Posted on 10/19/2002 4:14:44 PM PDT by blam
Immigration protest threatens to tarnish America's melting pot
By Marcus Warren in Lewiston
(Filed: 20/10/2002)
Influx of Somalis sparks an identity crisis amongst Americans, reports Marcus Warren in Lewiston.
'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," commands the inscription on the base of the Statue of Liberty. And here they are, in the form of black women in veils, strolling down Main Street, USA.
An invitation to the world's dispossessed to come to America, the lines of poetry beneath the lady with the torch in New York harbour are also a pledge of faith in the country's ability to welcome the new arrivals. Yet the nation's image as a melting pot of races has been put to the test anew by protests from a mayor in its whitest state that his town has been "overwhelmed" by Somali refugees.
Lewiston, Maine, where the mayor claims the community has become unbalanced Laurier Raymond, mayor of Lewiston and of French Canadian stock himself, has provoked a national outcry by describing his community as "maxed out financially, physically and emotionally" by the influx of Africans.
More than 1,000 Somalis have settled here in the past 18 months, a tiny figure besides the hundreds of thousands of immigrants the US as a whole admits yearly but a source of major strain in this small New England town.
Their sudden arrival has already changed the face of Lewiston, total population 35,000. Somali delis and a makeshift mosque in a converted shop have sprung up, almost overnight, on Lisbon Street.
Superficially a row about the cost of assimilating the newcomers, the controversy is rich in racial and religious overtones, especially after last year's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Behind the debate over how much the Somalis will add to the local property tax lurk fears over America and its identity if the stream of migrants from "alien" cultures continues.
Foreigners have turned up in this corner of Maine en masse before, but they hailed from Ireland or Canada and came in the 19th century at a much more leisurely pace. To this day the state is 97 per cent white.
Fugitives from a civil war, the Somalis are part of the historic tradition of refugees from "ancient lands" looking for a better life in the US - "wretched refuse of your teeming shore", as the poem on the Statue of Liberty puts it.
However, in a perverse twist to the conventional tale of migrants arriving on America's shores in search of refuge, Lewiston's Somalis are fleeing the violence of the US inner city as much as warlords and poverty at home.
On arrival in the US, most started their new lives in Georgia or Tennessee, where they were soon confronted by America at its very worst - rampant crime, poor quality schooling and what one called "hip-hop culture". Their sons were taunted by American-born blacks. Their daughters had their Muslim head scarves ripped off in the school bus.
"There were drugs being sold on every corner," recalled Muhammed Ali, an assistant imam at the Lewiston mosque. "The danger of corruption for our children through drinking, drugs or prostitution was very high."
Alarmed, Somali elders organised a sahan - in their homeland a search for pasture for cattle or camel herds during drought, but on this occasion a hunt for a safer, more edifying place to raise the next generation.
"We looked at the crime statistics for Lewiston," said Abdiaziz Ali, one of those who reconnoitred the town and a victim of a robbery at gunpoint in Atlanta. "A policeman was last killed here in the 1880s. We liked it a lot."
Its low unemployment, cheap housing and close-knit community were additional draws for the Somalis. They started heading north in large numbers, first by Greyhound bus, then by air.
Lewiston, a working-class mill town a world away from the Maine coast summer houses of the wealthy - such as President Bush senior - welcomed them at first. Then the welcome began to wear off.
The state, better known for moose and, at this time of year, the riotous reds, yellows and oranges of the foliage, now finds itself at the centre of a heated national debate over immigration.
The US admitted more immigrants in the 1990s than in any decade in its history - more than nine million - and the proportion among them of non-white, non-Christians is a source of growing anxiety to the Right. As are the numbers of illegal migrants, with evidence surfacing almost every day of the risks they will take to reach the US.
The skeletons of 11 stowaways, presumably from Mexico or Central America, were discovered this week in the sealed grain compartment of a goods train.
Outside Maine, communities of Somalis and Hmong, a Laotian people allied with the US during the Vietnam war, have in recent weeks both faced hostility in small towns.
Mortified by charges of racist bigotry, the Lewiston mayor - a grandfather to two black children adopted by his daughter - has gone to ground, refusing to speak to media from outside town. Mr Raymond has also declined to apologise for the letter he sent to local Somalis asking them "to exercise discipline" and staunch the flow of new arrivals.
"For me to apologise just to placate them, when I didn't believe I did anything wrong, would be an insult," he told Lewiston's local newspaper.
Most Somalis in Lewiston seem content to sit out the row. And if Maine turns inhospitable, there is always Minnesota and other Midwestern states, already home to even more refugees from the Horn of Africa.
For publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page please phone 44 (0) 207 538 7505 or email syndicat@telegraph.co.uk
28 August 2002: Secret hearings ruled illegal by US judges 5 August 2002: 2m migrants for Britain in next decade
Previous story: Turmoil as whites flock to join ANC coalition Next story: Rome rejects sex abuse plan
External links
Immigration and Naturalisation Service
Somalis, coalition want federal review of Lewiston [10 Oct '02] - Press Herald
City of Lewiston
Commands?
Tell me how some lines of *poetry* on a statue trump all other laws of our country? Not to mention common sense.
I wish they would take the damn plaque off the statue if the only alternative is for this country to be flooded with dirt poor, unskilled people who come here demanding that all of their needs be met by the American taxpayers or we will be deemed in violation of some poetry at the base of a statue.
Second of all, it's not only the "Right" that is "concerned" about the influx of immigrants, legal or otherwise. Good, if pedestrian, attempt at painting Americans as racist with a broad brush, though. This is a classic example, though, of what America is up against -- anything but open arms and welcoming grins to millions of immigrants, and we are painted as extremist xenophobes.
Of course this is the land of the unitarian church, send them to Unity and Ft. Kent.
I don't see nuttin about having to take Muslims who by the way are not tired as they take at least five long breaks everyday, who are not poor by our choice as we paid them dearly for oil, and who don't want to breath free as they want eveyone to submit to Allah's ganster mullahs. Screw 'em. Send them back. Now.
The reality is that Maine has the best welfare system.
Yup. Maine has the highest welfare payments. That's why they are there, to collect the most that they can get from the infidels for the least amount of effort. I wonder when a terrorist cell will be established?
Why should America be the entire worlds sponge for these individuals?
Only if they have job skills that make them completely self-sufficient, speak English and have heard of our Constitution. Many of the so-called political refugees are the first to end up on welfare.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.