who've already found the store, especially younger, first-generation ones like them.

"A lot of students at the universities, workers," says Ms. Pyszkowski, whose English is better but prettily accented. "I didn't realize we had Polish babies here!"

But she's had requests for certain Polish baby foods from young mothers.

Other customers have not been shy about asking for favorite items, and so the inventory continues to expand, as will the seating area. She would like to decorate with Polish pictures and other artifacts, "So on top of eating, they will have some cultural experience here."

They considered other neighborhoods, but focused on the foodie Strip after attending services at nearby St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church, where they still sing hymns in Polish.

They are keeping their construction business going in Scottdale, which is, she says, why they close the food store on Sundays. "That's family time."

S&D Polish Deli, at 2204 Penn Ave., is open 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays. Phone: 412-281-2906.

-- Bob Batz Jr.

bayviews

January 27th, 2009, 06:52 AM

Here's one of the articles from Newsweek's recent special edition, Obama's America, that highlights the increasing racial & ethnic diversity of the US population.

The Refugees Who Saved Lewiston - A dying Maine mill town gets a fresh burst of energy.
Newsweek - Monday, January 26, 2009
Author: Jesse Ellison

Barely a decade ago, Lewiston, Maine, was dying. The once bustling mill town's population had been shrinking since the 1970s; most jobs had vanished long before, and residents (those who hadn't already fled) called the decaying center of town "the combat zone." That was before a family of Somali refugees discovered Lewiston in 2001 and began spreading the word to immigrant friends and relatives that housing was cheap and it looked like a good place to build new lives and raise children in peace. Since then, the place has been transformed. Per capita income has soared, and crime rates have dropped. In 2004, Inc. magazine named Lewiston one of the best places to do business in America, and in 2007, it was named an "All-America City" by the National Civic League, the first time any town in Maine had received that honor in roughly 40 years. "No one could have dreamed this," says Chip Morrison, the local Chamber of Commerce president. "Not even me, and I'm an optimist."

Immigrants from Somalia may sound like improbable rescuers for a place like Lewiston. Maine is one of the whitest states in the country, second only to Vermont, and its old families have a reputation for distinct chilliness toward "outsiders." And many of the immigrants spoke no English at all when they arrived. But even beyond the obvious racial, cultural and religious differences between the Muslim newcomers and the locals, the town's image had become so negative that it was hard to imagine people choosing to move there. "Nothing could have rightfully prepared them," says Paul Badeau of the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council. "And nothing could have rightfully prepared us, either." It wasn't easy at first. Townspeople feared for the few jobs that remained in the area, and they warned that the strangers would overload local social services. In 2002, the then Mayor Laurier Raymond wrote an open letter to the Somali community begging them to stop encouraging friends and family to follow them to Maine.

But the Somalis kept coming, followed by Sudanese, Congolese and other Africans. By some estimates, 4,000 new immigrants have moved to Lewiston since 2001, and dozens are still arriving every month. Eight years ago, the town's adult-education center had only 76 students learning English as a second language. Now some 950 pass through every year. "This is just the teeniest little part of what has happened to the city," says the center's coordinator, Anne Kemper. "Everybody has had to scramble." Today, Somali women and children in donated winter parkas carefully navigate the snowbanks in the town's formerly crime-ridden low-income residential area.

The center of town still has pawnbrokers and bars, but now there are also shops with names like Mogadishu and Baracka, with signs advertising halal foods and selling headscarves and prepaid African phone cards. "Generally, refugees or migrants that come into a town give a new injection of energy," says Karen Jacobsen, director of the Forced Migration Program at Tufts University's Feinstein International Famine Center. "Somalis particularly. They have a very good network [with strong] trading links, and new economic activities they bring with them." Retailers sell clothes and spices imported from Africa; other entrepreneurs have launched restaurants and small businesses providing translation services, in-home care for the elderly and other social services. There's even a business consultant. "Increasingly, there's an acceptance that immigration is associated with good economic growth," says urban-studies specialist Richard Florida, director of the University of Toronto's Martin Prosperity Institute. "How is Maine going to grow? It's a big state with a sparse population . One of the ways to grow quickly is import people."

Commerce isn't all the Somalis are reshaping. Maine has America's highest median age and the lowest percentage of residents under 18. Throughout the 1990s, the state's population of 20- to 30-year-olds fell an average of 3,000 a year. Demographers predict that by 2030, the state will have only two workers for each retiree. "In many small Maine towns they're looking at having to close schools for lack of schoolchildren," says State Economist Catherine Reilly. "It will snowball. Right now we're seeing the difficulty of keeping some schools open; in 10 or 15 years that's going to be the difficulty of businesses finding workers." The same ominous trend is seen in other states with similarly homogenous demographics and low numbers of foreign-born residents—states like Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia. Reilly adds: "If you told a demographer just our racial composition, they would be able to guess that we're an old state with a low birthrate."

Lewiston's sudden jolt is reflected even in enrollment at local universities. Although University of Maine enrollment has dropped systemwide since 2002, the student population at its Lewiston campus jumped 16 percent between 2002 and 2007. And Andover College, which opened a campus in Lewiston in 2004, had to start expanding almost immediately to accommodate a boom in applications. Enrollment doubled in two years. The reason? "Young people didn't want to go to a place that's all white," says Morrison. Practically everyone in Lewiston credits the Somalis' discovery of their town with much of its newfound success. "It's been an absolute blessing in many ways," says Badeau. "Just to have an infusion of diversity , an infusion of culture and of youth. Cultural diversity was the missing piece." The question is whether the rest of Maine—and other states like it—can find their own missing pieces.

xzmattzx

January 28th, 2009, 06:59 AM

Here's an article from today's paper about Asian Indians in Delaware. There are a lot of Indians living in Hockessin (Chinese and Koreans as well), but it makes sense since most Indians came here to work for DuPont or AstraZeneca or another pharmaceutical company.

Asian Indian community's growth not just in numbers
Del. population finds balance between cultures

Space is running out at the Sikh temple in Elsmere. On a Friday or Sunday evening during services, members squeeze together to sit in prayer. The women, backs against the wall, crowd into one room, the men in the other, and when those fill, any small nook will do.

To follow building code, temple organizers have set up two large services to accommodate the growing population. They're also planning an expansion this year on the existing grounds of the Elsmere property.

The growth, even for Sikhs -- a minority group within the Asian Indian community -- mirrors a boom found in the U.S. census.

In Delaware, the 2007 U.S. Census shows that Asian Indians, with 8,416 estimated members, are the second-largest immigrant group. Nationally, the census put the Asian Indian population at 2.5 million.

As a student at the University of Delaware, Bill Swiatek, now a senior planner with Wilmington Area Planning Council, documented the rise of the group in Delaware through research for his undergraduate and graduate thesis.

Delaware has attracted many Asian Indians, says Swiatek, largely because of the strengths of its industries. Swiatek found that many came as doctors and engineers in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

"Delaware was a big feeder," remembers Prem Tandon, an engineer who ended up in Delaware working for what was then a Getty refinery in Delaware City.

They were few in number but, like many immigrant groups, they came looking for opportunities with companies like DuPont, Hercules and others that coveted their skills.

"Forty years ago, it was much different," Tandon recalls. "There were probably a total of 15 of us. I don't blame the non-Indians for saying, 'That guy looks strange.' But now the Indian community has made great progress and we're in the mainstream."

Jitu Asthana, also an engineer, came to Delaware during that time with his wife. They were in Nashville for a while before landing in Delaware. It was easy to socialize with other Asian Indians here, he said, because the numbers were so small. They watched movies together, held parties, marked professional and personal strides together.

"But we made a big effort to get organized," he said.

Building a community

Organization is a skill not lacking in the wave of Indian immigrants that Asthana and Tandon arrived in.

Do a search of Delaware and Indian organizations and a small phone directory worth of names pop up: There's the Hindu Temple Association, the Gujarati Samaj of Delaware Inc., undergraduate student associations, graduate student associations, merchant groups and two Hindu temples on the long list.

Asthana and Tandon are part of the Indo American Association of Delaware, whose mission is to educate others about Asian Indians, to promote the Indian heritage for younger generations and to promote unity among the Indo-American community.

As Tandon is careful to point out, India is a big country and it certainly isn't made up of a monolithic group of people.

"India itself is so huge, there's so much diversity," he said.

You'll find the same diversity in Delaware's Indian population: Hindus make up the largest religious group, but, as the Elsmere temple shows, there are also Sikhs, Muslims and Christians.

But there is one thing that ties those groups together, Tandon says.

"Delaware is one of the best places to raise a family," Tandon said, and if you know anything about Indians, you know that family is big.

Swiatek, the researcher, said that those family ties seemed to have brought a second group of Indians to Delaware: the merchant class.

Sid Sharma, of Newark, who came to Delaware in the 1980s to study in nearby Drexel University said he noticed the rise of the merchant class as he drove between Delaware and Pennsylvania.

In a matter of years, Indian stores began cropping up one by one in Delaware, a change from when he first arrived and had to buy goods for home in Philadelphia. He also noticed something else about the new wave of arrivals.

"The person who came started bringing their families here, which were non-professional," he said.

Tandon added: "And it was good that they brought them. It made it more emotionally peaceful for Indians."

The families, and single members of the Indian community, would gather to socialize and watch Indian movies at UD, where Asian Indian student groups also started making their presence known.

Branching out

For the most part, Swiatek says, Asian Indians settled in exclusively "white middle class" areas in northern New Castle, mainly in Hockessin and Christiana. Because most were highly educated and fluent in English before they came, they were able to settle anywhere in the region.

Being part of the mainstream community is important to the professional class.

"I didn't want my kids to be different than Joe Blow on the street," Tandon said.

In the past decade, however, some things have changed. Swiatek has noticed that those in the merchant class have settled in some of the area's less-affluent neighborhoods and tend to congregate with one another more than the more professional groups did.

The population has gotten so big, the earlier arrivals say, that it's a lot harder to keep track of what each group is doing and what the new trends bring. They point out that Asian Indians have become part of the nation's mainstream. They point to Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor of Louisiana, who is being touted as a rising political star, even as presidential material.

"The first generation who came were doctors or engineers," Tandon said. "Our kids have diversified. They used to be doctors or engineers. Now they are journalists and politicians."

However, while moving into the mainstream, they're careful to note that they haven't forgotten to honor their heritage.

"They see themselves as a hybrid, as being an Indian and an American," Swiatek said.

The next step, Tandon says, is to focus on helping those outside the Asian Indian community.

"The association is focusing on work we can do with the non-Indian community," Tandon said. "We feel we had the opportunity to stay here, make money and we can do something for the community and that is to provide charity. The more we do these things, the more comfortable people are and they don't feel, 'These are strangers.' "

http://cmsimg.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=BL&Date=20090127&Category=NEWS&ArtNo=901270326&Ref=AR&Profile=1006&MaxW=550&MaxH=650&title=0
Quarters are cramped at the Sikh temple in Elsmere, a reflection of Delaware's growing Asian Indian population.

http://cmsimg.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=BL&Date=20090127&Category=NEWS&ArtNo=901270326&Ref=V2&Profile=1006&MaxW=550&MaxH=650&title=0
Worshippers at the Sikh temple in Elsmere share a meal after a service on Jan. 11. The temple now holds two congregations to accommodate more people.

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009901270326

bayviews

February 2nd, 2009, 04:07 AM

bayviews

February 2nd, 2009, 04:26 AM

xzmattzx

February 2nd, 2009, 06:56 PM

Very Good article.

The Philadelphia consoldated metro that includes Wilmington had been lagging most of the other Northeast metros as an immigrant destination. But its picked up quite a bit since 2000. That's starting to have positive impact on revitalizing Philadelphia's neighborhoods, turning around the decline.

