Thread: Understand immigrants' outlook, speaker urges

Posted on Wed. Aug. 20, 2008 - 08:31 am EDT E

Understand immigrants' outlook, speaker urges
Bridging cultural gap vital in resettlement, he said at workshop.






By Bob Caylor
of The News-Sentinel
Even for social workers and volunteers trying to look past their own preconceptions, building relationships with refugee or immigrant families can be both hard work and uncertain. The gap can be as fundamental as whether people think of themselves as individuals first or members of a group first, Brant R. Dykehouse with the Jewish Child & Family Services in Chicago told a Fort Wayne audience Tuesday.

Americans, even the youngest children able to speak, are likely to identify themselves by their names, while Burmese and other non-Western immigrants are likely to define themselves as members of an ethnic group, a family or a clan, said Dykehouse, who helps run a 10-agency project in Illinois designed to help refugees adjust to life in the United States.

It’s tough for Americans to relate to that, because here “everyone is divided into a single ‘me’ and not enough ‘we’,â€

Well this sounds to me like a really darn good reason to cut back on immigration, they are changing our very thought processes!

If this continues America will cease to exist.

WE are in our own country and already assimilated, there is no need for AMERICANS to adapt to other cultures. Immigrants and refugees MUST adapt to OUR American culture. Illegal aliens MUST be removed from this country by any means and at all costs.

When in Rome... also applies to when in the US! Don't like it? Well then you can make use of one of our great freedoms - the freedom to get the hell out!

♦Although young adults in a refugee community may be more likely to cooperate with social workers, bypassing community elders to work through youth may harm relationships in the long run. Dykehouse told the story of Somali Bantu immigrants in Chicago. A young, technologically proficient Somali bonded quickly with social workers. But the top elder in the community gave this advice to the social workers: “He who sleeps with babies often wakes up wet in the morning

Is this the United States of America or some refugee camp in a third world country? WTF is going on in this country! Why has the US become the dumping ground for every third - world vagabond know to mankind! Then we are forced to embrace this garbage and are called names if we don't!

Oh and get this straight...it's NOT my job to understand these people or adapt to THEIR WAY OF LIFE! They came to THIS country to live! I didn't go to their country to live! They are the ones that need to understand this country and behave accordingly!

Don't forget "He who bursts into the front door and ridicules the Sleeping Giant will find a boot mark on his a**!"