Immigrants find a home, despair in rich Va.

Reuters via Boston Globe ^ | March 11, 2002 | Alan Elsner

[sarcasm]

AILEY'S CROSSROADS, Va. - In a small enclave of Northern Virginia, surrounded by upscale shopping malls and affluent, manicured suburbs, immigrants speaking a total of about 70 languages struggle to build new lives in the face of poverty, overcrowding, and crime.

[Dante3]

Northern Virginia has a problem with Asian home invasion gangs which often strike during the day time and torment those at home.

In Northern Virginia immigrants also provided the 9/11 terrorists with fake documents and mislead the FBI investigation yet received just a slap on the wrist.

[sarcasm]

Notice that they avoid mentioning the legal status of these "immigrants." Most of the Salvadorans in the United States are here illegally.

[sarcasm]

What about the diversity that they bring?

[Brownie74]

All of this is coming to a neighborhood near you soon. (If it already hasn't.)

Warm up AF-1 and lets take a little trip down to Monterey, Mexico on the 21st and 22nd and get a whole bunch more of these critters.

[Brownie74]

Notice that they avoid mentioning the legal status of these "immigrants."

I'm glad you brought this out, I was going to but forgot. (I'm still working on my first cup of coffee.)

I have noticed that the press has been doing this a lot lately.

[OldFriend]

The problem is MORALITY, not poverty.

[Dane]

All of this is coming to a neighborhood near you soon. (If it already hasn't.)

Oh sheesh, here comes Chicken Little again. The sky is falling, the sky is falling.

Your ilk said the same thing 100 hundred years ago when your scorn was directed at the newly arrived Irish, Jews, and Italians.

[Brownie74]

Your ilk said the same thing 100 hundred years ago....

You wore this line out yesterday.

Go away boy - you bother me.

[Dane]

Go away boy - you bother me

Yeah I guess it would bother you that someone dares to question your anti-immigrant clique, where all immigrants are evil and the world is going to come to an end tommorrow.

[Miss Marple]

The fear is that somewhere, sometime, one of us might be nice to a Mexican.

[xsmommy]

where do the xenophobes live? in flyover country, on a compound somewhere? i do not normally follow the immigration threads, but i am extremely familiar with this neighborhood, as my former parish is located directly across the street from the Chinese restaurant mentioned here. Every last one of my grandparents was off the boat from Eastern Europe, so i would be hard pressed to be anti-immigrant.

[Brownie74]

The fear is that somewhere, sometime, one of us might be nice to a Mexican.

I don't care who you are nice or not nice to. Shoot your best stick.

[Dane]

i do not normally follow the immigration threads, but i am extremely familiar with this neighborhood, as my former parish is located directly across the street from the Chinese restaurant mentioned here

Is it as bad as mentioned in the article? Every neighborhhod is going to have it's share of bad apples, but what miffs me is the smearing with a broad brush of all immigrants that some do on FR.

I have worked alongside a lot of immigrants and almost all of them were hard working church going family oriented people.

[RippleFire]

You mean back in the days when the nation still had borders and the legal immigrants came through Ellis Island?

[xsmommy]

well it depends on what you consider bad. for someone that lives in a homogenous area this would seem like living in a foreign country. But this is a major metropolitan area, and it is extremely common to have tons of people from all over. We lived not that far from this area, yes there are asian gangs, supposedly and i had heard of crime related to that sort of activity. Never encountered any sort of problems personally. But heck, i was a Latin American studies major undergrad and i had a salvadoran babysitter watching my kids and she lived in that area. So i am looking at it a bit differently than the xenophobes.

[jsraggmann]

Yup, these are just the kind of folks that we sholld give "amnesty" to. God forbid that we should open our borders to White, Englih speaking victims of ethnic cleansing in Rhodesia and South Africa.

[putupon]

There is plenty of work available in the various fast food establisments all over VA and seasonal agricultural work on the Eastern Shore and other parts of VA/MD. If I am not mistaken, the agricultural work often offers employer provided housing.

[Little Bill]

I was talking with our local Republican deligate, who is also on the school committee. Every second word out of his mouth was diversity. It took strenth of will and silent prayer to keep me from punching him in the face.