I know South Philly's (a traditional Italian & African American stronghold) has seen a significant new immigrant influx.

I would say that the Wilmington metro is the main reason for most of the immigrant growth in the Delaware Valley. It has been relatively consistent for a couple decades now, since companies like Dupont, Hercules, and AstraZeneca always have room for growth as medicine becomes more readily available.

It was nice to see an article on the Indian population in the Wilmington/Newark area, since I have a lot of Indian friends. These same pharmaceutical companies employ/employed people who came from other countries as well, like China, Iraq, Japan, etc. My dad had more Middle Eastern and Chinese coworkers than White coworkers when he was at Dupont. Many of our family friends are some Asian ethnicity.

The Wilmington metro actually has a good amount of Canadians that emigrated here as well. I know quite a few. Most of them are like the Indians, Chinese, Iraqis, etc, in that they have very good jobs. I know a couple Canadians (all from the Toronto area) who are doctors at A.I. DuPont Children's Hospital. I don't know if they came here because A.I. has such a good reputation (considered one of the best children's hospitals in the world), or if they stayed in the U.S. after studying in our country, or if they left Canada because of the government control over healthcare, but for whatever reason, a decent amount of Canadians are here.

bayviews

February 3rd, 2009, 07:03 AM

It was nice to see an article on the Indian population in the Wilmington/Newark area, since I have a lot of Indian friends. These same pharmaceutical companies employ/employed people who came from other countries as well, like China, Iraq, Japan, etc. My dad had more Middle Eastern and Chinese coworkers than White coworkers when he was at Dupont. Many of our family friends are some Asian ethnicity..

That's good. India has become a huge player in the global pharmauetical sector, as it has in finance & the soft sides (programming, call centers) of tech (tying in quite a bit with both medical & finance.) So it's not surprising that Wilmington would have a significant Asian Indian community.

bayviews

February 9th, 2009, 06:55 AM

Nutter to host new citizens' swearing-in
Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - Friday, February 6, 2009
Author: Michael Matza, Inquirer Staff Writer

Emphasizing the role immigrants can play in revitalizing Philadelphia, Mayor Nutter will, for the first time at City Hall, host a swearing-in ceremony today for new citizens.

Nutter, who early in his administration impaneled a task force to promote immigrant integration, wants to increase the city 's shrinking population by 75,000 in the next five years and sees new immigrants as a rich resource for that initiative.

"We have not done enough to help people who are already here and those thinking about coming," he said in an interview yesterday. "It's very important that the world knows that Philadelphia is an immigrant -friendly city . . . . The vast majority of new immigrants have demonstrated that they are tremendously involved in the community, quite entrepreneurial, actively engaged in the neighborhoods, paying attention to what is going on with their children, and a great opportunity to increase population."

The naturalization ceremony, presided over by the Philadelphia director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Karen FitzGerald, will have 12 individuals from nine countries take the oath of citizenship amid the chandeliers and stately portraits of City Hall's wood-paneled Reception Room. Israel Colon, director of the Mayor's Office of Multicultural Affairs, will welcome them; Nutter will lead them in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Ordinarily, new citizens are sworn in daily, five days a week, in groups of 70 at the immigration office at 16th and Callowhill Streets. About six times a year, special ceremonies are held at historically significant locations.

Given Nutter's initiative to make Philadelphia what his working group calls "an international destination point" for immigrant resettlement, holding a special ceremony at City Hall seemed like a natural, FitzGerald said.

"It's more than symbolic," said Nutter. "It's about making people feel welcome. . . . We want folks to come here. This is your City Hall, and this is where your swearing-in should be."

Acknowledging the tendency of some native-born Americans to ostracize foreign-born groups when jobs are scarce in recessionary times, Nutter warned against "scapegoating" immigrants .

"Over the years, every new group to America has been subject to the same kind of nonsense," he said, adding that "time and time again," negative stereotypes "have been demonstrated to be inaccurate."

The native countries to be represented at the ceremony include Albania, Armenia, Cambodia, India, Italy, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria and Romania.

Among the individuals, all of whom have been legal residents since 2003 or earlier, are Indian-born Vardhan Nadkarni, an accountant for the Philadelphia Housing Authority; Jamaican-born Janice Jackson, a licensed practical nurse at Temple University Hospital; Mexican-born Maria de la Luz Gutierrez-Nava, a DuPont Co. researcher trying to develop a drought-resistant strain of corn; and Cambodian-born Sokha Sem, who was an infant when she came with her parents to the United States in 1985 as a refugee.

Italian-born Gabriella Arena came to the United States in 1994 and worked initially as a translator at the Institute for Achievement of Human Potential, helping developmentally delayed children and their parents.

Married to a naturalized citizen who was born in Iran, Arena and her husband have, since 1995, owned Nature's Gallery Florist, at 21st and Walnut Streets. The shop provides everyday flowers as well arrangements for functions at hotels.

Arena, a mother of three, has had the green card of a legal permanent resident for 14 years. So why seek citizenship now?

"I took my time to really feel that I was part of the community," she said, "then I said, 'OK.' "

As for Nutter's City Hall hospitality, "the mayor obviously is looking forward to the new century, and I appreciate it very, very much," Arena said.

Then she added: "We are all human beings, right? It shouldn't be such a big deal. We should be respectful of each other."

Natusya

February 15th, 2009, 08:50 PM

I have (maybe an ignorant) questions for immigrants from Somali.

We came to Northeast from Ukraine and we are used to cold weather even though latey winters are milder over there..

How do you deal with frigit winters and snow? It's somewhat annoying even for me.

Xusein

February 18th, 2009, 02:01 AM

I don't think that they care about the weather. The main attraction is jobs. Colder weather isn't a problem, I guess.

Evergrey

February 19th, 2009, 08:37 AM

http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A59312

FEBRUARY 19, 2009

Nueva Voz

BY ADAM FLEMING

http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/binary/70c6/07_news1_h.jpg
Alejandra Quezada-Crowder is the director of Pittsburgh's new Spanish language newspaper, La Jornada Latina.
Brian Kaldorf

As any publisher will tell you, if you're going to launch a newspaper in Pittsburgh, you'd better find an untapped market. Fortunately for Brian Wiles, he thinks he's got one.

In January, Wiles and a media company he co-owns launched La Jornada Latina, a Spanish-language monthly paper geared toward Pittsburgh's Latino and Hispanic populations. The cover of the 40-page February edition proclaimed it a "Nueva voz de los hispaños" (New voice of the Hispanics).

"We look at it as an opportunity to jump-start the community," says Wiles, co-owner of La Jornada Latina's publisher, TSJ News, on the phone from his Cincinnati office. Wiles says much of the cultural infrastructure to support a Spanish paper is in place in Pittsburgh. "Our newspaper gives [the people] a chance to connect the dots."

The paper is distributed free at more than 150 sites; Wiles says he'll print a minimum of 5,000 copies for each issue.

Though the paper is based in Pittsburgh (with an office in Aspinwall's Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, at 6 Loop St.), it promises to cover Washington and Butler counties as well. It's also online at tsjnews.com.

Almost all of the content is in Spanish, but it's not all about Pittsburgh. The first issue featured nine pages of wire-news stories from around the world. A two-page section focused on immigration and legal help.

In the Opiniones section, Lourdes Sánchez Ridge -- senior counsel with Thorp Reed & Armstrong, and president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce -- wrote a column on the civic responsibilities of immigrants.

The paper profiled Dr. Andrés Gelrud, head of gastroenterology at UPMC Shadyside, and restaurateur Shelbin Santos, who owns the Strip District's Chicken Latino.

La Jornada is unquestionably the only paper in town to lead off its February sports coverage with a splash photo of Spain's Rafael Nadal -- who, while being the top-ranked tennis player in the world, wasn't expected to contribute much to the Super Bowl (which was previewed three pages later, after soccer, Joe Torre and boxing).

La Jornada Latina's ¿Que Pasa? (What's up?) section led with a feature on the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, penned by staffer Alejandra Quezada-Crowder, and followed up with some arts and culture wire copy -- including a syndicated piece on the two-part Che Guevara flick (starring Benicio del Toro) that's set to be shown at the Harris Theater in late March.

For aspiring polyglots, La Jornada offered one article (a story about the transition to digital television) side by side, in both English and Spanish.

Pittsburgh might seem like an odd expansion target for a Spanish-language newspaper. Only 1.2 percent of Allegheny County residents are of Hispanic or Latino origin, according to 2006 Census estimates. That's roughly one-tenth of the national average.

Is there a "giant population [in Pittsburgh]? No, not really," concedes Wiles, who himself is not Hispanic.

But La Jornada Latina is designed to survive in smaller markets: The paper is already published in Detroit, Dayton, Columbus, Northern Kentucky and Cincinnati.

The Latino and Hispanic communities account for 2.5 percent of Columbus' population, and 5 percent of Detroit. Cincinnati, which serves as TSJ News' home base, has roughly the same population mix as Pittsburgh. "We started this paper in Cincinnati in '99 with no Hispanic population," Wiles says.

In fact, serving a relatively small Spanish-speaking population is part of La Jornada's business plan. Wiles says, "We're never going to be able to survive in Chicago" -- where nearly one out of seven residents is Latino or Hispanic, and where there are already several Spanish-language papers.

Wiles also believes, however, that Pittsburgh's Hispanic and Latino communities are set to expand. "The white-collar crowd is already there," he says, thanks in no small part to the city's universities. And in the blue-collar and service sectors, the local workforce is aging. "Who's coming in to replace them?" he asks. "There is a lot of opportunity."

Others agree.

"Even though the population is very small [compared to other cities,] it's really growing tremendously," says Martha Mantilla, who runs the Eduardo Lozano Latin American Collection at the University of Pittsburgh. "The growth is very noticeable."

Mantilla doesn't frequently check statistics and surveys, but based on anecdotal evidence, she predicts that the 2010 U.S. Census will show an increase in Pittsburgh's Latino and Hispanic numbers. "When you go to different supermarkets, you see more Hispanics," she says. Mantilla has also seen a more diverse audience at the Amigos del Cine Latinoamericano film screenings, which she helps curate.

"The original plan ... was to get the academic community involved [in the screenings]," she says. But now, with a growing interest from Latinos outside academia, "It's a really nice variety."

Mantilla sees La Jornada playing an important role in linking that population together. "There are so many services for Latinos right now, and my feeling is that some of the people don't know about all of those," she says.

Wiles says the February issue was a "soft launch" of the paper, to help iron out distribution plans. He expects a bigger push around April or May.

For cost reasons, much of the shared work of the La Jornada chain (such as laying out pages) is done in Cincinnati. The paper currently has only one local staffer, Alejandra Quezada-Crowder, who runs the one-woman office like a community newspaper, juggling the responsibilities of selling ads and writing content. She splits writing responsibilities with freelancers, and other outside contributors -- including representatives of the Pittsburgh Metropolitan Area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Quezada-Crowder came to Pittsburgh about nine months ago and is still adjusting to a new climate and city. But neither a Pittsburgh winter nor the challenge of launching a newspaper has scared her off.

"I really enjoy being a pioneer," she says. "It's exciting and different to be here in Pittsburgh."

Quezada-Crowder says that, like "every other Hispanic in the area," when she first arrived in Pittsburgh, she "didn't know how many Hispanics were in the area. ... With the paper, that's going to change."

Quezada-Crowder hails from Mexico by way of San Diego. In Mexico, she worked about four years at the Televisa broadcast network before moving to California -- where she learned English, met her husband and held a job as a news reporter/producer at Univision.

She says that arriving in Pittsburgh and seeing no Spanish-language media "was a shock for me. ... In California, everything is actually in Spanish."

