Another reason for violence from Africans is [...]]]> The immigration of Africans to the west has brought some very brutal customs, shocking to residents of the First World. The category of witchcraft covers many abhorrent behaviors, like child sacrifice, such as that of Adam whose headless torso was found in the Thames in London a decade ago.

Another reason for violence from Africans is the fear of witchcraft among others. A 15-year-old Congolese boy, Kristy Bamu, residing in Paris visited his sister and her husband (court sketch shown) in London for Christmas in 2010. Instead of having a nice vacation with the family, he ended up dead because they thought he was a witch. After several days of beatings, they drowned him.

Not all diversity is equal, for sure.

Kristy Bamu ‘murdered over witch claim’ in Newham, BBC, January 5, 2012

A 15-year-old boy was tortured and drowned by his sister and her boyfriend because they believed he was a witch, the Old Bailey has heard.

Kristy Bamu, from Paris, was found dead in Newham, east London, on Christmas Day in 2010.

The boy had 101 injuries and died from being beaten with a metal bar and drowning, the court heard.

His sister Magalie Bamu and her boyfriend, Eric Bikubi, both Congolese and aged 28, of Newham, deny murder.

Prosecutors told jurors of acts they described as “depraved”, “wicked” and “cruel”.

Mr Bikubi admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, a plea not accepted by the prosecution.

‘Armoury of weapons’
Kristy and his siblings were visiting the couple for Christmas, but Mr Bikubi had accused the boy and two of his siblings of witchcraft, the court heard.

All three were beaten and other children were forced to join in the attacks. But it was Kristy who became the focus of Mr Bikubi’s attention, the prosecution said.

The teenager was said to be in such pain after days of being hit with an “armoury of weapons” including sticks, pliers, a metal bar, hammer and chisel that he begged to die.

Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, said: “Eventually Bikubi took him into the bathroom, put him in the bath and started to run the water.

“Kristy was just too badly injured and exhausted to resist or to keep his head above the water.

“It was only when he [Mr Bikubi] realised that Kristy was not moving that he stopped what he was doing and pulled him from the water.”

He added: “By then it was too late.”

The youngsters were forced to lie to their parents about what was happening when they phoned home, the jury heard.

Mr Altman said of Kristy’s father: “He had sent his children on holiday, not to a torture chamber.”

When police arrived they found Kristy and his siblings – brother Yves, 22, and and sister Kelly, 20, and other children.

Mr Altman said: “All were standing in the living room, hysterical, terrified and soaking wet.

‘Sorcerers’
“None of them spoke any English.”

Kelly Bamu said Mr Bikubi and Ms Bamu accused Kristy, herself and a third child of “being witches or sorcerers – practising witchcraft” which adversely influenced another child.

“Despite her own siblings’ denials that they were sorcerers, Magalie Bamu joined her boyfriend in repeating these fantastic claims and participating in the assaults,” Mr Altman said.

The three were beaten and refused food, drink and sleep and eventually, to stop the torture, they admitted being sorcerers, the jury was told.

Mr Altman said Mr Bikubi’s admission of manslaughter was rejected by the prosecution, which argues the couple carried out “the very deliberate murder” of Kristy.

‘Feral and evil’
Ms Bamu also denies two charges of causing actual bodily harm to her other siblings.

The defendants are originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The jury heard that witchcraft or sorcery – called kindoki – is practised in Congolese Christian churches.

Mr Altman said that taken out of the church’s control “it may take on a feral and indeed evil character, as we suggest it did here”.

The court heard that in 2008 Mr Bikubi had accused a family friend of being involved in witchcraft and had forced her to cut her hair short to purge herself.

The trial continues.

Unsurprisingly, the liberal radio network assumes the advisability of bilingualism where Spanish is accepted as a co-equal language in America. Spanish education will “help create the next generation of bilingual doctors, executives and teachers,” [...]]]> National Public Radio notes the increase of Spanish-speaking kiddies in southern states and the pressure their language diversity has made on schools.

Unsurprisingly, the liberal radio network assumes the advisability of bilingualism where Spanish is accepted as a co-equal language in America. Spanish education will “help create the next generation of bilingual doctors, executives and teachers,” the report states.

Earlier waves of immigrants received no special educational programs with credentialed bilingual instructors, but were expected to learn English by hearing it from their teachers.

NPR’s report focuses on the small Mississippi town of Vardaman, population 1300, where nearly half of the elementary school students are Spanish speakers.

