Thread: Immigrants: Lynn school woes not our fault

Immigrants: Lynn school woes not our fault

Groups holding Tuesday rally say underfunding is system’s problem

If You GoWHAT: Rally sponsored by Lynn Parents Organizing for a Better Education, Neighbor to Neighbor, Lynn United for Change, the Reclaim Our Schools Coalition, the New Lynn Coalition.
WHEN: Tuesday at noon.
WHERE: In front of Lynn City Hall.
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• Related: Lynn health workers question new arrivals
• Related: State offering sites to house children
• Related: Lynn bracing for even more new arrivals
• Related: Unaccompanied minors pose challenge to Lynn officials

Posted: Monday, July 21, 2014 3:00 am

By Chris Stevens / The Daily Item

• 
• Posted on Jul 21, 2014
  by Chris Stevens
  

LYNN — Local immigrants are tired of feeling like scapegoats for the ills facing the city and are ready to sound off about it.

“The mayor and the superintendent are dividing our community,” said School Committee member Maria Carrasco, who will attend a planned rally at City Hall Tuesday. “You say the reputation of this city is it embraces everyone … but this is hate against immigrants.”

Jose Palma from Neighbor to Neighbor announced Friday that there will be a press conference and rally in front of City Hall Tuesday at noon to highlight the fact that unaccompanied minors and refugees are not to blame for the problems of the city’s educational system.

Palma said Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy and Superintendent Catherine Latham have been outspoken regarding an overwhelming number of refugees and unaccompanied minors that have come into the system in the last four years costing causing a financial burden.

Both he and Carrasco said it’s time to stop blaming the kids.

“Our schools have been underfunded for years,” he said.

“We need to look for solutions and not blame the immigrants,” Carrasco said. “(Kennedy) talks about us like we’re not human beings. Like we’re nobody.”

There has been much in the news lately about Gordon College, which has been accused of seeking to discriminate against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Carrasco said when officials talk about that, they talk about compassion and the need to be accepting of all, but that doesn’t seem to translate to the unaccompanied minors or refugees.

She said people need to understand the children are coming to this country because their lives are in danger in their own country due to extreme violence.

“It’s not a war or a revolution,” Carrasco said. “It’s just violence.”

She said gangs will threaten families to hand over their children as young as 9 years old, and if they don’t, the gangs will kill them, so families are trying to get their children to safety.

They are coming to Lynn because they have family here, Carrasco said.

If the U.S. really wanted to remedy the situation, it would go into countries like El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala and try and fix the violence, she said.

“Help make it so they don’t have to leave, so they’re not afraid,” she said.

Palma said Kennedy and Latham have to stop using the refugee children and unaccompanied minors to justify crumbling schools and outdated textbooks.

Kennedy has been careful not to begrudge the children, noting that Lynn has always been a city that welcomes immigrants because it was built by immigrants. However, she has said publicly that “enough is enough.”

Palma said it is increasingly frustrating to watch city officials take aim at the unaccompanied minors and refugee children who are here seeking a better life and an education. He said Tuesday they will call upon Kennedy and Latham to stop blaming the children and for city officials to fully fund the schools, which they insist is not currently being done.

“This is really dividing our community,” Carrasco reiterated. “This may not be popular for me to say, but I don’t care.”

She said it wasn’t that long ago that society was turning its backs on Irish and Italian immigrants.

“Now it’s the Latinos,” she said.

Chris Stevens can be reached at cstevens@itemlive.com


More about Immigrants

• ARTICLE: Obama officials pledge to stem immigration tide

More about Unaccompanied Minors

• ARTICLE: Lynn has no room for unaccompanied minors; Item shows intolerance toward Gordon College
• ARTICLE: How an influx upended the immigration debate
• ARTICLE: Mass. asked to shelter unaccompanied kids
• ARTICLE: Lynn bracing for even more new arrivals

• Discuss

http://www.itemlive.com/news/immigrants-lynn-school-woes-not-our-fault/article_88c795f2-1086-11e4-8b73-0019bb2963f4.html


"Immigrants" again, Here We Go Again!!!!!! They are not immigrants they are illegal aliens!!!! That is a criminal act....An immigrant comes through legal channels to get here, illegals come through illegal ways!!!! What part of Illegal becomes Legal????? What has hate got to do with any thing, illegal is illegal, they are invading our country illegally, that is a crime and goes against our Countries Sovereignty...

PS there are good comments at the end of the article.

Sounds like Carrasco has borrowed an idea from GWB's Afghanistan book. "Help make it so they don't have to leave, so they're not afraid," Carrasco says Come to our country,, make us whole, that did not even work out well for us in Afghanistan..Nor Iraq, and Bush was the one that he did not believe that America should be the world's policeman. Another politician who proved himself a man of few principles, he could not even live upto his stated principles

If I do not know what my principles are, ! will fall for anything. It is that simple!

