'None of my children have cried of hunger here'

The Tennessean ^ | 12/26/2003 | ANITA WADHWANI

[VOA]

His children, however, can do anything. That's also the immigrant reality.

That's exactly the advice I've passed along to some of the "first ones off the boat"
that seem to be depressed that they don't have a million dollars after being
in the USA after a couple of years!


Life in America - ain't it great?!

Well, as badly as Jimmy Carter performed as a President, he did hit a homerun
when he reminded the nation (with a bit of passion!) that people were still
risking their lives to get to the USA, despite all the "malaise" and economic
problems of the time.

[Old Student]

When I was leaving for a tour in Germany in 1991, one of the taxi drivers I met in Charleston, SC, told us his story; He arrived in town with the cloths on his back, and about $15 in his pockets. He slept on a park bench until he found someone who had a dead VW bus for sale. He financed the bus by picking up aluminum cans and glass bottles. He lived in the bus until he was able to get a driver's license, and get a job as a taxi driver. He worked 12-hour days, 6 days a week, until he could buy his first taxi. When we met him, he owned 6 cabs, had 5 other drivers driving the rest of them for him, and he also owned 12 houses. He still worked 12-hour days, 6 days a week. He couldn't understand why some Americans wouldn't try to work to better themselves. He loved this country for the opportunity it gave him, and was working hard to make it possible for his kids to get college educations and better jobs. My kind of guy. At that time, he'd been here about 5 or 6 years. I expect he owns most of Charleston, now.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

freedom ping

[zimdog]

He already knows how to farm tobacco, so there might be a job in the South that he can not only do, but use his expertise.

[zimdog]

Farmers aren't hunter-gatherers.

[JoeSchem]

I wish them well, but history has shown that tribal refugees have had a mixed record. Vietnamese have been a success story, yet there is a high percentage of Cambodians who ended up on drugs. It's good that people are now realizing you can't throw them into an apartment and expect them to thrive.

[4.1O dana super trac pak]

I guess the bleeding hearts couldn't handle your posts.

[KantianBurke]

they don't need to. its not like THEY or their relatives are going to be living near or paying for these 3rd worlders.

[4.1O dana super trac pak]

I tell ya, you have to wonder about this website sometimes.

Don't these people know what the hell is going on here? Fooled by a liberal feelgood story, sheesh.

[tortoise]

Vietnamese have been a success story, yet there is a high percentage of Cambodians who ended up on drugs.

Vietnamese are successful probably because they despise each other and yet are well-educated. This cultural distrust of Vietnamese by Vietnamese makes it hard to have cohesive insular communities, unlike many other ethnic communities (e.g. Chinese). The result is an odd bias toward integrating into white communities rather than staying within their own communities. Most Vietnamese leave the Vietnamese neighborhoods as soon as it is feasible.

Part of what I've noticed that is unique, is that many Vietnamese immigrant parents actively encourage their children to essentially disown their cultural identity and adopt an American one. They may maintain some ethnic aspects such as food, but culturally they Americanize very fast.

[MississippiMan]

If only more of our long term citizens could once again feel the depth of opportunity and freedom that the United States of America has to offer.

Yeah, it would be great to return to this kind of assimilation into AMERICAN culture instead of morons constantly doing everything possible to fracture our nation into countless splinter groups. Multiculturalism is one of the worst things to ever happen to this nation.

MM

[Old Student]

Make that misguided multiculturalism. Everyone should be educated about everyone eles's cultural backgrounds, but it would help if the info they passed out was correct.

For our Mexican neighbors, Cinco de Mayo is not much of a holiday, as they had dozens of "independence days" before and after that one. Here, it is the only one most Americans know of. There are many other examples, including probably hundreds I don't even know about yet.

Heck, I just found out last year that "White Russians" are from Belarus, not Russia proper. It has nothing to do with communism, they are supposedly the only ones who weren't conquered by the Mongol hordes. One of my great-grandfathers is, according to family tradition, a White Russian.