The number of city-names ending in "burg" was the first sign that she was a long way from the San Andreas Fault. But when a Port Authority bus passed by with Cyrillic lettering on its side, she realized, "I feel like I'm living in Europe." Not to mention that "You can tell that the streets have been there for years and years.

"I really like it," she adds. "[But] thank God for the GPS."

La Jornada is finding its way too -- but Wiles is already thinking in terms of expansion. He says the paper might someday reach as far as Erie, making it a regional publication. And in 2010, the paper might start publishing every other week, perhaps adding two or three staffers.

Quezada-Crowder says the current monthly format and production schedule don't lend themselves to hard-news pieces -- but that could change down the road, if the paper goes biweekly.

For now, though, the chief goal is to help knit a community together.

"People can use the paper to be informed, but also to know their next-door neighbor," says Quezada-Crowder. "The main thing is to get everybody together. ... Pittsburgh needs something like this."

bayviews

February 19th, 2009, 08:39 AM

One thing that seems to be true about Somalis is their not following the Sun. There's plenty of sunshine & heat in Somalia, but not a great deal of peace or opportunity.

There are lots of Somalis in "winter cities" like Stockholm, Helsinki, Kopenhagen, Toronto, Ottawa, Minnneapolis, & a growing number in Buffalo.

I understand many of the Somalis in Lewiston Maine moved up from Atlanta.

Much the same is true with many other immigrants from warm climes. Their not following the sunshine, Their looking for an affordable place where they'd have better opportunity & less competition.

Their willing to consider a winter city like Buffalo, places that most native-born Americans shun.

veryprotourism

March 10th, 2009, 02:26 AM

bayviews

March 19th, 2009, 07:04 AM

i had the recent priveledge of working with two immigrants from west africa, one from liberia and one from the central african republic.

another of my coworkers could not understand why they came to buffalo, let alone why they were so proud to be here.(they frequently wore "716" caps, and Bills gear).

the answer was pretty straight forward, its better than a tent in a refuge camp.

Very true. I've always thought that in many cases new immigrants become Buffalo's biggest boosters. Half the problem is just letting the immigrants who want to come to Buffalo come, rather than trying to arrest & deport them.

If a critical mass becomes established, they'll pass on the good word to their relatives, freinds & hometown people. In time, perhaps Buffalo will have a steady enough inflow to reverse its seemingly endless population slide.

I just don't see any other better way to reverse Buffalo's downhill slide. Keep up the good work!

Evergrey

April 3rd, 2009, 07:25 PM

Video: Some Believe Immigration Vital to Pittsburgh's Future

http://kdka.com/video/?id=56348@kdka.dayport.com

bayviews

April 24th, 2009, 08:10 AM

Saving for a new home away from home - Homebuyer programs help penny-pinching refugees achieve American Dream
Buffalo News, The (NY) - Sunday, April 19, 2009
Author: Jonathan D. Epstein - NEWS BUSINESS REPORTER

Soe Than has set his sights on owning his first home and settling down. But

he's not your average first-time homebuyer in Buffalo .

Like many others, he and his wife, Thi Thi Aung, have been in a first-time

homebuyer class for months, learning about credit histories, loans and

everything they need to know about buying and owning a home.

They've also been participating in a special matched savings program at M&T

Bank, setting aside enough money to cover a downpayment. Finally, they signed

a contract for a particular house in Riverside.

But while they're coming to the end of that pursuit around May 1 with the

closing, they don't necessarily share the typical excitement, enthusiasm and

anxiety most Americans might experience upon buying a home.

After all, it's a far cry from protesting a military government in Burma,

languishing in prison for seven years, hiding from police between train cars,

fleeing the country by swimming, living in a refugee camp in Thailand, and

finally finding safety in a foreign country where they barely speak the

language.

"Our life is always exciting, always on the run," said Than, 38, who came

here in August 2004 and then brought his wife over. Gesturing around the

classroom in downtown Buffalo , he added, "This is 'normal' for us."

Than and his family are among several dozen refugee families from the

impoverished and war-torn nations of Burma and Burundi, who fled dangerous

conditions in their home country to seek freedom, protection and a better life

in this country.

Now, they've found themselves living safely in Buffalo , with paying jobs,

and like many Americans, they are trying to buy their first homes. So with the

help of Hope Refugee Services, HomeFront and M&T Bank Corp., they are

participating in a program designed for first-time homebuyers.

"This is definitely our first foray to this extent into this type of

relationship," said Bryan M. Cacciotti, HomeFront's executive director. "It's

very exciting for us. As the months have gone by, it just seems to have grown

and become so much more enjoyable."

The First Home Club, a program M&T offers from the Federal Home Loan Bank

of New York, encourages low-wage prospective homebuyers to save money, while

teaching them to be more financially savvy.

Individuals must regularly save money for at least 10 months, using an

account at a participating bank. In exchange, the program provides $4 in

matching funds for every $1 saved, up to $7,500. And it requires them to

complete at least six hours of homeownership counseling.

But these refugees aren't like most other participants in First Home Club.

In addition to the regular pressure of the program, they also must overcome

significant language and cultural hurdles. Most speak little or no English,

although they are slowly learning and some can speak in broken sentences. They

also are not accustomed to the way many things work in the United States.

"Homeownership is an important and effective way to assimilate into our

country and provide stability for newly arrived families, but immigrants often

face significant challenges, both financial and cultural," said Bradley J.

Dossinger, M&T vice president and regional Community Reinvestment Act officer.

"Many arrive in the United States with very little capital, and they lack

experience with the U.S. financial system."

In particular, they had to learn about obtaining, managing and fixing their

credit. That's meant a lot of hands-on assistance from the HomeFront staff.

"It's hard to know the credit laws, easy to get bad credit," said Than, who

works in maintenance at API Delevan in East Aurora. "If we were to do the

credit report ourselves, we couldn't do it. They help us."

In addition, though, the classes often include a lot of education and

questions about basic topics, not only involving finance, but also other

subjects. Discussions sometimes sound like the Tower of Babel, with the

families conversing in Burmese, Karen or Swahili. But they've learned to

manage.

"Even with the language barrier, people just speak slowly," said housing

counselor Lori Macakanja, who works directly with the group. "I've learned

more from them than they have from me. It's more fun now."

Indeed, even the HomeFront staff are getting an education, particularly

about savings.

"They make $14,000 a year, but $7,000 in savings," Macakanja said. "It's

instilled in them, where we don't have that instilled in us."

"It's in stark contrast to how we as Americans save," Cacciotti agreed. "It

points out how thrifty one can be if they actually apply themselves."

Robert G. Shibley, professor of architecture and planning at University at

Buffalo , and director of the Urban Design Project, said it's a positive for

Buffalo that it has the infrastructure to support a larger population and the

ability to absorb them in existing housing that's affordable. And he noted

that "so much of what made Toronto a vibrant city" was "a very thoughtful

policy of immigration that brought new folks into the mix."

"It has to be terrific. That's the kind of group that will do well and

prosper in our community," he said. "We're interested in supporting

homeownership in the city of Buffalo , period. It's a net gain all the way

around."

The unique situation came about in February 2008, as a result of

HomeFront's educational program and its partnerships with organizations on the

West Side, including Hope Refugee Services and the International Center of

Buffalo .

Hope Refugee was already working with the immigrants , providing translation

services and helping them sponsor other families from their home countries so

they, too, could come to the United States. So when the families started

expressing interest in owning homes, Hope referred them to HomeFront. And

HomeFront introduced them to First Home and M&T.

"Right now, I live here four years," said July Oo, 30, who came in

September 2004 from a refugee camp in Thailand, and speaks broken English. "I

want my own house. It will make me happy. I can do everything in my house, fix

it up the way I want to."

The group at HomeFront started with four families from Burma, but has since

grown to more than 40 from both Burma and Burundi, plus a couple from Vietnam.

All have been here at least two years.

About half of the group are particularly active in attending the classes

and looking for homes, Macakanja said. Everyone originally wanted to live on

the West Side, where many are currently renting houses or apartments, but

they've since diversified to Riverside and South Buffalo , she said. And many

are looking for multi-family homes, so they can live together or sponsor

friends and relatives to come from Burma.

All are pre-approved for mortgages with M&T, and are enrolled in First Home

Club for at least 10 months. They save $187.50 a month during that time,

collecting $1,875, and then M&T matches with $7,500 from the Federal Home Loan

Bank. Some are still working on fixing credit issues, but four families are

currently under contract to buy houses, with others not far behind.

For example, July and her husband, Zaw Htike, are eyeing two houses on the

same street, one of which had been abandoned and rehabilitated after a fire.

And Bo Bo, a 38-year-old sushi chef at Dash's on Main Street in Clarence, is

ready to buy a home on the West Side after living in Buffalo for nine years,

although his wife, War War Win, 34, is afraid of the crime.

But he still needs to work on his credit, and she's expecting their second

child in early May, so they're content to remain in their rental house -- for

now.

"We want freedom for my own home, like the American Dream," he said. "We

are saving for the future, for my baby."

Than and his family are furthest along. The couple, who have two young

children, are buying a two-unit house, with six bedrooms, in Riverside, for

$50,000. They currently rent a house with another Burmese family, and Than

said the payments will be about the same. But he said it's important for them

to own their own home, for the sake of their children.

bayviews

April 24th, 2009, 08:27 AM

Lets save some Federal tax dollars by reducing the overstaffed Buffalo District of ICE. It's become a racial profiling operation & the upstate NY depopulation agency. These agents would be better deployed to areas which have significant numbers of immigrants.

Border Patrol anti-terror mission blurred In North, the agency rounds up illegal migrants
Houston Chronicle (TX) - Sunday, April 19, 2009
Author: By NADJA DROST, HEARST NEWS SERVICE

ROCHESTER, N.Y. - Two U.S. Border Patrol agents board a bus in upstate New York, asking everyone "What's your nationality?" - prove you're allowed to be here.

A canine barks at a knapsack. Its owner is a legal Chinese refugee with fear in her eyes. Border Patrol agents have found her with a marijuana cigarette. Hours later, she's still being detained.

This is the face today of the U.S. Border Patrol in the North. Operating up to 100 miles from Canada with a federal mandate to catch terrorists, agents now crouch in the Vermont snow, ride horseback in Montana and patrol ferry terminals in Washington state. For thousands of working immigrant families, it is a frightening specter.

Public data obtained by Hearst Newspapers show the U.S. government, despite a massive injection of resources and staff to guard against terrorists crossing the Canadian border, is mostly catching ordinary illegal immigrants - creating a backlog of court cases and a flurry of protest from the public about random highway stops and bus or train inspections.

"The muddling of counter-terrorism and immigration enforcement is the single biggest mistake we've made since 9/11," said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations.

Budget nearly doubled

Nationwide, Customs and Border Protection has seen its budget almost double in the last 5 years to $11 billion in 2009. Prior to 9/11, there were 340 Border Patrol agents watching over 5,000 miles of border with Canada. Today, there are 1,530.

Critics decry what is happening. "Don't tell me that putting more people on the ground is going to prevent terrorists from coming," said Randall Larsen, director of the Institute for Homeland Security and author of Our Own Worst Enemy.

The CBP took on both border and immigration enforcement when it was created in 2003 under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

It includes both customs and immigration inspectors at ports of entry, and Border Patrol agents responsible for areas between those ports.

The CBP's top goal: prevent terrorists and their weapons from entering the country, as well as illegal immigrants, criminals and drug smugglers.

Following 9/11, the government looked northward toward the porous border with Canada, considered by CBP and FBI officials more vulnerable to terrorist infiltration than the U.S-Mexico border. Its immensity and terrain present a challenge.

