African Immigrants to the Rescue?

by Nelima

This is a rare immigration story.  As the economy worsens, immigrants are increasingly seen as a burden and competition for welfare resources, but this story in Newsweek gave a much needed fresh angle of the impact of immigrants on the American economy. Here are some excerpts, but make sure you read the full article.

Barely a decade ago, Lewiston, Maine, was dying. The once bustling mill town’s population had been shrinking since the 1970s; most jobs had vanished long before, and residents (those who hadn’t already fled) called the decaying center of town “the combat zone.” That was before a family of Somali refugees discovered Lewiston in 2001 and began spreading the word to immigrant friends and relatives that housing was cheap and it looked like a good place to build new lives and raise children in peace. Since then, the place has been transformed. Per capita income has soared, and crime rates have dropped. In 2004, Inc. magazine named Lewiston one of the best places to do business in America, and in 2007, it was named an “All-America City” by the National Civic League, the first time any town in Maine had received that honor in roughly 40 years.

Elusive employment opportunities for foreign-trained African Immigrants

by Nelima

 The Star Tribune had a  ’Mega Career Expo’ at the Minneapolis Convention Center yesterday. There where three pavilions, a health care pavilion, a general/professional pavilion and an engineering pavilion.  There were a ton of young job hunters and only FOUR booths in the general/professional area. Verizon Wireless was looking for customer reps, a company called ARAMARK was looking an operations manager and office assistant, AVON was looking for salespeople and the Border Patrol was there too (didn’t know they’d come this far north to hire people).  The health care pavilion was pretty small, though I couldn’t really tell how many booths were in there because they were screening people’s resume at the point of entry; you had to have some experience in nursing. The engineering pavilion had only one booth and they were screening for entry too; you had to be a US citizen. Which means that all those highly qualified American-trained engineering permanent residents were out of luck.  

The diversifying of Brooklyn Center

by Nekessa

Some of you probably live in Brooklyn Center, others in neighboring Brooklyn Park, and those of you who don’t, well, you might have noticed that hundreds of immigrants– Asian and African– have made the city their home.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Okay, today I’m writing like I got A.D.D. First I was writing about the future of life here on earth. (Yeah, I know, what the heck!), then Bob Marley pulled my attention to another piece. And just as I move to my third paragraph on that, I got a phone call from someone telling me she got my number from some lady I did some Obama campaign event with. I did a lot of Obama campaign events with a lot of people. Needless to say, I have no idea who she is talking about. But I encouraged her to go ahead. She started first by telling me she used to work as a nurse, and now she is doing that only on an on-call basis. Why? Because she has this home business that is making her a bundle! And by the way, it is endorsed by Donald Trump! I was like oh, oh, I heard this before. Matter of fact, I heard this just last night. But I let her continue.