"Arab-Americans: Detroit's Unlikely Saviors" Bobby Gosh

 
"Khalaf and Sami speak for a community that is growing and prospering alongside Detroit's decay, one of the largest concentrations of Arabs outside the Middle East. The four-county region of southeastern Michigan has a population of at least 200,000 of Middle Eastern origin; some estimates put that number far higher. In Dearborn, home to Ford Motor Co., one-third of the citizens have Middle Eastern ancestry — including Rima Fakih, the first Miss USA of Arab descent. "  Gosh

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2028057,00.html#ixzz15NJiUI9W

Comments

[psc]

Kebab shops and convenience stores will save America! Kinda like how bodegas and Taco stands are driving the booming economies of Nevada and California.

This goes back to America's failed policy of Invade the World, Invite the World, and In Debt to the World. Perpetual war, perpetual 3rd World immigration, and the borrowing of funds from the Orient. How long can we keep it up?

Detroit's automobiles and Los Angeles' aerospace industries are kaput and replaced by ethnic eateries and wily merchants. Not a good trade off.

[R Whitman]

Another few years and they too can buy a congressman.

[Fred]

Here's the best possible response to Jane & Company.

[walrus]

Ain't all Ayrabs terrorists Mary Lou?

[Patrick Lang]

psc

"Kebab shops and convenience stores will save America!" That is pretty vicious stuff. What did your ancestors do when they first came to the New World? Maybe you don't know, but from your name I suspect they came because they couldn't find enough moldy potatos. What did they do here? did they dig ditches until somone was able to get ahead a little? I know the people you are mocking. Your grandchildren will probaby work for theirs. pl

[Matthew]

Col: My wife's Arab relatives have all done very well in the United States. All college graduates. Most employed in education or technology.

What most people don't realize is that the reason most Arab Americans--like most Pakistani Americans--do well here is because the immigration process is difficult. These immigrants are often much more educated than the average native born.

Stereotypes? Well, those die slowly. As you note, some of your readers have forgotten the wonderful reception our Catholics ancestors received upon arrival here!

[psc]

My people survived the forced hunger of the 1840's and emigrated from Mayo and Donegal between 1910-1922. When they arrived, they went to work as longshoremen on the docks of Philadelphia and as laborers in the steel mills of Youngstown.

Due to the collapse of American industry, there are few steel mills in this country and longshormen have largely been replaced by cranes, forklifts, and other machines. At the beginning of the 20th century, America needed strong backs to dig canals, make shoes, erect skyscrapers, and man asssembly lines. Present day America is afflicted with 10% unemployment which limits the need of foreign labor (which depresses the wages of native born labor).

Regarding the future employment prospects of my grandchildren, I believe you are correct. Please refer to Senator James Webb's recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he outlined the fact that poor and middle-class whites are being discriminated against. Senator Webb eloquently questions the reasons why newly arrived immigrants and their offspring are given preferential treatment over native born whites during the Federal Govt hiring process, entry to colleges, and access to government loans for business start ups.

[William R. Cumming]

There are few studies for the 3rd or 4th generation of American immigrants. Perhaps that is the litmus test. Just as Southern Europeans were often considered non-white as were the Irish, their integration into American society is relatively complete after over a century.

The Detroit experience is remarkable and only time will tell how fully integrated into the American "dream" that group of people is in fact. But the US has to bet on immigration of many in order to survive. We can provide for our own and for our adopted but that would take political will not in evidence. Personally based on his policies, I don't consider President Obama the first black President. He does seem to be the first 50-50 President and clearly under most of the aggressive racial profiling in the US would be considered black. In my home state of Virginia at one time if your were more than 1/16th Indian you could not marry a white. Why? To prevent the heirs of Pocahantas from being considered racially inferior to whites. She did marry white--John Rolf if I remember correctly and died in England. But my understanding is that she did leave children. Others may disagree.

[Brad Ruble]

Neither Detroit automobiles nor Los Angeles aerospace went to hell because of immigrants. My family has been working their collective asses off in this country for better than 200 years and the people whom control the wealth and send the jobs overseas still don't think any better of them than they would a dog.
If we could get people to quit sniveling about immigrants, unions and Jane Fonda we might get somewhere.

[Fred]

PSC,

That's a nice re-election piece the Senator wrote. What legislation has he introduced to enact his sentaments? As to Detroit, the city's decline has nothing to do with imigration but with economic policy.

Being white doesn't mean one is necessarily descrimated against to help an imigrant or person who is non-white, I've presonally experienced it a couple of times, by white managers on behalf of other white employees; though the worst discrimination was the defense contractors at a college recruiting event who made a joke out of not hiring registered democrats. I don't think the company executives liked answering Congressman Gibbon's request for an explantion as to why thier firm would not consider hiring a qualified disabled vertean (yours truly) because he was a registered to vote in Florida as a Democrat. That was 1991, when Dick Cheney was only Secretary of Defense. Needless to say the point was made, though I chose not to work in defense contracting.

[Roy G]

"No Blacks, No Irish, No dogs."

Funny how some people think they are immune to history, and fancy their own ethnicity to be superior to other human beings – psc and the Zionists come to mind in this post.

[Jane]

Note to Brad: You must be new here -- I am not Jane Fonda although I mostly like her.

Since I believe that the formation of Israel was justified and its retention of its role as a Jewish homeland is also moral and since I despise the demonization of Israel and Jews in Islamic politics, most here have concluded that I despise Muslims and their culture. This does not follow except for the part that there are aspects of their culture to which, as a woman, I have great objection. I would note that similar tendencies were seen in Christianity especially during the Middle Ages. I do despise Fundamentalists of all denominations.

