THE DAILY BLADE: How Did We Get From A Knowledge Economy To An Unskilled And Illiterate Economy?: Part II
Why do some immigrants thrive in the U.S. and others don’t? Today’s edition of The Washington Post sheds light on this question, with profiles of a refugee whose family escaped persecution in Iran, and a Mexican-born “second-generation” American whose parents entered the U.S. illegally, later obtaining legal permanent residency (the WaPo doesn't quite say how or why). As you will see, the first fellow single-mindedly pursued success, while the second mindlessly pursued failure.
In an op-ed, Thomas Heath profiles Payam "Peter" Tabibian, 37:
He and his family fled Iran in 1982 after getting word his father was going to be arrested. Tabibian, his sister and his parents left the country that night, leaving behind a profitable manufacturing business that gave them a comfortable life.
They paid smugglers to get them to Turkey. They dressed as farmers and hid under blankets in trucks to make their way. They landed in Switzerland, where an uncle was in the import-export business. They moved to Bloomington, Minn., in 1984, to live with an aunt.
Tabibian started his first business in a Bloomington middle school; he bought chocolate bars from his uncle's business for 50 cents and sold them to classmates for a buck. He sold as many as 50 to 60 candy bars a day.
At 14, he started his apprenticeship in the hamburger business at a Burger King next to his middle school, taking out trash, washing dishes and cleaning the parking lot. It paid around $4 an hour. …
He worked at several Burger Kings before he became the youngest manager ever at the L'Enfant Plaza restaurant at age 17, which taught him how to handle high-volume lunch crowds. …
His schedule was a killer. He went to high school in the morning, then went to work at a Burger King in the afternoon. He worked at a grocery store starting around midnight, and would grab sleep during class the next morning.
Tabibian learned the hamburger business from top to bottom, and did something else that was really smart: He saved much of what he made, banking more than $30,000.
He took a job as general manager at a Capitol Heights Jerry's Subs & Pizza, where he remodeled the store and boosted advertising and promotions. Store sales increased from $3,500 a week to $23,000 a week over the 10 years he was there.
After starting up a bubble-gum vending machine business and selling neckties, Tabibian went back to his first love, hamburger joints, and opened Z-Burger near American University on the corner of a heavily-trafficked commercial street. He already has a second location about a mile away and is planning other locations. Wanna bet he builds this thing into a franchise not unlike In-N-Out Burger?
Now, by way of comparison, read WaPo staff writer N.C. Aizenman's profile of Javier Saavedra, 23:
Raised by Mexican immigrant parents, Saavedra was a gang member by 13, a high school dropout by 16 and a father by 21. Now 23, he has been trying to turn his life around since his daughter, Julissa, was born.
But without a high school diploma, Saavedra was unable to find a job that paid enough for him and his girlfriend, Mayra Hererra, 20 and pregnant with their second child, to move out of her parents' brick home in Hyattsville.
Even the dim, wood-paneled room piled with baby toys and large plastic bags of clothing was costing them $350 a month.
"I get so upset with myself," Saavedra said. "I should have a better chance at a job [than our parents]. I want to be helping them with their bills, not them still helping me."
Saavedra eventually quit gang life, got anger management counseling, and had his gang tats lasered off with funding from a local youth group. He’d been trying to support his family with temporary, low-paying gigs like cleaning carpets, driving for FedEx, and construction and had started on online course to earn a high school diploma so he could get better-paying jobs. But he quit when FedEx offered him a steady delivery job at $500 a week, and decided to babysit his two kids while his girlfriend finishes up business degree at a Northern Virginia vocational college in the hopes of landing a job in human resources.
Here’s the rub: In earlier waves of immigration, a go-getter like Tabibian would have been the norm – why else would you leave your friends, family and everything that is familiar to you to come to a strange, far-away place and start from scratch? Writing on the Center for Immigration Studies blog, David North makes the point that The Immigration Act of 1965 and subsequent amendments to it have weeded out such self-starters. In an earlier blog post his colleague, Jerry Kammer, argued that "comprehensive" immigration reform that emphasizes “family unity” instead of valuable skills and advanced education (fourth item) will preferentially openour doors to the unskilled and poorly educated (third item), like Saavedra and his parents, who never finished grade school.
We Fight Them Over There So We Don’t Have To Fight Them Over Here?: Part V
Chicagoan David Coleman Headley, 49, who has been charged with plotting to kill employees of Danish newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten for publishing “offensive” cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005 (second item), is now accused of scoping out potential targets in Mumbai before terrorist attacks in 2008 that killed 166 people, reports The Associated Press:
Headley was charged in a 12-count criminal information with six counts of conspiracy to bomb public places in India, to murder and maim people in India and Denmark, to provide material support to foreign terrorist plots and another offenses.
According to the charges, Headley, a U.S. citizen, attended terrorist training camps in Pakistan earlier in this decade operated by Lashkar e Taiba - a group that specializes in violent attacks on targets in India.
Editorial Note: Was the slaying of anthropologist Richard Antoun, a professor emeritus at New York State University-Binghamton and an expert in Middle Eastern cultures, a case of “sudden jihad syndrome”? The New York Times reports:
The suspect, Abdulsalam S. al-Zahrani, 46, remained held without bail on Sunday, charged with second-degree murder in the death of the professor…
The two knew each other through Binghamton’s graduate program, where the professor served on the dissertation committee for Mr. Zahrani, who is from Saudi Arabia.
On Sunday, Mr. Zahrani’s roommates - who had lived with him for about three weeks in a three-bedroom apartment in downtown Binghamton - recounted how the suspect, who spoke of financial problems, often mentioned death and said he was being persecuted because he was Muslim.
“I said he was acting oddly, like a terrorist,” said one of the roommates, Souleymane Sakho, a graduate student from Senegal. “When I informed them, it was for them to understand that the guy was violent or he may be violent.”
Mr. Sakho said that he told his academic adviser who is overseeing his dissertation about Mr. Zahrani, and that the adviser referred him to the school’s counseling center. Mr. Sakho said that the head of the counseling center told him to avoid interaction with Mr. Zahrani and said he should look to move out of the apartment.
A spokesman for Binghamton University declined to comment on what university officials may have been told by Mr. Sakho about Mr. Zahrani’s behavior, citing a continuing investigation by the district attorney of Broome County.
In Memoriam
“Monk,” July 12, 2002 – December 4, 2009
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