There is no mention of the cost of educating so many foreign children or the immigration status of their farmworker parents. (A report elsewhere observes the routinely high level of pregnant teens and dropouts in high school among the hispanics.)

The linked story includes an audio file of the radio version:

Rise In Spanish Speakers Has School Trying To Adapt, NPR, January 4, 2012

Year over year, the number of Spanish-speaking kindergarteners at Vardaman Elementary School in northeast Mississippi has been on the rise.

Census numbers show the South has the fastest-growing Hispanic population in the country. Now, Vardaman Elementary is about to become Mississippi’s first predominantly Latino primary school, and that’s posing special challenges when it comes to finding teachers who can help Spanish-speaking students adapt to the American classroom.

Vardaman Takes Its Own Approach
Resources are scarce in the school’s small farming community of Vardaman. But of the town’s approximately 1,300 residents, at least one-third are Hispanic — and that number is growing.

Over at Vardaman Elementary, many of Angela Barnette’s second-grade students are American-born, but close to half are also native Spanish speakers. It’s a language Barnette doesn’t speak, but she does her best to encourage it. She says she often picks books with English and Spanish words to read to the class.

“They love it when they see the teacher who can’t speak [Spanish],” Barnette says. “It makes them feel special that they can say those words and the others can’t. They love that.”

Across the country, debate continues over how best to teach English-language learners. Some states, like Arizona, have English-immersion policies mandating that no Spanish be spoken in the classroom. Other states, such as Texas, use a bilingual approach. Mississippi leaves it up to individual districts to determine the best method.

The ‘Cyclical Issue’ Of Bilingual Education
Vardaman Elementary Principal Pamela Lee says a big concern for her is finding bilingual instructors.

“I had one position for a certified teacher open last year and I interviewed 10 people,” Lee says. “No one in that pool of 10 people was bilingual.”

Teachers are already in short supply in Mississippi’s rural areas, and Lee says a starting salary of less than $30,000 makes it even harder to recruit bilingual educators.

She says she ultimately filled the opening with a non-bilingual teacher. After all, Mississippi doesn’t actually require schools with Spanish speakers to employ bilingual instructors.

Education researcher Megan Hopkins says that’s a problem.

“Bilingual instruction isn’t valued, so teachers are not pursuing that credential,” Hopkins says. “My work shows that likely, [as] we have fewer and fewer [bilingual instructors], that may not be a good thing for kids.”

Hopkins, who studies at Northwestern University, says schools need Spanish-speaking educators to help create the next generation of bilingual doctors, executives and teachers.

“It’s sort of a cyclical issue,” she says.

Working To Meet Demand
Annie Anderson is Vardaman Elementary’s one bilingual teacher, and as the Hispanic population has grown, so have her responsibilities. Her job is to improve the English of every Spanish-speaking student at the school, which means coaching 170 students one by one through their English assignments every week.

It’s a big job for one person, and it has educators worrying that if they can’t find more bilingual teachers like Anderson, Mississippi schools will just fall further behind.

Furthermore, when millions [...]]]> One of the most disturbing aspects to the unwelcome Mexicanization of the United States is the intrusion of Spanish into American life. There is nothing that prevents assimilation more than the increasing ease by which Spanish speakers can function in this country without learning English, a situation created by both business and government.

Furthermore, when millions of people don’t speak the national language and cannot communicate, conflict naturally arises. Richard Lamm’s ironic op-ed “I Have a Plan to Destroy America,” lists bilingualism as the first to-do item of cultural annihilation.

The story of Babel in the Bible was not about celebrating diversity, but was a curse from God to punish humanity.

Government media, particularly NPR and PBS, are particularly disgusting in the way they hawk Spanish as the cool new thing for the kiddies to learn, like on Sesame Street. Let’s all speak Spanish, they propagandize.

In the real world, the only good reason to learn Spanish is to understand what MS-13 gangsters are planning, if you are so unlucky to be within earshot.

Naturally, the AP is all in for language diversity on the taxpayer tab.

Public radio in Spanish gives US Latinos a voice, Associated Press, January 1, 2012

FRESNO, Calif.—Phones at the radio studios on the outskirts of town kept ringing.

Saul from Visalia lamented cuts to public education, calling in on a December afternoon to Linea Abierta, the first nationwide Spanish-language public affairs show. Miguel from Madera asked how county taxes are distributed and Manuel from Calexico wanted to know whether schools still receive lottery funds.

