Read on Twitter
When I was at FT Lewis from '92-'98 I used to spend some time with the local Thai and Cambodian immigrant communities. The Thais because I was working on my language skills and there's no more pleasant way to do this than hang out in restaurants and have conversations with...
..people, and the Khmers because of a teammate I had who was Cambodian, former Khmer Rouge child soldier, who maintained contacts in that community and liked having someone along to watch his back because a lot of the 2nd generation Khmer were gang members. This was a problem...
..in Tacoma, WA, at the time. Not sure what it's like now. Anyway, I found the 1st generation immigrants to be like most 1st gen immigrants I've met, incredibly industrious and proud of their new country. Their number one concern always seemed to be the same thing, their kids...
..which is concern I find very endearing as it's a concern I shared as a parent. I'm not writing this to be Major Woke or to get some likes, I'm writing this because these are observations I made for myself based on first-person perspective and experiential learning...
..and it jibes with my experience on the US-Mexico border in 1995, that the vast majority of immigrants are people coming here to work hard and make a home in which to raise kids and, as such, should be welcomed and made to feel at home. That immigrants are largely value added...
..and get a bad rap because there's an entire industry out there that exists to paint immigrants in as negative light as possible. It allows them to be exploited if enough people look down at them or are indifferent about their fate. Don't buy into BS. There's too much already.