Democrat Massachusetts Governor Compares Opposition to Immigration to the Holocaust

Posted 7 hours ago by Gary DeMar

Those calling for our southern border to be opened to everybody are arguing that those entering the United States are being persecuted. This is hardly the case. They are being told that America is the land of opportunity. Because of our generous welfare system and generally Christian worldview, these children will be cared for.

These parents see themselves as Superman’s parents and their children as the embodiment of Kal-El. Dr. Gary North comments:

“Central Americans have adopted the Jor-El strategy. They figure the United States is a nation of Jonathan and Martha Kents.
“Why now? Parents could have done this at any time over the last ten years. Are the children fleeing the Mexican drug cartels? Or are their parents using them as paid escorts?”

As usual, some liberals have gone over the top with their rhetoric. Gov. Deval Patrick (D-MA) told local reporters he was looking into ways to help the Obama administration deal with the tens of thousands of illegal immigrant children flooding across the U.S.-Mexico border.
He said “My inclination is to remember what happened when a ship full of Jewish children tried to come to the United States in 1939 and the United States turned them away, and many of them went to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps.”

“His invocation of the Holocaust appears to correspond to the story of the St. Louis, a ship that sailed from Germany in the spring of 1939 carrying roughly 900 Jewish refugees. The ship was forced to return to Europe, where more than a quarter are known to have died in the Holocaust, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.”

What? Where are the Central and South American concentration camps and gas ovens? The parents of these children aren’t about to be packed into trains to be gassed.


If there is a comparable analogy between immigration and the holocaust, we need to look at what’s happening to Christians in Muslim nations.

“Mosul's remaining Christians were fleeing the city . . . after the brutal ISIS occupiers told them to convert to Islam or face summary execution. In a statement read out at the city’s mosques, the Islamists told Christians that they had until midday to either convert or pay a ‘jizya’ – a tax on non-Muslims. Those who refused to comply would be killed.

“‘We offer them three choices: Islam; the dhimma contract – involving payment of jizya; if they refuse this they will have nothing but the sword,’ the statement said.”

*****

“‘For the first time in the history of Iraq, Mosul is now empty of Christians,’ Patriarch Louis Sako, head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, added.

“The patriarch also said that militants were tagging Christian houses with the letter ‘N’ for ‘Nassarah’ – an Islamic term for Christian.”

Does any of this remind you of anything, Gov. Patrick?

Read more at http://godfatherpolitics.com/16362/d...uYFyLrSRhER.99

Illegal Immigration: Destroying Schools One District at a Time [video]

Posted by Michael Becker on Jul 22, 2014

Illegal immigration is destroying not just the fabric of our nation, it’s destroying the very foundation of our nation. Public schools, and we’re not friends of public education, are at the point of the spear when it comes to the destructive impact of allowing illegals to flood into the US.
Illegals aliens bring their children, so-called DREAMERs, into the country, and thanks to Democrats, we require that schools accept every child in their district without regard to the immigration status of the child or the family. Like their parents, these illegal alien children can’t speak English, and are uneducated in their home language. That means that tremendous resources must be used to “mainstream” these kids into the classroom. That does two things.

First, it takes resources away from kids who are, and whose families are, US citizens. For the most part, these families pay the taxes to run the schools and their kids are getting robbed of any chance of a decent education by the flood of illegals taking up classroom resources. Second, it slows down the learning process for the entire class, because these kids can’t be just put into a special needs classroom until they’re able to keep up, because that might “scar them.” Rather than call attention to the fact that they have no business in a regular classroom, educators mainstream them and slow down the whole class.

What’s the impact on your city or town? We would guess it’s a lot like the impact on Lynn, Massachusetts, or it will be shortly since the Obama administration is busily relocating the flood to random towns in red states.

Lynn, MA Mayor Judith Kennedy (R) said that she received “no notice” before over 200 illegal immigrant children were sent to her town in a phone conversation on Fox News Channel’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on Wednesday. “I have had to increase my school department budget 9.3 percent and have had to cut all of my other city budgets between 2 percent and 5 percent to make up for the influx of the unaccompanied children.” Kennedy stated.




Remember this story, it’s coming to your neighborhood. President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security is moving these illegal aliens into your neighborhood with no notice. You can expect your schools to be overrun, if you offer any kind of public assistance to low income families, you can expect your welfare budget to skyrocket as well.

We would urge you to contact your Senator and Representative today. Tell them to seal the border and to stop relocating illegal aliens to the interior of the nation where they’ll soon be forgotten and it’s likely they’ll end up on President Obama’s AmnestyWishlist.

Read more at http://joeforamerica.com/2014/07/ill...chiTlyIEvVQ.99

Lynn rallies for immigrants

Supporters call for unity among city residents

• Story

Angela Owens / Item Photo
Lynn immigration rally

Reverend Jane Gould called for residents to follow in Jesus’ footsteps by welcoming the children and caring for them during a rally in support of immigrants, on the steps of City Hall on Tuesday.