The public affairs show is produced daily by Radio Bilingue, the nation’s only public, non-commercial Spanish-language radio network. With seven FM stations in California and more than 100 affiliates nationwide airing its programs, the Fresno-based network reaches an estimated 500,000 Latino listeners per week.

Controlled by Latinos and run by a Harvard-educated former farmworker, the network fills a crucial gap in public broadcasting, which attracts overwhelmingly white, middle- or upper-class, English speaking audiences. The industry has been struggling to capture Latino listeners.

“We want to offer news and information that’s relevant to the lives of our listeners,” said Linea Abierta’s executive producer Samuel Orozco, “so that they can use it as citizens, to be able to participate in the decision making process and be active members of society.”

Radio Bilingue focuses on immigrant and first generation Latinos who are predominantly low-income, young and under-educated. It offers a platform to the working poor, the undocumented, Indians from Mexico and
farmworkers.

The network is now expanding and building five stations along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Experts say Radio Bilingue’s efforts to foster civic engagement are key as the number of Latinos in the U.S. keeps growing and the nation moves toward a presidential election.

“They’re a model of how Latino public broadcasting can flourish,” said Florence Hernandez-Ramos, director of Denver-based Latino Public Radio Consortium. “There are a lot of people in the U.S. that speak primarily in Spanish. They have a right to engage in the national conversation.”

Hugo Morales, a former farmworker who graduated from Harvard Law School, founded Radio Bilingue more than 30 years ago because he felt poor Latino farmworkers had no voice.

“I was shocked that the mainstream saw our community as basically having no brains,” Morales said.

A Mixtec Indian born in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, Morales arrived in California when he was 9 years old, joining his farmworker father on a prune farm near Santa Rosa. He worked in the orchards, studied and helped his brother run a local Spanish-language radio show.

After graduating from law school, Morales lectured for La Raza Studies at California State University in Fresno and founded the radio station. The all-volunteer station eventually went professional and grew into a network with nationally distributed programming. Morales won a MacArthur “genius” grant and the Edward R. Murrow Award, public radio’s highest honor, for his work.

The Latino population nearly quadrupled in size since Radio Bilingue began broadcasting, to more than 50 million or 16 percent of the nation last year. But Latino participation in public media remains minimal. So the network’s mission changed to fill that gap: it would serve Latinos in general, not just farmworkers.
The network struggles to secure funding. Unlike traditional public broadcasting—which relies on donations from well-off listeners—Radio Bilingue relies on grants from private foundations and the government.

It has had difficulty securing stations in urban areas, especially Los Angeles, because new frequencies are not available in major markets and purchasing a station is expensive.

About 1,000 public radio stations broadcast today, and fewer than two dozen are Latino, said Joseph Tovares, senior vice president for diversity and innovation at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which gives federal funding to public media. Non-Latino stations, Tovares said, have been struggling to provide culturally authentic, relevant content to Latinos.

“We have not been able to provide the content this demographic will need going forward,” Tovares said. “There’s been a population explosion and we’re playing catch-up.”

Only about 5 percent of the listeners of NPR, the largest producer of public radio programming, are Latino, which the network is trying to change through diversity initiatives.

“If we are to survive,” Tovares said, “we need to reach these folks.”

The number of commercial Spanish-language stations, on the other hand, has skyrocketed to over 1,300, according to Arbitron research. But some commercial programming perpetuates stereotypes against gay and indigenous Latinos, Orozco said.

“What investors are seeing is not Latinos as citizens, but as consumers, as dollar signs,” he said. “The service for them is cheap entertainment that caters to the lowest common denominator.”

In addition to the public affairs show, Radio Bilingue produces a national news service, a talk show in Mixteco that simultaneously airs on stations in Oaxaca, a call-in youth show about sexuality and original reporting on topics from the arts to the environment. It airs programs from radio partners in Mexico.

The network, which also has Internet broadcasts, refuses to air narcocorridos, the popular drug ballads, and doesn’t accept money from alcohol companies. It produces educational messages and guides listeners to resources. Music—from Cuban jazz to mariachi to rock en espanol—is used to attract different audience subsets. In addition to professional producers, 90 volunteers host programs and help at the stations.

“Where Radio Bilingue is pretty extraordinary is that it’s pro-social; it uses radio as a medium for positive impact,” said Ed Kissam, an independent researcher who has studied the network’s impact.

