Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [140]
Ten Common Beliefs of the JPI
Refugees are ignorant and have no formal education.
This is not true. Many were doctors, professors, engineers, and journalists in their native lands. Mohamed, for example, was a foreign exchange student to Austria when he was in high school.
The United States takes in most of the world's refugees.
We actually take less than 1 percent of the world's refugees. Many countries take a much larger share than we do. And many host countries are much poorer than the United States.
Most refugees are here illegally.
This also is not true. Most have the proper papers and are desperately seeking to comply with the INS. My INS story about Sadia and her daughter going to Hastings illustrated how difficult that can be.
Newcomers are taking American jobs.
In fact, they are filling jobs that Americans won't take and thus enabling businesses to prosper in a time when minimum-wage workers are hard to find. They are a tremendous boon to our economy, especially our rural economy. Furthermore, relations between newcomers and old-timers are not a zero-sum game. Refugees buy groceries and other products in our stores and introduce innovations that ultimately help all of us.
Newcomers do not pay taxes.
In fact, refugees pay taxes, including property taxes. Even though they pay taxes, newcomers cannot vote or receive many government benefits and they were not eligible for the Bush tax rebate of 2001. They are taxed without representation.
Tax dollars go to teach refugees in their own languages.
Actually, the concept of ELL is that our publicly funded schools teach newcomers English.
Newcomers don't want to learn English.
Not being able to understand the languages of newcomers makes some locals uncomfortable. Some people think refugees are talking about them. Some locals have the mistaken belief that newcomers don't want to learn English. It seems ironic that we expect people to learn our language rapidly when so few of us speak any language but English. However, people who haven't struggled to learn another language have less empathy for how difficult it is to succeed with a new language. The fact is, most refugees, many of whom speak four or five languages already, are desperately trying to learn English.
Most refugees end up on welfare.
In feet, all of the refugees I know do 3-D work—difficult, dirty, and dangerous. And most were working within a month of their arrival.
Anyone who wants to can come to America.
This is not true. We have strict rules and quotas on new refugee arrivals. Most people are shocked to hear that asylum seekers are often put in detention centers, even though they have committed no crimes and are often here because they fought for democracy at home.
When asylum seekers arrive in this country, desperate for sanctuary from totalitarian regimes, they are often treated like criminals while they wait out a long process of adjudication to determine if they truly deserve asylum status. Many are sent back to their countries of origin, even though this may mean death or prison for them.
"Why don't they go back where they belong?"
Refugees are here because they had no choices but to be here. They couldn't stay where they were. I want to respond to this question by asking, "Would you stay where your children saw people being killed if they looked out the windows? Or where you were made to participate in your parents' torture and execution? Or, where you might be beaten until you could never work again for the crime of speaking to an American? Would you stay where your daughter could be raped and shot by soldiers?"
HUMAN RIGHTS VERSUS RESPECT FOR DIFFERENT CULTURES
Refugees bring in evil as well as good. Refugees, like other Americans, range from saints to psychopaths. All cultures have values that are loving and strength-producing and values that are punitive and deleterious. No culture has a monopoly on goodness or common sense.
Desperate people arrive having