[MississippiMan]

Everyone should be educated about everyone eles's cultural backgrounds

We'll have to agree to disagree on that one. I personally enjoy knowing about where friends came from and such, but I don't think that's where the focus needs to be. Granted, in some cases--the subjects of this article provide one such example--it's necessary to understand what they're coming from, but only inasmuch as it's relevant to getting them settled in here. The focus needs to be on American life, American culture, the things that bind us together, not the things that make us different.

My ancestors showed up here from Ireland in the late 1600s to early 1700s. That's interesting to me, but it has very little to do with who I am today, nor how I relate to fellow countrymen.

MM

[expatguy]

I agree with you 100%.

There is no point to bring this Bantu man to the United States. No point at all. It is not meant to truly help him as much as it is a feel good act of charity on the part of our liberal misguided elites in our immigration service.

Bringing in unskilled workers under the guise of immigration is foolish. Why not bring in all the unskilled primitive workers of the world and just transform our society into another third world country?

There are millions of people like Mr. Ader throughout the world, do we intend to feed, clothe and support them all? We can expect Mr. Ader over the next few years to bring in his entire entended family under our immigration department's family unification rules.

If liberal elites truly wanted to "help" Mr. Ader, they would help him in his own country. They would help teach him how to fish instead of giving him a fish.

I have absolutely no respect for a man who is severerly in debt and has alread maxed out all his credit cards to be giving charity to people outside his own family.

[expatguy]

Thank you so much for posting that. Hopefully it will wake up a few people on this thread.

[Old Student]

I think you need to rethink that a little. It is not a matter of "enjoying" information, but having correct information so you know why people react the way they do. (Not that it will be 100% accurate, but it will help, anyway.) You may enjoy the information, too, but that is secondary. If you know not to offer a ham sandwich to a Muslim or Jew, that Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on or about the 6th of January, that you don't pat a traditional Chinese child on the head, and many other little oddities, you might be able to avoid giving unintentional offense. I do not believe that an ethnic identity must be totally submerged in an American identity. It is the unique combination of many ethnic and cultural traits that makes America so strong, and so able to solve so many problems.

Getting any immigrant settled means that their culture will be relevant for at least their lifetime; you don't shed a culture in only a few years. One of the things that we can profit by is having that totally new and different point of view observing our culture and commenting cogently on it. American culture is by no means perfect. It is just the best in the world. It still has a ways to develop, yet, and an illiterate farmer from Somalia's just as likely to help shape it as the Irish, Scots, English, and German ancestors many Americans claim. It is that melding of cultures, and the discarding of tattered ideas, replacing them with better ones, that is America's strength. Most of our ancestors came here to avoid unnecessary stupidity in their home country; the factionalism and disruption one other poster commented on. That poster was wrong, however, in that multicultural societies can survive and prosper, if they are TRULY multicultural. To be truly multicultural, we need to understand other cultures, as well as our own, and help all of us winnow out the bad ideas, and replace them with good ones. We have, throughout our history, adapted and assimilated good ideas others brought, and discarded those that don't fit our national character. .

The work ethic, as an example is not just a protestant idea, it is common in many countries, and those who have it will likely fit well here. Those who don't have it, can learn it. Folks like our Bantu immigrant are at least familiar with what Steven Covey calls "The Law of the Harvest." You can't reap if you didn't plant when it was time, weed as necessary, and keep the big herbivores out of the garden. Starvation alone will teach that to those who survive. These folks have that idea.

You and I share some Irish ancestors, probably, and their descendants have discarded some of the stupid ideas they had. I've also got English ancestors, and the Irish were thought, by them, to be no better than the savage wild Indians of the Americas. The modern English and Irish probably still feel about each other much like our (or at least my, since you may not have any English ancestors)felt about each other, but Americans of Irish and English descent find, now, that they are not so much different. A little distance, a different point of view, and a little knowledge.

[Redbob]

What's with this guy "Ader" - is he trying to single-handedly (so to speak) re-establish the Bantu tribe?

And why has he decided to inflict this upon Nashville?