Many charter schools are formed by immigrants to prevent their kids from assimilating to American values. Muslims in particular want their girls kept away from ideas of freedom and individual expression. [...]]]> Charter schools in America are a fascinating viewing port for the immigration-twisted social stew of today and what is brewing up for tomorrow’s balkanized America.

Many charter schools are formed by immigrants to prevent their kids from assimilating to American values. Muslims in particular want their girls kept away from ideas of freedom and individual expression. Training females to be obedient servants to future husbands, along with Allah, is a tough job with so much visible freedom all around, so Muslims like the immersion atmosphere of a Islamic charter school.

The liberal education establishment in Minnesota (home of the charter movement) is upset that charter schools are more racially segregated than public schools, thereby defying the first principle of diversity as the highest virtue.

But what did edu-elites expect with such a wrong-headed social engineering project? Of course immigrants set up their own social institutions when a critical mass of tribal members has been reached — and America does not insist upon traditional assimilation even though citizens desire it. Everyone like their own tribe the best because of humans’ innate tribalism, but Americans are trained not to express such preferences.

What American (not from Laos) would send their kid to St. Paul’s Hmong College Prep Academy (99% Asian)? Not many black Americans would choose the Dugsi Academy, which bills itself as “East African children in the Twin Cities” and emphasizes Somali and Arabic language acquisition. (Only 40 percent of Dugsi’s K-8 students passed state reading tests in 2009-10, which indicates something about priorities there.)

So charter schools do promote diversity, just in discrete modules, with no mixing.

Below, Dugsi Academy teaches Islamic values to children in St. Paul.

Immigrants today come to make MONEY, period, and set up their own balkanized communities that keep America out as much as possible, from little Havana (formerly Miami) to hispanicized Los Angeles (with 4.7 million latinos).

Segregated Charter Schools Evoke Separate But Equal Era in U.S., Bloomberg News, December 22, 2011

At Dugsi Academy, a public school in St. Paul, Minnesota, girls wearing traditional Muslim headscarves and flowing ankle-length skirts study Arabic and Somali. The charter school educates “East African children in the Twin Cities,” its website says. Every student is black.

At Twin Cities German Immersion School, another St. Paul charter, children gather under a map of “Deutschland,” study with interns from Germany, Austria and Switzerland and learn to dance the waltz. Ninety percent of its students are white.

Six decades after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down “separate but equal” schools for blacks and whites, segregation is growing because of charter schools, privately run public schools that educate 1.8 million U.S. children. While charter-school leaders say programs targeting ethnic groups enrich education, they are isolating low-achievers and damaging diversity, said Myron Orfield, a lawyer and demographer.

“It feels like the Deep South in the days of Jim Crow segregation,” said Orfield, who directs the University of Minnesota Law School’s Institute on Race & Poverty. “When you see an all-white school and an all-black school in the same neighborhood in this day and age, it’s shocking.”

Charter schools are more segregated than traditional public schools, according to a 2010 report by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles. Researchers studied 40 states, the District of Columbia, and 39 metropolitan areas. In particular, higher percentages of charter-school students attend what the report called “racially isolated” schools, where 90 percent or more students are from disadvantaged minority groups.

Charter-School Birthplace

In Minnesota, the birthplace of the U.S. charter-school movement, the divide is more than black and white.

St. Paul’s Hmong College Prep Academy, 99 percent Asian- American in the past school year, immerses students “in the rich heritage that defines Hmong culture.” Its Academia Cesar Chavez School — 93 percent Hispanic — promises bilingual education “by advocating Latino cultural values in an environment of familia and community.” Minneapolis’s Four Directions Charter School, 94 percent Native American, black and Hispanic, promotes “lifelong learning for American Indian students.”

Charter schools, which select children through lotteries, are open to all who apply, said Abdulkadir Osman, Dugsi’s executive director.

“Some people call it segregation,” Osman said. “This is the parent’s choice. They can go anywhere they want. We are offering families something unique.”

Nobody ‘Forced’

That’s a “significant difference” between Minnesota charters and segregated schools in the 1950s South, said Joe Nathan, director of the Center for School Change at Macalester College in St. Paul.

“Nobody is being forced to go to these schools,” said Nathan, who helped write Minnesota’s 1991 charter-school law.