"A person looking at the border thinks, ‘How can you protect it?'" said Azel Price, public affairs officer for CBP's Buffalo sector. "You can't."

Price said the CBP has increased intelligence, manpower and technology. It collaborates more with Canada. Air and marine operations are more frequent. Motion sensors, remotely operated cameras and unmanned aerial vehicles detect crossings.

"The first priority should be information and intelligence and it should be before anyone reaches the 49th parallel," said Frank Cilluffo, head of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University.

John Pikus, special agent in charge for the FBI's Albany division, which covers 400 miles of border south of Montreal, said increased intelligence and information-sharing has made the northern border safer since 9/11.

Gateway to the Midwest

Northern illegal crossings are less than 1 percent of those on the southern border, leading critics to accuse the Border Patrol of overzealously targeting southbound immigrants who don't pose a threat to society.

Border Patrol officials say train stations, airports and transportation hubs like the Rochester bus station along the Syracuse-Rochester- Buffalo corridor are productive because they are gateways for people traveling from New York to the Midwest.

Last year, Rochester's Border Patrol station made 1,523 apprehensions, but 87 percent were for misdemeanors and only 0.05 percent led to successful criminal prosecutions.

Price, CBP's public affairs officer in Buffalo , acknowledged that most apprehensions are of illegal immigrants. "If you look at our apprehensions, a small percentage have anything to do with terrorism," Price said.

A Hearst Newspapers analysis of records provided by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a public interest group, found that of all the national security and terrorism charges filed in federal district courts along the northern border since 2001, only three were based on referrals made by CBP.

In other words, there is scant record of northern border enforcement catching terrorists.

That isn't to say the effort doesn't produce results. Steve Cribby, spokesperson for the Border Patrol, said border agents who work between specific land border crossings, turn apprehensions over to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

ICE, as it is popularly known, can in turn lead an investigation or - in suspected terrorism cases - hand it over to another agency such as the FBI. Still, ICE referred only 16 such prosecutions since 2001.

Officials at the FBI, Border Patrol and ICE say terror suspicion cases can easily originate with a referral or phone call from Border Patrol, but there are no records that indicate how often this may happen. An examination of all Justice Department press releases since 9/11 revealed only one terrorism case in northern border states where CBP was credited with assisting in the investigation.

In fact, 90 percent of prosecutions filed by CBP last year were for ordinary immigration charges, mostly for violations such as re-entering the country following deportation or entering illegally.

"They may be catching an impressive number of folks, but are they really catching the people that should be high on their priority list?" asked Wally Ruehle, director of the immigration program at Rochester's legal aid clinic.

Arrested on Amtrak

On Valentine's Day in New York, Chet Childers, 36, married Tetyana Tsymbal, 26, of Ukraine. Tsymbal's work visa had expired, and the couple wanted to wait until they arrived in Childer's native Washington state to file her paperwork for permanent residency.

But on their westbound Amtrak train three days after their wedding, Border Patrol agents went on board in Syracuse, N.Y., and took Tsymbal off.

The next morning, she called her husband from the county jail. "That minute and 20 seconds was spent reassuring her that I would do everything I could to help her," said Childers four days later over the phone from Chicago. "That was the last time I talked to her."

Tsymbal spent almost a week in jail until her husband paid a $5,000 bond. They are now in Washington awaiting her hearing in immigration court.

Almost all cases seeking the court removal of a noncitizen go through immigration court, which is a central means for Border Patrol to deport unwanted immigrants.

Data provided by TRAC showed that suspicion of a criminal violation - which include actions not normally thought of as "criminal" such as re-entering following deportation - was the reason to seek removal in only 16 percent of individuals charged in immigration courts along the northern border between 2004 and 2006. Only two out of over 75,000 charges were terrorism-related.

‘No criminal record'

Barbarah Brenner, an immigration attorney in Colonie, N.Y., questioned "the value of devoting scarce money and personnel to people who have simple immigration violations, meaning they have no criminal record."

Groups who work with immigrants accuse the Border Patrol of targeting immigrants who simply have come here to work.

Cribby, at the Border Patrol's national office, said that is untrue. "Our intention is to stop any type of illegal entry between the ports of entry."

But an agent in upstate New York who did not want his name used, said most of the immigrants he apprehends haven't come over the border recently - they are traveling and have lived here for years in many cases.

"We hold everyone, it's absurd," the agent said, adding border patrol in upstate New York commonly describe their work as " immigration Dumpster-diving."

But other agents say it's worth it. "If through the whole year, we get one terrorist, we've done our job," said Adrian Cotsworth, head of Rochester's Border Patrol station.
Caption: MICHAEL P. FARRELL : ALBANY TIMES UNION ARE YOU A U.S. CITIZEN?: U.S. Border Patrol Agent Chad Cadwallader asks citizenship questions of passengers who boarded a Trailways bus at the bus station in Rochester, N.Y.

veryprotourism

April 28th, 2009, 08:46 PM

and like many Americans, they are trying to buy their first homes. So with the

help of Hope Refugee Services, HomeFront and M&T Bank Corp., they are

just a note on hope refugee services. these girls are doing a wonderful thing over on breckinridge.

in addition to providing long term transitional services to refugees, largely Somali Bantu, they provide valuable services to a struggling section of buffalo's west side.
atleast weekly they pick up litter on their block of breckinridge(the first block east of grant street) and act as a set of eyes in a neighborhood where drug dealing and other crime often goes unreported.
in addition they operate under the umbrella of houghton college. their second floor acts as cooperative housing where several houghton students live with several refugees in transition. this helps the refugees adapt to social and cultural differences in america while providing enrichment and life experience for the houghton students.

its been a while since i've been able to give any of my time to them but the few occasions when i did they were very gracious.

http://hoperefugee.org

i know they accept clothing and of course monetary donations, they may accept furniture or appliances but i would call before you bring something that large down because they have limited space.

if you have time to give i'm sure they will find use for your hands as their permanent staff is limited.

anyway, breckinridge just east of grant street, left side if you are coming from grant.

they are a faith based organization but they are not preachy and will not discriminate.:)

bayviews

May 19th, 2009, 08:16 AM

Yea, Buffalo's refugee agencies have really been doing a great job, here some others, especially the sisters at Vive La Casa who have helped many refugees....One thing, nearly all of the 68,000 refugees that La Casa has assisted have gone up to Canada.....Now if only they had been settled in Buffalo, the city might still be over 300,000 today. And instead of having MOST of NY State's most barren, depopulated, lifeless, neighborhoods, maybe it would have neighborhoods as vibrant as those in Toronto where most of the refuges have ended up!

Vive La Casa honors supporters - Nun, legislator, Episcopal Diocese recognized for assisting asylum seekers in Buffalo area
Buffalo News, The (NY) - Friday, May 15, 2009
Author: Harold McNeil - NEWS STAFF REPORTER

Vive La Casa, the nation's only nonprofit organization aimed at providing

hands-on help to refugees who are seeking asylum in the U.S. and Canada,

celebrated its silver anniversary Thursday by honoring three disparate

supporters of its mission.

The honorees at the recognition dinner held in Shanghai Red's restaurant on

the waterfront were Sister Mary Louise Lopez, a Franciscan nun who spent 20

years serving refugees aided by the organization; Erie County Legislature

Majority Leader Maria Whyte, who for years has engaged in her own humanitarian

causes; and the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York, which also has a track

record for advocating on behalf of refugees.

"Sister Mary Louise Lopez is our longest serving employee. She's been at

Vive for over 20 years. She was on the staff, but she had to retire in

September. Her whole life is ministry to refugees," said Brian

Brown-Cashdollar, executive director of Vive La Casa.

Vive, located at 50 Wyoming Ave. on Buffalo 's East Side, was founded by a

group of nuns 25 years ago and initially situated in Lackawanna. Over the

years, it has served more than 68,000 asylum seekers, of which 60 percent have

been women and children from countries in turmoil.

"The sisters who founded Vive made a deliberate choice to make it a

sectarian organization," Cashdollar said. "There is no evangelizing at all.

There never has been at Vive. We serve people of all faiths. Probably half of

the people we serve are Muslims."

Lopez joined the organization in 1987. Before that, she had been a teacher.

"I really wanted to travel to other countries. In a way, I did, because I

met people from many countries, many religions, many languages," she said.

She started out as a secretary at Vive and a year later was placed in

charge of housekeeping and maintenance at the organization's shelter.

"I speak Spanish. I'm Puerto Rican, so it gave me an opportunity to use my

language to listen to people. That's how I learned a lot about all of these

countries. It's been a wonderful experience," she added.

Whyte started as an intern with the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission in

Washington, D.C., and was hired as the assistant to the director of the

organization after graduating from college. While helping to organize

congressional hearings on human rights abuses of refugees from around the

world, Whyte said she became irrevocably committed to human rights causes such

as those championed by Vive.

"It was incredibly powerful testimony, and to hear their stories and their

bravery and everything they had gone through was just a powerful experience

for me as a young woman," Whyte said.

A delegation from the Episcopal Diocese also attended the dinner to accept

its award.

"The Episcopal Diocese has really been an advocate for immigrants and

refugees. They support us, but they also support Journey's End, as well,"

Cashdollar said.

bayviews

June 12th, 2009, 08:45 AM

Immigrants help drive Philadelphia's revival
Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH) - Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Author: Robert L. Smith, Plain Dealer Reporter

Vacant homes. Empty storefronts. Ghostly streets.

In a scenario hauntingly familiar to Cleveland, sprawl and abandonment diminished a great American city .

By 2000, many had given up on Philadelphia, which had seen its middle class flee and crime surge as row-house neighborhoods hollowed out.

Then, a tide of newcomers arrived - seemingly out of nowhere - and wrote a new script.

The City of Brotherly Love has not escaped the job losses and anxieties of the great recession, but it's showing a new spring in its civic step.

Power saws whir and bright shop windows beckon in once-forgotten neighborhoods. Biotech startups are energizing the suburbs. New apartments and restaurants set downtown aglow at night.

Come the census of 2010, Philadelphia might post its first population gain in 60 years. My what a difference an immigrant wave can make.

Not long ago, demographers packaged Philadelphia with Cleveland as a "former gateway" on a downhill slide. Then, in November, they spied a surprising trend. Immigrants were coming, bringing a culture of entrepreneurship and high-tech skills. The Brookings Institution declared that Philadelphia was poised to re-emerge as a destination city .

What happened? Some Cleveland civic leaders would like to find out so they can replicate the pattern here. To start the discussion, they are bringing to town the woman deemed largely responsible for Philadelphia's transformation into an immigrant-friendly city .

Anne O'Callaghan, an Irish immigrant, is the founder and executive director of the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians. Her nonprofit agency put out a welcome mat in 2003 and today works to assimilate new cultures into an aging blue-collar town.

O'Callaghan is to address the City Club of Cleveland on Thursday, then join a discussion on the prospects of adding new cultures to Cleveland.

Immigration is a politically sensitive topic long avoided in Northeast Ohio. But Barbara Hawkins thinks the time has come to address it.

Hawkins, a director of the Cleveland Council on World Affairs, helped to organize O'Callaghan's visit. She is part of a small group urging politicians and civic leaders to consider immigrant attraction strategies.

"I think that's the future of Cleveland," Hawkins said. "If we don't get some good, talented, capable people here, we're in trouble. I think the situation has gotten grim enough that the business community is starting to say, 'We have to do something.' "

Slowly, new voices are joining the discussion. Cuyahoga County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones agreed to moderate Thursday's forum. The Greater Cleveland Partnership, the region's chamber of commerce, joined the Cavaliers as a co-sponsor.

"It's pretty clear the statistics show immigrants not only bring the talent, they bring investment dollars," said Partnership President and Chief Executive Joseph Roman. "We certainly have raised it way up on our agenda."