[steve]

I have seen this occur over and over in abandoned inner-city neighborhoods--Houston, Minneapolis, Des Moines. Asians, Hispanics, and Latinos rent cheap, save their money, then buy up property, and open stores for their communities. Crime goes down and you have a vibrant ethnic neighborhood.

A generation or two down the road, and the kids all move out to the 'burbs, and the old folks lament the lost ethnicity. Nothing could be more American than that.

[Abu Sinan]

@PSC,

The reason your children will be working for their children has nothing to do with race. Care to point to any affirimative action programs that target or promote Arab/Muslim Americans in the USA?

The reason your children will work for them is because their culture places a premium on education that we dont anymore. It is the same with immigrant Pakistanis and Asians.

Arab immigrants, Christian and Muslim alike, are higher educated and make more money than the average American.

The reason your children will work for them because their children will be doctors, lawyers, engineers and scientists. If you want to change your children's futures stop the whinging about the colour of their skin and get them working on advanced mathematics, differential equations and the things most Americans cannot do, but the Asian and Arab immigrants find easy.

I work for the US government in an area that only hire engineers, scientists, doctors and the like. We are forced to hire probably 70% of our workforce from the naturalised American community because there are not enough Americans being graduated from our schools that have the degrees and can handle the mathematics.

My mother's side of the family, originally from the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, had a cross burned on their lawn when they came here. They were Catholics.

It speaks poorly of someone who has bad blood for people who work hard and move ahead because of it.

[graywolf]

pl:
You really kicked a yellow jacket nest on this one.
Very emotional subject.

[Patrick Lang]

greywolf

That is the idea. pl

[Patrick Lang]

greywolf

question:

Do you think the emotion is because people do not like immigrants or because they don't like Arabs? pl

[CK]

And here I thought the objective was to work for one's self. To show your offspring how to not have to forelock tug to anyone.
My bad, it appears that the highest objective is to be someone else's employee.

[Sidney O. Smith III]

The top pediatric oncologist at Egleston Children’s Hospital in Atlanta was Egyptian. This doctor was a savior of children, primarily those diagnosed with leukemia. Race or religion did not matter to him to him. In 1975, he started a program called CURE.

http://www.curechildhoodcancer.org/about-cure/history-of-cure/

Meanwhile, to present a contrast, Mondoweiss headlines read “Israeli siege kept Baby from leukemia treatment” and “Two year old girl dies from leukemia while waiting to leave Gaza for treatment”.

http://tinyurl.com/2aurlcn

http://tinyurl.com/2uevca2

The Israeli approach would appear to contradict American values. But what the hell, to quote from Bibi’s reaction following the collapse of the Twin Towers. “We are all Israelis now.” (Bibi communicates the same message all the time and will do so when Iranians respond against US assets following Israeli limited pre-emptive attack on Iran).

[R.d.]

Do you think the emotion is because people do not like immigrants or because they don't like Arabs? Pl

If I may jump in Col., with my 35 or so years, it certainly has a bit of this or that. However, at this point, I believe it is mostly caused by the politics of polarization. If it is not immigrants, it is the abortion issue, if not, they’ll dig up some thing else. It is both parties who are catering to their corp and lobby interest in place of the people, magnified by the MSM. So they got every one on each others throat while they squander the public wealth.

It is so ironic to see how un-easy people are talking to one another about politics, or past one another. They easily get irritated and un-able to discuss even simple issue. I don’t believe this is necessarily an immigrant issue, rather the politics of polarizing the people. Divide and conquer. It reminds me of my parent generation who once here, for years, would lower their voices when talking politics, as if the walls had ears. Here, they use the ‘soft power’ and get the masses distracted. Though one wonders if the walls here are beginning to have ears as well.

[Tyler]

I'd rather have a bunch of middle eastern immigrants than another bumper crop of mexican illegals.

[Tyler]

Addendum to the above:

I didn't like the pieces wishy washy tone, as if the author was trying to find a rock to kick over and go "Ah ha!" throughout the story.

And I wish illegals from Mexico would have to go through the same trials that an illegal from the middle east goes through when he's found out.

[WILL]

the greatest Muslim terrorist, born a dictator, worse than Lucius Cornelius Sulla!

"Jobs was born in San Francisco[1] and was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs (née Hagopian[22]) of Mountain View, California, who named him Steven Paul. Paul and Clara later adopted a daughter, who they named Patti. Jobs' biological parents – Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian Muslim[23] graduate student who later became a political science professor,[24] and Joanne Simpson, an American graduate student[23] who went on to become a speech therapist[25] – later married, giving birth to and raising Jobs' biological sister, the novelist Mona Simpson."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs

Talked about in Presidential Terms, guv of Indiana

"Mitchell Elias Daniels, Jr., was born in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, to Dorothy Mae (née Wilkes) and Mitchell Elias Daniels, Sr.,[5] spending his early childhood years in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Georgia. The Daniels family moved to Indiana from Pennsylvania in 1959 while he was still in grade school. His paternal grandparents were Christian immigrants from Syria. As an Arab-American,[6] Daniels has been honored by the Arab-American Institute with the 2009 Najeeb Halaby Award for Public Service"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_Daniels

[graywolf]

"Do you think the emotion is because people do not like immigrants or because they don't like Arabs? pl "
A little bit of both, or neither.
Fear of change is a very big fear.

[wcw]

My, my -- these comments. Good work kicking over that nest.

FD: my parents are immigrants. Both have doctorates.