Ever since Horace Mann crusaded for free universal education in the 19th century, public schools have been hailed as the U.S. institutions that bring together people of disparate backgrounds.

The atomization of charter schools coincides with growing U.S. diversity. Americans of other races will outnumber whites by 2042, the Census Bureau projects.

Even after a divided Supreme Court in 2007 ruled that schools couldn’t consider race in making pupil assignments to integrate schools, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy urged districts to find other ways to fight “de facto resegregation” and “racial isolation.”

“The nation’s schools strive to teach that our strength comes from people of different races, creeds, and cultures uniting in commitment to the freedom of all,” Kennedy wrote.

Diverse Workplaces

Citing Kennedy’s words, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Attorney General Eric Holder this month called for schools — including charters — to combat growing segregation.

Along with breeding “educational inequity,” racially- divided schools deny children the experiences they need to succeed in an increasingly diverse workplace, Duncan said in announcing voluntary guidelines for schools.

Charter schools may specialize in serving a single culture as long as they have open admissions, and there’s no evidence of discrimination, said Russlynn Ali, assistant education secretary for civil rights.

The education department is encouraging charter schools to promote diversity. Charters could expand recruiting and consider lotteries that give extra weight to disadvantaged groups, such as families living in low-income neighborhoods or children who speak English as a second language, Ali said in a phone interview.

Immigrant Magnet

Minnesota, 85 percent white, is a case study of the nation’s growing diversity. Since the 1970s, Minneapolis and St. Paul have become a magnet for Hmong refugees, who fought alongside Americans in the Vietnam War. In the 1990s, Somalis sought refuge from civil war.

St. Paul, where the nation’s first charter school opened in 1992, is 16 percent black, 10 percent Hispanic and 15 percent Asian-American, according to the U.S Census Bureau.

Charter schools should be similarly diverse, recommended a 1988 report that provided the groundwork for Minnesota’s charter-school law.

“We envision the creation of schools which, by design, would invite a dynamic mix of students by race and ability levels,” the Citizens League, a St. Paul-based nonprofit public-policy group, wrote in the report.

‘Great Failure’

Instead, in the 2009-2010 school year, three quarters of the Minneapolis and St. Paul region’s 127 charter schools were “highly segregated,” according to the University of Minnesota Law School’s race institute. Forty-four percent of schools were 80 percent or more non-white, and 32 percent, mostly white.

“It’s been a great failure that the most segregated schools in Minnesota are charter schools,” said Mindy Greiling, a state representative who lobbied for the charter-school law when she was a member of a suburban school board in the 1980s. “It breaks my heart.”

Segregation is typical nationwide. Seventy percent of black charter-school students across the country attended “racially isolated” schools, twice as many as the share in traditional public schools, according to the report from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA.

Half of all Latino charter-school students went to these intensely segregated schools, the study found. In the West and the South, the two most racially diverse regions of the country, “charters serve as havens for white flight from public schools,” the report said.

Hmong Roots

They also serve as havens for minority students who need extra help, said leaders of Minnesota charter schools.

Christianna Hang, founder of Hmong College Prep Academy, said she designed the school so children, mostly first- generation Americans, didn’t feel adrift in public schools as she did when she arrived in the U.S. in 1980.

In the Hmong academy’s central hallway, a tapestry depicts families living in Laos, fleeing the Vietnam War and arriving in America. The school’s roughly 700 students, in grades kindergarten through 12th grade, learn Hmong.

“I came here for my parents as much as for me,” said Mai Chee Xiong, a 17-year-old senior. “I was very Americanized. I wanted to be able to speak with them in our language, and I wanted to understand my roots.”

In the 2009-2010 school year, 26 percent of Hmong Academy students met or exceeded standards on state math exams, while 30 percent did so in reading. About half passed those tests in the St. Paul Public School District.

Harvard Banners

To raise expectations, classrooms adopt colleges, hanging banners from Harvard University, Yale University and Dartmouth College over their doors.

“If we don’t do something to help these kids, they will get lost,” Hang said. “If they drop out of school, they will never become productive citizens, and there’s no way they will achieve the American dream.”

Dugsi Academy, the school for East Africans, and Twin Cities German Immersion School make for some of St. Paul’s sharpest contrasts.

Until this school year, the two schools were neighbors, across a busy commercial thoroughfare in a racially diverse neighborhood. At different times of the day, the kids used a city playground in front of the German school for recess. Dugsi has since moved three miles away, across a highway from the Hmong academy.