Related Stories

• Related: Immigrants: Lynn school woes not our fault
• Related: State offering sites to house children
• Related: Lynn health workers question new arrivals
• Related: Lynn mayor: ‘Enough is enough’
• Related: Lynn bracing for even more new arrivals

Related Links

• Related: Photo gallery: Lynn immigration rally

Posted: Wednesday, July 23, 2014 3:00 am
By Chris Stevens / The Daily Item | 11 comments

• 
• Posted on Jul 23, 2014
  by Chris Stevens

LYNN — With signs that read, “Keep the kids, deport the racists” and “Immigrants are part of Lynn’s past and present,” more than 150 people spread across City Hall steps Tuesday calling for unity among residents during a rally to support immigrants.
“We have to get better at this,” said the Rev. Victoria Weinstein, a Lynn homeowner. “It is a disgrace that this kind of rhetoric still flourishes in this nation of immigrants.”
Residents, members of Lynn United for Change, Lynn Parents Organizing for a Better Education, Neighbor to Neighbor and other organizations came out in response to comments made by Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy and Superintendent Catherine Latham. The pair sat down last week to discuss the impact that what they call an overwhelming number of unaccompanied minors and refugees are having on the city and the school district.

Weinstein pointed out that when her four grandparents immigrated to the U.S. nearly 100 years ago as children, their families heard the same accusations: they are a stress on the school system, they were too needy, it’s too expensive to provide services and there is a need to learn English faster.

Her grandmother left school in the fourth grade because she was deeply wounded by the prejudice she experienced, said Weinstein, pastor of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lynn in Swampscott.

“She was deeply ashamed all her life of her illiteracy and encouraged me to do well in school as a way of making good on the promise of this country,” she said.

Weinstein said she stood on City Hall steps for her grandmother and in support and affection for the city and her neighbors who speak many languages.




Activist Carla Moniz called it unfair for Kennedy and Latham to blame the unaccompanied minors and refugees for the schools woes.

“The fact is Lynn has underfunded its schools for years,” she said before rattling off a litany of statistics.

“Let’s be clear,” she went on to say, “education is not a privilege; it’s a right for all students regardless of where they come from.”

While participants remained calm and mostly respectful, the rally highlighted a division in the city. While the Rev. Jane Gould called for residents to follow in Jesus’ footsteps by welcoming the children and caring for them, an onlooker on the fringe called out, “Send them to Lynnfield.”

School Committee and Lynn United for Change member Maria Carrasco spoke passionately and largely in Spanish, prompting some to complain.

She said, “We are all immigrants, and we need to support each other on this issue.”

At one time, the Jews, Italians and Irish faced oppression and had to fight back. “Now it’s our turn to fight,” she said. “We cannot be intimidated.”

Isaac Hodes of Lynn United for Change asked that people not stigmatize children who are already fighting an uphill battle as refugees and unaccompanied minors.

“Words have power,” he reminded the crowd.

Jude Silva stood at the edge of the sidewalk at the back of the crowd watching the rally holding a sign of his own that read, “Support the Mayor, Don’t Judge Judy.”

Silva said he felt that the rally was, in a way, supporting reverse racism.

“This has nothing to do with immigration,” he said. “The people on the steps — (Kennedy) has accepted them because they are here legally.”

Silva said the issue is simple: “legal is legal.” He likened it to getting caught lighting fireworks.

“That’s illegal, and you should be arrested for it,” he said, adding that if people are in the country illegally, they should have to pay the consequences.

When a nearby supporter challenged him, Silva noted that he is an immigrant as well, and he came into the country legally, although he was adopted at 8 months old from Portugal.

“But it’s still legal,” he said with a shrug.

Mary Sweeney of Lynn United said the problem is that things have changed. When her grandparents came to this country, there was an actual waiting list, a line to join, to get into the country legally.

“They shout, ‘why not do it legally?’ but there is no line anymore,” she said. “It’s not like it was; there is no line.”

Chris Stevens can be reached at cstevens@itemlive.com

More about Lynn

• ARTICLE: Local woman injured in fall
• ARTICLE: Gordon College flap a matter of civil rights; Gordon College true to Christian values
• ARTICLE: Rally organizers mistake valid concern for racism
• ARTICLE: Anne Gorski, 95
• ARTICLE: Adeline M. Boland, 85

More about Immigrants

• ARTICLE: Senate, House at odds over border money
• ARTICLE: Immigrants: Lynn school woes not our fault
• ARTICLE: Obama officials pledge to stem immigration tide

More about Unaccompanied Minors

• ARTICLE: Senate, House at odds over border money
• ARTICLE: Lynn has no room for unaccompanied minors; Item shows intolerance toward Gordon College
• ARTICLE: Immigrants: Lynn school woes not our fault
• ARTICLE: How an influx upended the immigration debate

http://www.itemlive.com/news/lynn-ra...a4bcf887a.html