Mayor Frank Jackson said he worries about immigrants taking jobs but notes the region has thousands of high-skill jobs that go unfilled. If a welcome center can help lure needed talent and promote the city , he's all for it.

All agree, Cleveland has a people problem. The city lost half its population between 1950 and 2000 and became nearly entirely native-born. The slide continues. In 2006 and 2007, the city lost more people than any other big city in America. It could slip below 400,000 at the 2010 census.

Philadelphia once shared a similar trajectory. It shrank by 30 percent between 1950 and 2000. But in recent years, its population has stabilized. Immigrants began replacing people leaving. Today, they make up 11 percent of the city .

Behind the numbers are people like Calvin Pham, who opened an air freight service in a city shopping center astir with immigrant entrepreneurs.

Virtually every shop in New World Plaza, in South Philadelphia, is owned by a couple from Vietnam or China. Pham came from California three years ago, lured by word that Philadelphia was friendly to immigrants.

From Thanh Binh Cargo, he ships laptops and baby formula and big-screen TVs to Ho Chi Minh City . A pair of squawking chickens in a cardboard box attests to the fact that Vietnamese like their American relatives to send poultry, too.

"Vietnamese people are doing good here," Pham said. "People keep coming in. They want to send things home."

There was plenty of other anecdotal evidence of an immigrant tide when the Philadelphia Foundation hired the Brookings Institution to put numbers to the faces.

The conclusions caused a sensation in a city with a demographic profile similar to Cleveland's. Between 2000 and 2006, about 113,000 immigrants streamed into Greater Philadelphia, swelling the foreign-born community to half a million people, Brookings reported. They came from all over the world, but the largest group - 39 percent - hailed from Asia.

A substantial number of the newcomers opened shops in poor neighborhoods. Many brought advanced skills into the region's medical and pharmaceutical industries, according to Brookings researchers, who predicted Philadelphia was returning to its immigrant past.

Not everyone was happy to hear it. At Geno's Steaks, a famous purveyor of Philadelphia's signature dish - the cheesesteak - customers are confronted with signs that say, "This is America. Please speak English when ordering."

Restaurant owner Joe Vento, a 60-something grandson of Italian immigrants, has said he's fed up with newcomers in the formerly Italian neighborhood not knowing English.

On and around the busy commercial corridor of 52nd Street, black residents charged that new immigrant shopkeepers were getting ahead with government help - a false but widely believed assumption.

"In a city with a large African-American community, immigration is a hot-button issue," O'Callaghan acknowledges.

She recently opened Welcoming Center West in a 52nd Street storefront to bring together black and immigrant merchants. Their combined power is being credited with reviving the Harlem-like neighborhood.

On a recent afternoon, sidewalk tables piled with merchandise stretched for five lively blocks up 52nd Street. People strolled past vendors who greeted them in lilting West African accents in front of Chinese restaurants and Pakistani-owned variety stores.

"We've come a long way," O'Callaghan observed.

She said that when she first took her idea to City Hall, she found no interest in a center that would welcome and guide immigrants. So she launched the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians in donated space with state and foundation support.

It began publishing simple but powerful brochures, like "How to Open a Coffee Shop in Philadelphia," building a database of English as a Second Language classes and matching immigrant skills with employers.

O'Callaghan preached "shared prosperity."

If immigrants came and did well, she argued, the whole city would flourish.

Today, Philadelphia City Hall is part of her crusade. Current Mayor Michael Nutter ordered city departments to become multilingual, hired immigrant liaisons and hosted a naturalization ceremony - the first ever in City Hall.

Earlier this year, the mayor announced a plan that would have once sounded dreamlike but now seems plausible. He said he wants to add another 75,000 people to the city in a few short years.

"You need to be able to see how your community can be transformed," O'Callaghan said. "And we have a lot of places in the city where you can walk down the street and see that."

bayviews

July 1st, 2009, 04:19 AM

Census offers look at foreign face of U.S. - Profiles show Hispanic, African population rising across America
Houston Chronicle (TX) - Saturday, February 21, 2009
Author: By SAM ROBERTS, NEW YORK TIMES

Indians are the best-educated newcomers from overseas. Somalis are the youngest and poorest. Immigrants from Jordan and Bangladesh are most likely to be working in sales and office jobs.

Those are among the findings of a profile of the nation's foreign-born residents, legal or illegal, released this week by the Census Bureau.

The profile indicates that Latin Americans and Africans account for a greater share of the nation's immigrant population than they did five years ago. In 1990, 22 percent of the foreign-born residents were from Mexico. By 2007, 31 percent were.

In 2007, the Census Bureau found, 54 percent of the nation's 38.1 million foreign-born came from Latin America, 27 percent from Asia, 13 percent from Europe and 4 percent from Africa.

More came from Mexico - 11.7 million - than from any other country, followed by China, the Philippines, India, El Salvador, Vietnam and South Korea.

Dominican immigrants accounted for 2 percent of the foreign-born - the same as the share of Canadians and the same percentage as Germans as recently as 2000. Indians made up 4 percent of the foreign-born.

The profile found that immigrants are about as likely to have graduated from college as native-born Americans, 27 percent compared to 28 percent.

Those from India, Australia, South Africa and the Philippines had the highest median household incomes, with the figure for Indians at $91,195. Those from Somalia and the Dominican Republic had the lowest. The median for the foreign born was $46,881, compared WITH $51,249 among the native born.

The oldest immigrants were from Europe (Hungarians, Italians, Greeks, Germans and Irish all had median ages of about 60 or more), while Somalis had the youngest median age (26.8).

Fully 97 percent of immigrants from Mexico and the Dominican Republic do not speak English at home. About 52 percent of foreign-born residents say they speak English less than very well.

Americans born in the Netherlands and Ireland had the lowest poverty rates (5 percent). Somalis, who like Kenyans are among the most recent immigrants , had the highest (51 percent).

bayviews

July 16th, 2009, 03:03 AM

Drawing on a storied tradition - African folktales find new life in book illustrated by young refugees on West Side
Buffalo News, The (NY) - Monday, July 13, 2009
Author: Deidre Williams - NEWS STAFF REPORTER

There is an African folktale about a race between a hare and a chameleon.

The speedy hare is winning, while the much slower chameleon tries without

success to overtake him.

Then the chameleon has an idea and concocts a scheme to defeat the bunny:

He cheats.

To find out how and if he won the race, get a copy of "Under the Story

Tree: Folktales from East Africa."

The book was illustrated by four young refugees from Africa who now -- or

used to -- live on Buffalo's West Side. Habiba Noor, Safiya Osman and Yonis

Osman (no relation) were born in Kenya of Somali Bantu ethnicity.

Fifteen-year-old Gbokolo Sambola, a native of Liberia, also participated but

has since moved to Tennessee.

In Africa, folktales are not just for children, said Houghton College

education professor Daniel Woolsey, who compiled and edited the book. Very

often at the end of the day, the villagers get together and trade stories.

It's their version of television "without the commercials," he said.

"I liked it," said 15-year-old Safiya, referring to working on the book.

Safiya has lived in Buffalo for the past five years with her aunt and cousins.

She will be a ninth-grader in the fall at Leonardo Da Vinci High School.

"I like drawing, and it was fun," she said.

From a pool of 55 African folktales to choose from, the children selected

five stories to illustrate for the book. Under the direction of Cornelia

Dohse-Peck, they met regularly for about three months to work on the project.

They read the stories aloud, played them out, talked about them and analyzed

them.

Then they drew and painted pictures, said Dohse-Peck, a German-born visual

artist.

"I wanted the drawings to come from within. I wanted them to create artwork

that meant something to them, not just Western artwork," said Dohse-Peck.

"Western isn't bad. I just thought, for them, I wanted to capture their

culture."

Woolsey, who considers Africa his homeland in many ways, spent the first 11

years of his life in Sierra Leone, where his parents were missionaries.

"In that way, I gained a love for African folktales," he said.

In the fall of 2007, he took a sabbatical and went to Tanzania to collect

the stories, returning with 55 of them.

Last year, he contacted Hope Refugee Services for help in identifying kids

to work on the artwork featured in the book.

"Oral tradition is very important. It's about handing down culture," said

Bonnie MacBeth, Hope Refugee executive director, adding that the Somali Bantu

language was not even written until recently.

One of Habiba's aunts living here already translated the one Somali Bantu

story in the book. The other four folk tales are Tanzanian -- never before

published -- in tribal languages and translated into Swahili, then into

English.

Quite the storyteller herself, 14-year-old Habiba wrote a story two years

ago about two fictional cousins. One was prettier, and the other was meaner.

The moral of the story: "Family is family no matter if you're pretty" or

not, said Habiba, who moved to Buffalo four years ago from a refugee camp in

Kenya with her mother and two brothers.

Like Habiba, Yonis Osman came to Buffalo from a Kenyan refugee camp. The

17-year-old Riverside High School senior has lived in Buffalo for the past

five years with his family.

Working on the illustrations helped improve his reading skills.

"Reading the stories aloud was good for me because I was having trouble

before in school," he said.

Once the students were finished with the artwork, it was photographed by

some of Woolsey's colleagues from Houghton. Another colleague designed the

book using the photographed artwork and the text Woolsey gathered in Tanzania.

Woolsey said he hopes this book is the first of many.

"My goal is that this is just volume one. I hope that publishing these

stories and circulating them around . . . will inspire other refugees to

[share their folktales]," he said. "I have 50 stories that are waiting."

Each book costs $22.95, and copies can be purchased through the Web site

bayviews

July 28th, 2009, 04:06 AM

Youthful immigrants leading the way as community unity grows organically
Citizen's Voice, The & Sunday Voice (Wilkes-Barre, PA) - Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Author: Nicholas Sohr (Staff Writer)

Last in a three-part series

Oskarllys Perez was 1,653 miles from home and, even though he knew exactly where he was, he was lost.

The English he learned throughout high school in the Dominican Republic and the English the customs officer spoke that day at the airport - the gulf between them was as wide as the sea, the ocean and the continent that separated Perez from the baseball fields and basketball courts of his youth.

Propelled so far from home by the promise of a better education and a better life, Perez was trapped behind a barrier of language, one he thought he had already overcome.

But now, nearly two years later, Perez is among the young adults and school-aged children local leaders hope will lead the integration of the expanding Latino and established Anglo communities in Northeastern Pennsylvania, even as schools, governments, nonprofits and other institutions sometimes struggle to keep up.

Members of the younger generations have "taken the time to know their peers and because of that they are in a different mindset," said Isabel Balsamo, coordinator of the King's College Hispanic Outreach Program and a native of Colombia. "In the media they see people from all kinds of backgrounds, and the music and the actors, so it's something that's part of the way of living. On the other hand, (older generations), in particular in this area, they're in a comfort zone they don't want to give up."

Balsamo and other community leaders don't predict the demolition of those comfort zones will truly solve the issues confronting the area's newcomers and longtime residents. Rather, she said, the solution will grow organically along with the region's young people, to whom the newcomers don't represent anything out of the ordinary.

"I really don't see any kind of animosity between Latino high school students and non-Latino high school students, or even in our mentoring program - King's students and Latino kids," Balsamo said. "I can assure you not one of them sees the other as the enemy, or focuses on 'you're Latino and I'm not Latino.'"

Balsamo and the staff members and volunteers with the outreach program interact with young Latinos in the region, from children in elementary schools through college students. They provide translation services for parent-teacher conferences, host programs to give high school students a taste of college life and offer a range of programs to boost language skills and prepare for the battery of tests that confront one trying to enter the American education system midstream.