The German Immersion School is a bright, airy former factory with exposed brick and high ceilings.

Fluent German

“Eva, was ist das?” kindergarten teacher Elena Heindl asked one morning earlier this month as she pointed a red flashlight to letters, eliciting the name of each one in German.

To succeed at the school, students must be fluent in German to enroll, unless they enter before second or third grade, Julie Elias, a parent, told prospective families on a tour this month.

“You can’t just move into the neighborhood if you want to go to our school,” Elias said. The school is legally required to take anyone picked in its lottery, though it counsels parents against enrolling in older grades without German knowledge, said Annika Fjelstad, its director.

The school, which includes many families with one parent who speaks German or that have German relatives, holds special events at the Germanic-American Institute in a $1.3 million St. Paul house with a ballroom. Children like to call the institute “our school’s mansion,” said Chris Weimholt, another parent giving the tour.

No Buses

In the 2009-2010 school year, 87 percent of children at the German school passed state math tests and 84 percent did so in reading, according to the Minnesota Department of Education. Fifteen percent qualify for the federal free or reduced lunch program, compared with 71 percent in St. Paul. The school doesn’t offer bus transportation, so most parents drive, often carpooling, Elias said.

The language requirement and lack of transportation prevents poor families from attending, said Greiling, the state legislator, who has toured the school.

“A regular public school could never have that kind of bar,” she said. “It seems an odd thing that this would be legal.”

The German program doesn’t have buses because they would cost $100,000 a year, too heavy a burden for an expanding school of 274 that wants to maintain classes of 20 students, Fjelstad said. An immersion school can’t take kids who aren’t fluent after early grades, she said.

In February, the school formed an “inclusivity” task force to find ways to make the school more reflective of the community, Fjelstad said. The school will try to improve recruiting through its relationship with community organizations, such as a neighboring YMCA, she said.

International View

The school offers a different kind of diversity, said Weimholt, a nurse whose grandfather emigrated from Germany after World War I. “It doesn’t look diverse by skin color. But families straddle two different continents. The school truly has an international perspective.”

So does Dugsi Academy. Children learn Arabic and Somali along with English and traditional academic subjects. A caller last month heard no English on a school voice mail.

One morning in late November, a sixth-grade social-studies class discussed immigration with 28-year-old Khaleefah Abdallah, who himself fled Somalia 12 years ago. The boys wore jeans and sweatshirts. The girls sported hijabs, or traditional Muslim head coverings with skirts or long pants.

‘Melting Pot’

Abdallah asked his class about the idea of the American “melting pot:” immigrants assimilating into U.S. culture. He suggested another metaphor, a “salad bowl,” where people from different backgrounds mix while retaining their own identity.

“I agree with the salad bowl,” Fadumo Ahmed, 12, dressed in a black hijab and sneakers with pink laces, told the class. “We all come from different places, but we still want to keep our culture.”

Students shared stories of the challenge of co-existing in mainstream America.

Ahmed Hassan, 12, complained about a boy on a city playground who made fun of the long traditional robe he wore one Friday.

“He told me it looked like a skirt,” Hassan said. Abdallah told the class that, under the U.S. constitution, Americans have the freedom to express themselves through their clothing.

Test Scores

Dugsi, a low-slung red-brick building in an office park, has about 300 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Almost all qualify for federal free or reduced lunches, according to the state. Only 19 percent passed state math exams in the 2009-2010 school year, while 40 percent did so in reading.

The school’s test scores reflect families’ backgrounds. said Osman, the Dugsi director and a former employee of the U.S. Embassy in Somalia, who emigrated to the U.S. in 1993. Parents work as cab drivers, nurses and grocers, Osman said. Many had no formal schooling.

It would be better if one day Somali students could go to school with children from other backgrounds, Osman said.

“That’s the beauty of America — Latinos, Caucasians, African-Americans and Native Americans, all together in the same building, eating lunch and in the same classrooms,” Osman said. “It would be something wonderful. That’s what I’m thinking of for my own kids and grandchildren.”

Not all are college graduates. Chinese are high achievers, as we were recently reminded by the Tiger Mom Chinese supremacist imbroglio. But [...]]]> There’s a new report filled with lots of interesting Asian statistics, focusing on education but including a wide range of social measures, informing anyone who is interested that Asians residing in America are diverse.

