Thread: Racial diversity, a look at America's future

Garden City’s racial diversity is a look at America’s future
By DAVID KLEPPER ★ The Star’s Topeka correspondent

CHRIS OBERHOLTZ/The Kansas City Star
Mexican-American Omar Flores, moved to Garden City, Kan., eight years ago from Chihuahua Mexico, because his homeland had become too dangerous to raise a family. Flores, with his daughter, Adaliz, 2, visits the community carnival Wednesday evening....

For a growing number of immigrants, home is far west Kansas in a city of 28,000, a world away from Mogadishu, Mexico City and Myanmar.

It’s where women in burqas stroll down a Norman Rockwell Main Street festooned with early Fourth of July banners. And where a Buddhist temple sits alongside grocery stores selling Mexican soft drinks and 50-pound bags of jasmine rice.

“This is my home. I want to become American,â€

[quote]“This community doesn’t look like it once did in the ’50s and ’60s,â€

Police also are coping with a rise in crime.

Several years ago, Garden City briefly became one of the more dangerous cities in Kansas because of drug-fueled gang violence. Crime rates have stabilized now, but last month police met with representatives of each ethnic group to discuss a new strategy that will place an officer in each neighborhood.

Several ethnic leaders told police that immigrants sometimes feel uncomfortable contacting the authorities.

I am sorry but in some cases diversity is a division. Like driving a wedge right through the heart of a civilized country. And in this case several wedges. The costs are enormous and it wears thin the patience of many.

It’s where women in burqas stroll down a Norman Rockwell Main Street

I am sure Norman Rockwell NEVER envisioned that kind of picture.

Across the nation, the new immigrants are bringing with them new challenges for established communities. Schools are searching for more money to hire interpreters. Governments are struggling to integrate newcomers in a strange land. Long-time residents are adapting to neighbors who look, cook and speak differently.

Not surprisingly, some people are pushing back.

But the changes may be inexorable. The white population is aging and birthrates are falling. Hispanic birthrates are rising. So is legal immigration. Meatpacking centers such as Garden City offer an attractive destination during a down economy, with plentiful jobs that require few skills and little training.

Meanwhile Americans are out of those jobs. That is who worked them before! Hispanic birth rates climb because they are not paing for it and actually collect more money from it.

THIS DOES NOT MAKE ILLEGAL ALIENS ..LEGAL!

But thanks to the community’s number of low-income immigrant households, the school district receives more money than other districts. Indeed, Garden City schools get $60 million in state and federal funding, compared with the $40 million received by the similarly sized De Soto district.

So Americans from not only the state of Kansas but from the entire Nation are subsidizing the cheap labor for the meat packing plants in this town.

I wonder how welcoming they'd be if they and they alone bore the financial burden of the IAs.

I was going to leave a comment on there myself but you always have to register with these news org's.

I saw some mentioned on there that if it wasn't for new blood the towns would have dried up. Well it was the business that moved there that gave then jobs.

And if the town did dry up,SO WHAT! We have had ghost towns throughout our history now. We even had them when they built the Interstate highway system,since in some cases they bypassed smaller towns that the old road system went through.

These are not reasons to allow the higher number of legal immigrants into this country and sure does not make coming here illegally ,LEGAL.

And I saw others on there say the Americans are lazy. Maybe so,but WHY? You have to ask yourself that question. Maybe too many years of too many social benefits that give people money if you don't work. Maybe it is time this is stoppped.

Another problem with that thinking is. Many corporations WILL NOT HIRE YOU if they think you are OVER QUALIFIED for these types of jobs. And another thing is these people speak other languages and have different cultures. They then need a person of the same background as a foreman or supervisor. And guess who these new foremans WILL HIRE?

Another thing is these companies WILL NOT PAY the American citizen what they are used to gettting or close to it. They can get MORE LABOR FOR CHEAPER from THIS NEW BLOOD.

Across the street, dozens of Burmese children ride bicycles and run barefoot. Most are Karen, a minority that for years fought for independence in Burma. Thousands still live in refugee camps along the Thai border.
Instead of allowing these people on to the public dole, there are private groups that will help them in their native region for far less money.

The bottom line is that we are allowing just a few more entrepreneurs in the US to become wealthy, like the Tyson meatpacking company----meanwhile, the taxpayers foot all of the attendant costs.

As with anything that brings a few people more money there are lots of slick arguments about why "we" all need it.

Here's a truth that everyone needs to heed. - God Himself will NOT base anything He judges on anyone based in their race - OR the race of anyone else.

Hence, no one is going directly to God's Heaven because they ARE NOT white - no matter what color Jesus is.

If that sounds like an out-in-the-orbits idea, many blacks say Jesus was black (though not African) and in some way that meant that whites have a big surprise on their hands when they die. WRONG!

Back to the post's reply:
Anyone recall any race, except whites, who have had their minority status rubbed in their face over, and over, and over again?

This is racism straight up!

Why does ANY media feel that they are winning friends and influencing enemies when they highlight that one day whites will fall to minority status?

This type of thing is really meant as an insult, truly a racist slap or smack down against what they've usually lined out in their segments, articles, or reviews as something that is worthy of befalling whites - over all other races that they paint as puritan saints who are repopulating a nation once a slum, of sorts, run by whites.

Anyone watching Glenn Beck's Friday shows? If not, you need to.

Enough years have passed that some really bad Americans, who were in really high positions, did some very deceitful things against Americans and their ability to realize the TRUTH of America's history regarding race relations.

Thank God for these honest shows, which are a refreshing truth compared to the slated race bating of some other "black this and black that" (insert any race there you want) shows that put down whites more than they uplift races other than whites.