Perez was once one of those students, fresh off a plane ride from the Dominican Republic. He graduated from high school there, studied English and dreamed of becoming a graphic artist.

Perched on the edge of a couch in the front room of a house on Carey Avenue in Wilkes-Barre, Perez chooses his words carefully, navigating the last 18 months of his life. He pauses occasionally, searching for words as a wide grin splits his face.

He lives in the house with his parents Pascual and Carla and 8-year-old brother Romel. When Oskarllys, now 21, arrived in 2007, it was the first time his family had lived together under one roof in 16 years.

Carla Perez left the Dominican Republic when Oskarllys was 2 years old and moved to Spain to find work. Then Pascual moved to New Jersey, leaving 7-year-old Oskarllys to live with his grandmother. The rest of the family moved to Wilkes-Barre about 18 months before Oskarllys joined them in August 2007.

Early on, Perez's cousins would translate for him when he ventured out into English-speaking settings.

"It is different because my ( Dominican ) teachers, they didn't have the same accent, the pronunciation. They didn't have the correct pronunciation," he said. "When I first came here, I had a lot of problems because I thought I knew enough English to live here, but when I came here and I used to go some places, I didn't understand what some people said to me, and they didn't understand when I speak."

So Perez went back to school. He took English classes, learning the language for a second time. He studied for and passed the Spanish language high school equivalency exam at Luzerne County Community College and then enrolled there this past spring.

He's now juggling work at a local supermarket and classes at LCCC. He wants to be a dental hygienist, but flirts occasionally with thoughts of returning to graphic design.

"Here, there are a lot of resources to help you go to college," Perez said. "There (in the Dominican ), there are none of those things."

For centuries, immigration to the United States was dominated by East to West movement. Waves of German, Italian, Polish, Irish and natives of other European nations flocked to its shores. Now, the trend is South to North, from South and Central America to Florida, California, Arizona, North and South Carolina, New York, New Jersey, Texas, Massachusetts and every state in between.

"The demographic face of this nation is changing. Some places over a generation, a generation and a half ago, experienced significant population losses, like Buffalo , Chicago, what they call these Rust Belt cities," said Louis E.V. Nevaer, a consultant to Fortune 100 companies on the growing influence of Hispanics, and author on the subject. "Some have remained in decline, like Buffalo , N.Y., but those that are not, like Chicago, are rebounding because of immigration and higher birth rates among Hispanics."

For the last few years, that trend has led thousands of Latinos to Northeastern Pennsylvania. Often they are transplants from New York or New Jersey. Many were born in the United States and even more speak crisp, clean English. And, whether they know it or not, they are in large part responsible for the first years of positive net migration in the region. In 2002, more people moved to Northeastern Pennsylvania than moved away.

"That's the first time in almost 50 years," said Teri Ooms, executive director of the Institute for Public Policy & Economic Development think tank on South Main Street, Wilkes-Barre. "It's a nice positive change for us. It's a significant change."

The population is also being boosted by the children of the migrants, who have much higher birth rates than the native population. In 2007, about 10 in every 100 Latino women between the ages of 15 and 44 had children, while the national rate for all races lagged behind, at about 7 in 100.

A Pew Research Center report estimates the U.S. population will increase by about 50 percent from 2005 to 2050, with immigrants representing 82 percent of that growth.

"The bottom line is that we have to educate the new wave of immigrants [and their children] because that's where the economy will reside," Balsamo said. "They are going to be the workforce of the future."

Spongebob Squarepants yammers in English from the television in the Perez house on Carey Avenue as the family gathers in the living room. Carla points the remote at the screen and the light blue "volumen" bar flashes across the images of the undersea cartoon.

Eight-year-old Romel speaks more English than Spanish after working his way through a local elementary school. He can read and write English, but not Spanish. He's the Spongebob fan and can name all the professional wrestlers glaring out from his T-shirt.

Pascual Perez is a truck driver and has been in the country the longest, first New Jersey and then Wilkes-Barre. Carla Perez works in a factory that makes wires and hopes to go back to a program at King's to work on her English.

"Muy dificil," Pascual Perez says of their time apart. "Very hard. Now, estamos muy bien."

"Now it's easy," Romel says, one eye still on the television as he squirms away from his mother's grasp in perfect 8-year-old form.

"Now, I am happy," Pascual Perez finishes.

Once separated by oceans and continents in their search of opportunities not available to them in the Dominican Republic, they're reunited in this country for that same reason.

"They wanted to buy a house. They wanted a good future for me and my brother," Oskarllys Perez explains, occasionally volleying questions to his mother in Spanish. "It is different. The life here, the life there."

"Para una mejor vida, para una mejor vida por mi familia," his father says. "You understand?"

"A better life?"

"A better life."

xzmattzx

July 28th, 2009, 06:02 AM

There was an article in the News Journal a few weeks ago about the immigrant population in Sussex County (legal and illegal; illegals likely outnumber legals, but there's no way to figure out exact numbers), and I forgot to post it until I saw this thread up here. It's basically about how almost the entire town of Tacana in Guatemala moved to the Georgetown area in Sussex County. Over 20% of Georgetown's population is of Guatemalan ancestry. The money that they send back to Guatemala has been a godsend for Tacana. There are problems with the immigrants such as gang violence, which is kind of unheard of in the U.S. in rural areas (my brother-in-law works for ICE and tracks gang activity in Dover, which he says he an unknown yet very big problem), and obviously the language divide, but we'll see what happens. Hopefully the ones here work to become legal residents like the store owner in the article, and hopefully future immigrants choose the legal way to enter. I think if that stuff is taken care of first, then sending money back home will become even less of a deal, and I think the people responsible for bringing crime with them might go somewhere else.

Georgetown immigrants still living a world apart
Guatemalans in Delaware thriving, but at what cost?

From the window of his office on Race Street in the heart of Georgetown, Police Chief Bill Topping watches as two Latinas -- a mother and daughter, perhaps -- walk down the street.

He can't be sure, of course, but more than a decade in Georgetown has taught him that most likely the daughter is a U.S.-born citizen, the mother an undocumented immigrant from Central America.

"Looking at a person and knowing they're an illegal immigrant doesn't even faze us anymore," said Topping, a wad of tobacco stuffed in the side of his cheek. "If it were sporadic we might pay attention. But when you see hundreds every day, it numbs you after a while."

According to the U.S. Census, 5,157 people lived in Georgetown in 2007. Police estimate that about 4,000 undocumented immigrants, mostly from Guatemala, are living in the town. Officially, the Census recorded 2,846 Guatemalans living in Delaware for 2005 to 2007.

Officials and longtime residents say the sheer number of Guatemalans who have settled in Georgetown in the last decade -- mostly in the town's historic Kimmeytown section, located within walking distance of jobs at the town's Perdue poultry plant -- has meant an increase in housing code violations and crime, overcrowded schools, shortage of housing and general communication problems.

While the immigrants' hometowns, most in the Guatemalan department of San Marcos -- Guatemala's equivalent of a state -- are benefiting from thousands of dollars sent back each month, many in Georgetown's non-immigrant population have begun to question just what it is they're gaining from a community that speaks another language and lives by a different culture.

"In some ways Georgetown would have been better off if the immigrants had never come," said Bob Ricker, a town councilman and former mayor and fire chief. "We'd never have been able to weather the housing boom without them, but our town wouldn't have the housing problems or crime it has now, either. What it takes is for someone to weigh whether what they bring to the table is worth the cost. All things considered, San Marcos benefits from us more than we benefit from them."

In 2008, 48 percent of all code violations in Georgetown were in Ward 2, where the bulk of the immigrant population lives, said Town Manager Gene Dvornick. Also, more than 70 percent of DUIs were attributed to Latinos, Topping said.

"Things like that stir up the citizenry, and they should," Topping said. "The point is those people shouldn't have been here in the first place, and you can't really argue too much with that."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deported 5,373 immigrants from Delaware, Pennsylvania and West Virginia in 2008. That's up from 3,407 in 2006. Regional numbers are not broken down by state or country of origin.
Nationally, 361,222 immigrants were deported in 2008, and a record 27,645 were sent home to Guatemala.

Topping said he and his officers have learned -- the hard way -- that ICE isn't going to go after the average undocumented immigrant working at Perdue.

"The average person wants to know what's going on with illegal immigration, and they look to us as police to do something about it, which we really can't because it's a federal issue," Topping said. "But it's still an issue that reaches down into the grass roots of America, especially right here in southern Delaware."

The chicken factor

Ricker said residents point the finger of blame at the local poultry industry: Perdue in Georgetown, Mountaire in Selbyville and Millsboro, Allen's in Harbison.

Sussex County is the nation's top broiler-producing county, with more than 223 million broilers produced on nearly 700 farms, according to data contained in the latest Census of Agriculture released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Tired of the life of a migrant laborer, moving from Florida to Georgia to North Carolina and back to harvest whatever crop was in season, immigrants say what first drew them to Georgetown was steady work in the poultry industry -- Perdue wages average $9.75 an hour.

Otilio Robledo Roblero, vice mayor of Tacaná, San Marcos, who has three children living in Delaware, said he's never heard of chicken plants recruiting in Guatemala.

"Allens, Mountaire, Perdue," he said, rattling off the companies. "They never needed to recruit here. Everyone here knows those names because that's where they all go to work. Everyone here knows someone who works at a chicken plant."

Perdue Farms Inc. spokeswoman Julie DeYoung said one can't assume that just because a lot of Latinos live in Georgetown they all work at Perdue's Georgetown plant.

"Jobs are a draw for people to any area," she said. "Poultry is just one industry with jobs in this area, and Perdue is one company in that industry."
Neither Mountaire nor Allens responded to inquiries.

Leonel Ramirez, 27, left Tacaná in 2006 with a mission to earn enough money to build his own casita in Guatemala -- he was tired of living with his family of 10 in a tiny house constructed of corrugated metal and wood.

He followed his older brother and four cousins to Georgetown, his head filled with stories of all the money his relatives said they had made working at the pollo plants.

"It was weekly pay, making $8, $9 or $10 an hour," said Ramirez, who worked at Mountaire before returning to Tacaná in August to open a butcher shop with the money he earned in Delaware. "That much money is unheard of here. We had enough to buy a television, beds. Life was good, and it wasn't that hard to integrate, because everyone there was from Tacaná."

In 2007, an estimated 65 percent of Perdue workers in Georgetown were Latino, but over the past year the number of Hispanics applying for jobs has declined, DeYoung said.

Topping said it's because last year ICE made an arrangement with the local poultry plants, giving the companies time to phase out and replace any undocumented workers so that a raid didn't "cause the industry to crash."
Perdue uses the federal government's E-Verify program to determine whether workers have provided a valid Social Security number, DeYoung said, adding that the company does not provide statistics on how many people have been terminated for failing to provide legitimate work authorization papers.

Although he did not provide specifics, regional ICE spokesman Mark Medvesky said last year that immigration officials cooperated with the Sussex County "food processing industry" to arrest five vendors selling authentic Puerto Rican birth certificates and Social Security cards to undocumented immigrants.

"ICE is committed to working cooperatively with all employers who want to strengthen their adherence to legal hiring practices and reduce and eliminate the unlawful employment of illegal aliens, but who may be subjected to the victimization caused by the presentation of fraudulent documents or other attempts to unlawfully gain employment outside of the employer's control," Medvesky said.

"With that stated, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is committed to investigating and prosecuting egregious employers and individuals that are violating laws regarding the unauthorized employment of illegal aliens in Delaware and throughout the country."

Kimmeytown

Whether they came for jobs in the poultry industry, construction or tourism, most immigrants' first stop is Kimmeytown, the area running from the train depot east to Albury Avenue, to New Street in the north and Market Street to the south.