Not all are college graduates. Chinese are high achievers, as we were recently reminded by the Tiger Mom Chinese supremacist imbroglio. But Hmong and Laotians remain in the back of the class.

The report uses Census data and has lots of charts. See the whole study: Asian Americans in the United States: 2011.

Who knew that so many more Asians than hispanics are foreign born?

Here’s a brief overview from CaliforniaWatch, which unfortunately frames the normal difficulties of immigration as victimhood, e.g. “Asian Americans face language barriers,” etc.

For Asian Americans, educational attainment varies widely, CaliforniaWatch.org, November 1, 2011

Asian Americans overall obtain high levels of formal education, but an analysis of recent census data reveals large disparities between Asian American ethnic groups.

The percentage of high school graduates is as high as 96 percent among Taiwanese Americans and as low as 61 percent among Hmong Americans, according to a report [PDF] released last week by the Asian American Center for Advancing Justice. The rate of bachelor’s degrees ranges from 12 percent among Laotians to 73 percent among Taiwanese.

These lower rates of educational attainment put some Asian American ethnic groups on par with Latinos and African Americans, the report found. Sixty-one percent of Latinos and 81 percent of African Americans have high school diplomas; 13 percent of Latinos and 18 percent of African Americans have bachelor’s degrees.

All together, 86 percent of Asian Americans have high school diplomas, and 49 percent have bachelor’s degrees, the center’s analysis of data from the 2007-09 American Community Survey found. Compared with other racial groups, Asian Americans have the highest rate of bachelor’s degrees, but their high school graduation rate is second to that of whites (90 percent).

Even though the data include both American-born and immigrant Asians, they reflect the various pathways Asian immigrants take to the United States, said Daniel Ichinose, director of the Demographic Research Project and Census Information Center at the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, which co-authored the report.

The majority of Asian immigrants who became legal permanent residents in 2010 – 62 percent – entered as immediate relatives of U.S. citizens or under family-sponsored preferences. Twenty-three percent immigrated under employment-based preferences.

“Educational attainment among Asian Americans in this country is really sculpted and shaped by immigration policies,” Ichinose said.

For example, 52 percent of South Korean immigrants came to the U.S. under employment-based preferences. According to census data, 92 percent of Koreans hold high school diplomas and 52 percent have bachelor’s degrees. On the other hand, just 1 percent of Vietnamese immigrants came to the U.S. under employment-based preferences. Vietnamese educational attainment was among the lowest of Asian Americans: 72 percent graduate from high school, and 27 percent finish college.

The report also notes that many Asian Americans face language barriers. Nearly three out of four speak a language other than English at home, and about one-third are limited-English proficient.

The report’s findings are particularly significant in California, which has more Asian Americans and more English learners than any other state. Tens of thousands of students who speak Asian languages – the most common are Vietnamese, Filipino, Cantonese, Hmong, Korean and Mandarin – attend California public schools.

Nationwide, 16 percent of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students are English learners.

The diversity of Asian languages “certainly creates challenges in terms of educating youth,” Ichinose said. “Language access … does play out in our schools. We certainly want education policymakers to address that.”

The report calls for including Asian Americans, particularly underrepresented groups such as Southeast Asians, in affirmative action programs in education. It also says that government, corporations, foundations and other stakeholders need to invest in bilingual K-12 education and that more funding is needed to provide English-language programs for adults.

Since Groogan’s first television report, numerous Americans have come forward to tell their own stories of [...]]]> Houston reporter Greg Groogan has been doing fine work on the illegal immigration/employment connection, in particular the fraud involved in the mass hiring of unlawful foreign workers, as I noted in the blog, Mexican Corruption Observed on Houston Construction Sites.

Since Groogan’s first television report, numerous Americans have come forward to tell their own stories of job discrimination in a corrupt system were foreigners are running the table. For example:

● Activist Says Black Community Excluded from Construction

● Galveston Carpenter Says Mexican Labor Killing His Livelihood

● No Spanish, No Job, Says Conroe Woman

You can’t have millions of Mexicans residing in America and not see Mexican-style corruption take root. It’s a lead-pipe cinch. The bribery-infused culture is part of the whole package, which is why mordida doesn’t stop at the Rio Grande.

Mexican kiddies grow up paying bribes to teachers for better grades, and the mordida comes into play for traffic tickets, building permits and other everyday transactions. An estimated 12 percent of Mexico’s GDP is lost to corruption and one study found that 87 percent of Mexicans pay at least one bribe during their lifetimes.

