This San Diego family came here as refugees and are succeeding. But assimilation is always difficult for any immigrants. - - Donna Poisl
BY AMITA SHARMA
It was 2 o'clock in the morning back in 1988. Amina Farah was about to go from a middle-class mother with a house and a job at the Central Bank of Somalia to refugee. Civil war had just erupted. The dark of the morning lit up with firefights. The air choked with smoke. And Farah says she had no choice but to grab her four-year-old son and run.
"You saw the children sitting with dead bodies," Farah said. "You saw injury. You saw no food and no hospital, no light, no doctor, no hygiene, no water."
Farah traveled by foot with thousands of other Somalis to Ethiopia in scorching heat. Each day of the month-long journey she thought would be her last. Farah tried to prevent her young son from succumbing to dehydration -- at times she gave him her saliva.
Click on the headline above to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.
This country was built by immigrants, it will continue to attract and need immigrants. Some people think there are enough people here now -- people have been saying this since the 1700s and it still is not true. They are needed to make up for our aging population and low birthrate. Immigrants often are entrepreneurs, creating jobs. We must help them become Americans and not just people who live here and think of themselves as visitors. When immigrants succeed here, the whole country benefits.
No comments:
Post a Comment