Once the thriving home of blue-collar workers, Kimmeytown has long been in decline.

"It's been a hellhole for a long time," said Carleton Moore, chairman of the executive board of the Historic Georgetown Association. "People talk about being scared of getting lost in Kimmeytown. They see it as the bad part of town."

Moore, who has lived in Georgetown all his life, said none of the problems of Kimmeytown should be blamed on the immigrant population.

"They moved into a terrible area, because that's where the available houses were, even though they were in bad shape," he said. "But they also haven't done anything to keep the area up or make it better."

Joining forces with other builders and developers, Moore thought Kimmeytown could be fixed up in just five years. Sixteen years later, Moore is still saying it will take another five years.

More than 20 new houses have been built in Kimmeytown in the past few years, the train depot, renovated to house the Greater Georgetown Chamber of Commerce, reopened in 2004, and the group is hoping to bring Georgetown's original firehouse to what they're referring to as the "railroad village."

"In four or five years, Kimmeytown will be more cleaned up," Moore said. "There will be better housing, with the houses razed or restored by that time. I don't think it will be primarily Guatemalans living there anymore. They'll keep coming, as always, and they'll work hard, but they'll have to find affordable housing somewhere else."

While Kimmeytown continues to be the destination for newly arrived immigrants, Guatemalans have begun buying houses in neighborhoods citywide.

Still, native residents and immigrants alike agree that, even as Guatemalans become more integrated, Georgetown remains divided.

"It's not just the language, but if you can't communicate with someone, you're instantly suspicious of them," Ricker said. "There are also cultural issues, and frustrations about what's happening to our beloved town. Really, there's no interaction."

A town divided

That lack of interaction carries over into the business world, said Karen Duffield, executive director of the Greater Georgetown Chamber of Commerce, housed in the Kimmeytown train depot.

She doesn't have numbers to back it up, but Hispanic businesses are the fastest-growing in Georgetown. And unless they're Latino-owned, there are no new businesses opening in Kimmeytown.

"It would be remiss or inappropriate if we didn't recognize the businesses that are developing and becoming part of the fabric of the Georgetown community," Duffield said. "But right now these businesses are just serving their own populations, and the problem we keep running into is the language barrier."

Sergio Escalante, 40, is one of Kimmeytown's Guatemalan business owners.
After leaving Tacaná at age 22, he landed at Perdue in Georgetown.
"It was the same thing every day, and I was bored, so I made a plan," said Escalante, now a legal resident. "I wanted more."

His first step was to obtain a credit card to establish credit. He started working with a friend, also from San Marcos, selling imported Guatemalan products to stores along the East Coast.

Nearly three years ago, he opened his own store in Kimmeytown, selling everything from anti-fungal cream, vitamins and shampoo to key chains with soccer team logos, baby dolls and prayer cards of the Virgen de Guadalupe. There are even back issues of Prensa Libre, a Guatemalan newspaper, for customers to peruse.

"We sell whatever people ask for," Escalante said.

But by people, he said, he means fellow immigrants, because few Anglos ever enter his store.

The Chamber of Commerce needs to do a better of job of reaching out to Hispanic business owners, Duffield said, adding that such an effort is getting under way now.

While having so many Guatemalans in the area is something that should be promoted, she said, the lack of Anglo-Hispanic interaction is likely to preclude marketing the town for its cultural diversity.

Moore said the "Latino flavor" of Kimmeytown, Spanish speakers and signs in Spanish, are what keep so many people from feeling free to visit or shop there.

Ricker, too, said he doesn't see Kimmeytown as a "Guatemalan Town" tourist destination.

"I went to Chinatown in San Francisco, and everyone spoke English back to me," he said. "Try that on Race Street and see where it gets you."

Escalante acknowledges that immigrants should learn English. He's picked up a few words and phrases over the years, but he's never had time to really study English.

Language experts say that for immigrants like Escalante, who had little formal schooling in their own language, trying to learn a second language as an adult is made all the more difficult.

Plus, as long as he stays in Georgetown, surrounded by so many of his countrymen, Escalante said, knowing English seems less critical.

No 'loyalty' to community

It's not that the Anglo community wants to kick out the immigrant population entirely, residents said -- just the ones who are here illegally.

Still, in the next breath they say that acceptance for even those here legally is conditioned upon "fitting in."

Ricker said Hispanic immigrants need to "pull their own weight. They need to prove they're paying their way and working themselves into society. ... If you're coming out of the backwoods of Tennessee and you want to eat at the country club, you're going to have to find shoes."

Topping said he'd like to see how San Marcos has changed since so many of its residents began migrating to Georgetown.

"They're taking the things they learn here home," he said. "I'd like to see what kinds of upscale things are happening for them in San Marcos that they're not doing here.

"The workers here are saving money, living Spartan lives, and since they know they're going home, they don't have a lot of loyalty to this community. Georgetown is just their means to an end."

http://cmsimg.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=BL&Date=20090706&Category=NEWS&ArtNo=907060341&Ref=AR&Profile=1006&MaxW=550&MaxH=650&title=0
Police estimate that about 4,000 undocumented immigrants, mostly from Guatemala, are living in the city. Sergio Escalante became a legal citizen and opened his own store. His wife, Diana Gomez de Escalante, is at left.

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20090706/NEWS/907060341

bayviews

July 30th, 2009, 03:39 AM

xzmattzx

July 30th, 2009, 05:37 PM

Very good article, shows the impact the immigrant Guatamalan farmworkers are having on the growth in rural Delaware, although the numbers probably aren't quite as high as the estimates.

Interesting, many of the same types of farmworkers migrate to upstate NY, but most get run out by the Buffalo ICE at the end of the farming season, so few end up staying.

I'd like to see more consistent immigration enforcement, no reason that the same types of immigrant farmworkers who are settling around Delaware should be run out of WNY.

The reason that ICE doesn't go after every single person down here is because there are simply too many people to go after. They cut their losses and work on the ones responsible for random violent crimes (rape, kidnapping, etc) or the ones involved with gangs (MS-13 is huge down here). It's good for ICE to keep tabs on immigrant workers in New York, because following the people that are just trying to make a living are others who are trying to escape justice both here and in their home country, and they naturally try to hide where the pressure by officials isn't as strong as in other places. We're finding that out the hard way down here.

bayviews

July 31st, 2009, 04:15 AM

The reason that ICE doesn't go after every single person down here is because there are simply too many people to go after. They cut their losses and work on the ones responsible for random violent crimes (rape, kidnapping, etc) or the ones involved with gangs (MS-13 is huge down here). It's good for ICE to keep tabs on immigrant workers in New York, because following the people that are just trying to make a living are others who are trying to escape justice both here and in their home country, and they naturally try to hide where the pressure by officials isn't as strong as in other places. We're finding that out the hard way down here.

Now thats a ICE policy that really makes a hellava lot of sense, focusing immigration enforcement on criminal aliens. Yes, they should be going after MS-13 & other international criminal syndicates. ICE simply doesn't have the staffing in a place like Delaware to go after the substantial numbers of immigrant workers.

But contrast that with Buffalo & in WNY, where ICE has much larger staffing for far fewer illegal immigrants, they have conducted a very aggressive campaign targetting farmworkers & other immigrant workers.

ICE needs to adopt, redeploying more staffing from depopopulated areas like WNY which frankly need all the immigrants they can get, to areas like Delaware, which already have substantial immigrant inflows & where there are alien criminal syndicates.

It just seems to me that Federal immigration enforcement policies should be consistent across the US, rather than a "tougher" policy for places like Buffalo & a "looser" policy for other places like Delaware.

xzmattzx

July 31st, 2009, 04:23 PM

I can agree with your last sentence. It does make a lot of sense to have ICE have a stronger presence in places with larger illegal immigrant communities, like Los Angeles or Georgia or Houston or wherever, over Buffalo. However, maybe they are approaching it from the standpoint that if they are strict in Upstate New York now before any large influx, then they stay ahead of the curve, and don't have to worry about reacting to problems that have already taken hold (like the gangs in Delaware and elsewhere).

I'm confused about your statement about needing all the immigrants that you can get, but maybe I am interpreting it wrong. Are you saying that you think it's fine for people to enter the country illegally if they move to a place that is losing population?

bayviews

August 1st, 2009, 02:41 AM

I'm confused about your statement about needing all the immigrants that you can get, but maybe I am interpreting it wrong. Are you saying that you think it's fine for people to enter the country illegally if they move to a place that is losing population?

Well whats the reality now? There are somewhere between 10-15 million unauthorized immigrants living in the US today & there not going away. And most tend to be concentrated in areas like NYC, California, Florida, & Texas which have more people & growth than their public & private infrastructures (housing, transportation, schools, churches, etc.) can handle.

Meanwhile, many depopulated areas which have plenty of excess, underutlized infrastructure have been begging for growth, Buffalo & WNY being a prime example. Why not solve the challenge by legalizing undocumented immigrants who repopulate depopulated areas like Buffalo & other rust belt areas?

Seems like that would solve a number of major challenges right there.

xzmattzx

August 1st, 2009, 07:54 AM

Well whats the reality now? There are somewhere between 10-15 million unauthorized immigrants living in the US today & there not going away. And most tend to be concentrated in areas like NYC, California, Florida, & Texas which have more people & growth than their public & private infrastructures (housing, transportation, schools, churches, etc.) can handle.

Meanwhile, many depopulated areas which have plenty of excess, underutlized infrastructure have been begging for growth, Buffalo & WNY being a prime example. Why not solve the challenge by legalizing undocumented immigrants who repopulate depopulated areas like Buffalo & other rust belt areas?

Seems like that would solve a number of major challenges right there.

If you grant citizenship status to people that came here illegally, then you are practically telling others that if they come here illegally, then they could also get citizenship status. You would be opening up Pandora's Box with a decision like that. Then again, granting citizenship to illegal immigrants already here really seems like the only feasible option. Of course, patrolling the border first and preventing new people from circumventing our immigration laws needs to be done, and then later on you figure out how to take care of the people already here. (It's kind of like having a leaking pipe in your house; you don't start pumping water out onto the street first, then worry about the pipe later: you fix the leaky pipe first, then worry about the water that already came out.)

I agree that immigrants can be of great help (provided that there are jobs for them, which is another topic), but simply waving a magic wand whenever and making them citizens or looking the other way with a wink and a nod is just not a smart thing to do at such a large scale.

xzmattzx

August 1st, 2009, 08:40 PM

Speaking of immigration and whatnot, my brother-in-law, the one that works for Homeland Security, told me yesterday that anyone travelling to the beach should try and pay cash at all times. His office is investigating a rash of incidents at the Delaware beach towns in which seasonal workers from Russia and Eastern Europe are writing down the credit card numbers and names when people pay with a card. They then e-mail the credit card numbers to hackerrs/identify theft criminals back in their home country. So, Homeland Security is starting to spread the word to pay cash whenever possible at tourist destinations, particularly beach towns, and to be cautious to give your credit card to a non-American, particularly a Russian or Eastern European.

bayviews

August 2nd, 2009, 03:23 AM

The high rate of unauthorized immigration, mostly from Mexico & other Latin American countries is largely due to the reality that the immigration quotas for our hemispheric neighbors are unrealistically small, given the proximity & the huge disparities in economic levels. Anytime there's a relatively poor region right next to rich one, many people are going to migrate.

Most would have to wait to decades to come legally, so most come illegally. Increase the quotas to a realistic level & legalize those willing to repopulate places like Buffalo & other dying towns in WNY & that would dramatically cut down on the illegal flows right there.

Jobs tend to follow people these days. Remember 70% of any local economy is based on consumption, that is people being in a place. Employers are drawn to places where there's a steady influx of people, Employers steer clear of places like Buffalo where there's a steady outmigration of people. Remember, Buffalo's had a steady outmigration for decades, the metro population's down by 200k & yet local jobs seem just as tough to find as ever.