We naive Americans who believe in fairness are sheep allowing the wolves to enter and steal thousands of jobs.

Whistleblower Says Illegal Labor Built Houston Landmarks: MyFoxHOUSTON.com

Whistleblower Says Illegal Labor Built Houston Landmarks, Fox Houston, by Greg Groogan, October 14, 2011

HOUSTON – A decade ago it was the illegal workers who lived and spoke from the shadows. Times have changed.

Nowadays, if an American citizen tradesman like “Duane” blows the whistle on cut-rate, illegal labor, there is a genuine risk of being cut off by the contractors he counts on for work.

“I’d be blackballed,” said Duane.

That is why FOX 26 News agreed to hide his identity. 

”I don’t know how they are getting away with it, but they are,” said Duane.

Duane is referring to the mass employment of what he calls ‘clearly illegal’ workers on nearly every high-profile construction project in the Houston area.

The 25-year veteran of the building trades is absolutely certain because he worked alongside the undocumented at dozens of Houston’s signature sites like Reliant Stadium and the Toyota Center. 

”If you hollered INS, they’d scatter.The job would clear out in 20 minutes,” said Duane. 

So why talk now? For Duane it comes down to jobs. When economic times were better there was work for everyone, but these days what little work there is often goes to workers with no legal right to be here.

“Those jobs are jobs we American citizens who were born here and live here and pay taxes, we could have. We could probably make a good dent in the unemployment picture, especially in Texas if some of these illegal aliens weren’t doing these jobs,” reasoned Duane.

While the local contractor’s association acknowledges 90 percent of it’s workforce is Hispanic, it’s members continue to claim no one knowingly hires illegal labor. 

”These people are the ones who actually apply and are willing to work in the working conditions and the wages being offered,” said Russell Hamley of Houston’s Associated Builders and Contractors. 

”Maybe the top 25 percent are U.S. citizens. The other 75 percent is questionable,” counters Duane. 

FOX 26 News shared the claims of widespread employment of illegals with Kenneth Fontenot of Carpenters Union local 551.

“Just good old fashioned fraud and these guys need to start playing by the rules,” responded Fontenot, referring to contractors who skirt the law.

Fontenot says certified tradesmen with the Carpenter’s union get less than one percent of the work in Houston.

“We are losing this battle every day and if we don’t do something about it than we are just going to continue to be pushed by the wayside,” said Fontenot.

It’s out of control and must be fixed. America must remain a monolingual society. So-called bilingualism (aka foreigner language rules [...]]]> The flooding of America with millions of Mexicans and other foreigners has become so extreme that society is literally upside down for citizens, where Americans must know the invader’s language to work in their own country.

It’s out of control and must be fixed. America must remain a monolingual society. So-called bilingualism (aka foreigner language rules prevail) will balkanize this country faster than anything else.

The current employment depression and unfairness of the new paradigm indicate the wisdom of an immigration moratorium for several decades, at least.

No Spanish, No Job Says Conroe Woman: MyFoxHOUSTON.com

No Spanish, No Job Says Conroe Woman, Fox Houston, By Greg Groogan, October 6, 2011

HOUSTON – These days Becky Cusak spends a lot of time around the house. Too much time.

“I was born and raised here in Texas and I’ve never had a problem finding a job before,” Cusak said.

Laid off more than a year ago from a construction company front office job, her ongoing effort to get back on a pay-roll has run into a barrier: a language barrier.

“I know what I’m doing. I can go and run your entire office with no problems at all, its just nobody wants somebody who can’t speak Spanish now,” she explained.

Fourteen months of job search futility has left this married mother of a teenage son with a sense of intense frustration.

“You have to be bilingual because they have customers who only speak Spanish,” she said.

Lots of customers.

Of the more than 1 million Hispanic adults in the greater Houston area, research indicates more than half speak little or no English and more than 60 percent were born outside the US.

While in no way anti-immigrant, Cusak believes their sheer numbers have succeeded in forcing their language on others.

“This is America. We speak English. It’s not fair to have a requirement that you have to speak another language to be able to work here,” she insisted.

With fairness in pretty short supply these days, she says she would jump at the chance of learning a new language if it would just guarantee a job.

“If someone gave me the opportunity, I would take it in a heartbeat and I know a few other people who would take it too,” she said with a smile.