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Title: Small-town America 'struggling to cope' with wave of new migrants... Post by: Chef Ramsay on March 21, 2015, 04:42:01 AM For small-town America, new immigrants pose linguistic, cultural challenges
On a warm July evening in 2012, while Marshalltown, Iowa, celebrated Independence Day, three refugee children from Myanmar (Burma) drowned in the Iowa River. The drownings at Riverview Park cast a grim light on the challenges facing both the city and its newest immigrants, most of whom spoke little English and had scant understanding of life in their new home – including the perils, known to more established residents, of the river’s treacherous currents. “We preach to kids all the time: You don’t swim in the river. You don’t play around the river,” says Kay Beach, president of the Marshalltown school board. “But they didn’t know that.” http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2015/0314/For-small-town-America-new-immigrants-pose-linguistic-cultural-challenges (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2015/0314/For-small-town-America-new-immigrants-pose-linguistic-cultural-challenges) Title: Re: Small-town America 'struggling to cope' with wave of new migrants... Post by: pattu1 on March 21, 2015, 12:50:56 PM This is sad, but why talk about a drowning which happened in 2012 in a 2015 story about new migrants?
I am sure immigrants are making an extra effort to assimilate into America, but language is always a barrier. |