I know guys like your brother in law at ICE have a tough job to do. I'd just like to see their duties made easier, by focusing on the likes of the illegal real gangsters & criminals, wherever they may be from. Rather than facing the thankless task of trying to keep out the undocumented but vital workers who are (as in Delaware) boosting the local economies, or could be (as in WNY).

xzmattzx

August 3rd, 2009, 01:36 AM

I think we generally agree with each other. I'm fine with upping the quotas; there's nothing wrong with more legal immigrants, especially if there are jobs needed done, and there are places that need to keep the population stable (like Western New York). I think we should be upping the quotas for all immigrants, really. I've heard that a lot of doctors from India and Southeast Asia and similar places want to come here but we effectively turn them away. I'm not sure where I read it; I'll have to find a source. Why would we turn away people that can really help out society? Delaware has really benefitted from white-collar and scientific industry immigration from India, Iraq, China, South Korea, Hong Kong, etc, with all of the pharmaceutical companies (DuPont, Hercules, AstraZeneca, etc) and other high-tech companies (W.L. Gore, etc) in the area. We should be using these types of immigrants to propel us back into the world's sole superpower through our technology and science industries.

However, I still think that we shouldn't be haphazard about illegal immigrants already here. Being too loose with everyone means that the gangs and criminals will take advantage first and the most. Granting citizenship to everyone already here without cleaning out the mess doesn't seem like a good idea. (At the same time, just kicking everyone out and then doing nothing will never solve any problems either.) We need to close up the borders and prevent illgeal immigration in the future (and that can be complimented with letting in more people legally), then deport the people who committed crimes, and then figure out what to do with the people here illegally but are here for benign reasons (amnesty for them, or whatever).

bayviews

August 15th, 2009, 03:01 AM

Burmese find home in Buffalo - Refugees chase American dream on city's West Side
Buffalo News, The (NY) - Sunday, July 26, 2009
Author: Gene Warner - NEWS STAFF REPORTER

Law Eh Soe was one of only two photojournalists to chronicle the monks'

pro-democracy uprising two years ago in his native Burma.

He fled after government soldiers shot and killed a Japanese journalist.

Smiler Greely, another Burma native, spent 23 years in a refugee camp, a

virtual city of 40,000 people crammed into a few square kilometers, living in

bamboo houses with thatched roofs and no electricity.

He fled to give his three kids an education -- and a country they could

call home.

Myo Thant, a pro-democracy youth leader in Burma, spent 17 months under

house arrest as a key aide to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize

recipient.

He fled because he wouldn't compromise his beliefs and knew he'd spend much

of his life under house arrest, in prison -- or worse.

All three refugees -- bright, educated men forced from their homeland --

now live on Buffalo 's West Side.

And they're not alone.

Buffalo is home to approximately 2,000 Burmese refugees -- approaching 1

percent of the city's population.

The figure is climbing quickly, and Buffalo has become the unofficial state

capital for resettling refugees from Burma and elsewhere. This year, more than

30 percent of the refugees coming to New York State have settled in Western

New York.

"If it weren't for refugees, Buffalo would be shrinking even faster," said

Molly Short, executive director of Journey's End Refugee Services. "This is

the incoming population."

The Burmese make up more than half the roughly 1,000 refugees who resettle

in the Buffalo area each year.

Most of the Burmese have fled from refugee camps along the Thailand-Burma

border, where some lived for years in primitive conditions, after 3,000 of

their villages were destroyed.

They've settled mostly on the West Side, west of Richmond Avenue and south

of Lafayette Avenue. Many spend their time in all-day English classes, fishing

along the Niagara River and walking through their neighborhoods.

Many passers-by think they're either Chinese or Vietnamese. And they're

adamant that their native land is Burma, not Myanmar, the recent name favored

by the military government.

They're new Buffalonians, chasing their own version of the American dream.

But not just for themselves.

"This is only the first generation," Law said, gesturing toward an English

class of Burmese adults. "The second generation will be different. They will

speak fluent English and be more educated."

But Law sounded a warning for that younger generation:

"They shouldn't forget their roots, and why we had to come to America.

Thousands of our people stayed in Burma and suffered, and they shouldn't

forget that."

>New kid in town

The Burmese refugees who have formed their own community on the West Side,

as well as smaller enclaves in Black Rock and Riverside, face two major

hurdles in adapting to America.

First, few come here speaking much English. Authorities estimate that only

10 to 15 percent of Burmese refugees arrive with a workable mastery of the

language. That's why newcomers spend up to eight hours on weekdays in English

class, first having to crack the intricacies of our alphabet.

The Burmese also have to overcome their own diversity. Burma has eight

basic ethnic groups, dozens of sub-ethnic groups and about 100 language

dialects. That means many of them need interpreters just to talk with each

other.

Last week, Denise Phillips Beehag, director of refugee services for the

International Institute of Buffalo , asked some Burmese refugees outside

English class for permission to have their photos taken for The Buffalo News.

She made her pitch in English, before it was translated by one interpreter

into the Burmese dialect and then by another into the Karen dialect.

The Burmese refugees also come from three religious groups: Christian,

Buddhist and Muslim.

Thant, the former youth leader, dismissed the notion that the Burmese are

too divided by their ethnic, language and religious differences.

"We're all the same," he said. "We've all been oppressed. It doesn't matter

what language you speak. We're all from Burma."

The Burmese also face the same challenges confronting any new immigrant

group -- including the Irish, Italian, Polish and Hispanic groups before them.

"Every new group goes through this," Beehag said. "They're the new kid in

town, and they're going to be picked on. But it's easier to pick on this

group. They're timid, they're quiet, and they're not assertive."

Burmese refugees work with four local resettlement agencies: the

International Institute, Journey's End, Catholic Charities and Jewish Family

Service. But the Burmese won't tell their case managers when they don't have

food or electricity, Beehag said.

"You have to ask them," Beehag said. "They don't want to be a burden.

That's a challenge for resettlement agencies."

These refugees have endured a great deal just to get here.

Burma, located in Southeast Asia, bordering Thailand, China and India, has

been in civil war for more than five decades.

Listen to the stories of Law, Thant and Smiler, and you hear about the

burning of villages, the shooting of innocent people, the house arrests of

democratic leaders, the crowded and primitive refugee camps and the physical

and psychological torture of those imprisoned for their beliefs.

You also learn how much freer they feel here, how much they still miss

their own rivers and mountains, and how high their hopes are for the next

generation of Burmese -Americans.

>No Hollywood movie

Back home, Law Eh Soe graduated from Rangoon University with a law degree.

But he didn't want to be a lawyer or judge under the long-running martial law.

So he drifted into photojournalism, working for Japanese, French and

European news agencies in Rangoon.

"The government didn't like me because I showed my people's daily life in

Burma," he said.

On Sept. 18, 2007, thousands of monks protested peacefully in the streets

against the military regime. Law and one other photojournalist captured those

images, and his photos appeared on CNN, Time magazine and even Al Jazeera.

Previously, Law and others had been warned whenever government soldiers

started shooting. This time, there was no warning, and a Japanese journalist

was killed in downtown Rangoon.

"When they started shooting, it wasn't like a Hollywood movie," Law, now

38, remembered. "In a movie, the journalist can take the picture. In Burma,

when they started shooting, I had to run for my life.

"It was no longer safe for me. I thought I would be in prison, or they

might hunt for me."

Two days later, Law fled to a remote area in Burma, then to Thailand. Since

resettling in Buffalo in March 2008, he lives with his mother and two brothers

on 14th Street and works full time with the International Institute as an

interpreter.

"The two important things we have here are freedom and hope. We didn't have

them in Burma. We had to live under fear and doubt, and we didn't have freedom

of speech. Here we can discuss what we want."

The hardest part of his adjustment to America?

"Nothing is like home. I love to live here, [but] when I close my eyes, I

miss my country. I can smell the rivers and the country roads and the

mountains."

Law marvels at the adjustments other Burmese have made.

Many, before moving into the refugee camps, came from remote areas, often

in the mountains, where they had no cars or buses or electricity. Now they

live in a fairly large American city, with buses, shopping malls, hospitals

and other modern amenities.

"It's like they moved to another planet."

>Man without a country

Smiler Greely's story is more typical among Burmese refugees.

The son of a teacher and a local agricultural minister, young Smiler lived

along the Burma-Thailand border, where the Burmese government attacked its own

residents.

"You couldn't live there anymore," he said. "You didn't need to make a

decision. You just ran across the river."

Beehag, from the International Institute, described a typical scenario.

"You're in your village minding your own business, and your village is

burned down by the military government. So you run, and you run until you feel

safe and meet up with people from another village."

At about age 11, Smiler moved to a refugee camp in Thailand, into a life of

bamboo houses, thatched roofs, no electricity and little water. The food was

rice, fish paste, salt and chili peppers.

"Every 15 days, you have to line up, wait for your name and get your ration

of rice," he said. "Then the next day, you get your fish paste . . . "

There was no freedom, no choice, he said. The civil war prevented him from

returning to Burma. Stateless, living in Thailand, he and other refugees were

not allowed to grow their own rice or raise their own animals. He stayed 23

years, past the birth of his three children.

"I was over 30 years old, and I didn't have citizenship in any country," he

said. "I am not an animal. But what country do I belong to? My children were

born in Thailand. They didn't have any citizenship, because they were in a

refugee camp."

A whole family without a country.

"How can your children survive for the next generation? I've spent my whole

life in a refugee camp. Are my children going to spend their life there? My

grandchildren?"

That's why Smiler, now 36, came to Buffalo , where he lives with his wife

and three young children and works in a school program with Journey's End.

Smiler wants others to understand where he's come from and to learn the

difference between a democracy and a repressive military dictatorship, where

people are shot and young girls raped by soldiers.

"Geographically, I like Burma and the weather. I love the streams and

rivers and forests in Thailand and Burma, but not the [ Burmese ] government.

"The government just kills their own people."

>Words from a poster

Following some of his greatest accomplishments -- earning two degrees from

Buffalo State College and being sworn in as a U.S. citizen in 2006 -- Myo

Thant has felt a twinge of sadness.

"I feel like I'm selfish, because my people are still in trouble, being

killed and persecuted," he said. "I feel responsible. I'm OK, but they're not

OK. Even though physically I'm here, my mind is not here. My mind is in Burma,

with my people."

Thant was a youth leader in Burma, becoming a trusted confidante of the

National League for Democracy's Suu Kyi.

"She called me like her son, because I was so young," he said. "She said,

'Why don't you stay with me, to help me plan the youth activities?' "

That's what Thant did, and from May 1996 until October 1997, he was under

house arrest with Suu Kyi, the 64-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner who's on

trial in Burma.

Thant never thought about fleeing Burma. But he didn't want to be in prison

for his beliefs. He wanted to keep fighting for them. And that meant leaving.

"I would never change my beliefs," he said. "The country must be free and

democratic."

Thant, 37, a Journey's End case manager, wants to keep Burmese culture

alive among the young refugees who settle here. Some day, he wants the Burmese

to have their own festival, like the Italian Festival, to celebrate their

food, their history, their culture, so the young people won't forget.

This is a tough tightrope for local Burmese leaders to walk. They want

their young people to learn English, get jobs and be self-sufficient in

America. But Thant doesn't want them to forget.

"Please speak your language in your home," he advises his fellow Burmese .

"Don't speak English. You have to maintain your culture in your home."

On the walls of Thant's modest Normal Avenue flat, a poster of Suu Kyi

looks down at him, with a saying that may sum up his mission:

"Please use your liberty to promote ours."