Word: lewiston
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Your story on how Somali immigrants are moving into Lewiston, Maine, described some of the resulting tensions in the town [LETTER FROM MAINE, Oct. 28]. The problems that the town had absorbing 1,100 Somalis showed a good reason to support an immigration time-out. The era of Ellis Island is past. Today's immigrants are coming to the third most populous nation in the world. America is unable to absorb any more immigrants. What's more, some of these people represent a groundswell of cultural change that their homelands obviously need. Enabling them to emigrate will only prolong...
Tensions first flared at Lewiston High School when nearly 80 new Somali students showed up for the first day of class last fall. More than 100 students, up from 20 the previous year, enrolled in English-as-a-second-language classes. Rumors spread that the Somalis, who are mainly Muslims, were washing their feet in the school water fountain before they prayed. Then fights broke out in the cafeteria between natives and newcomers. Friends told Mohamed's daughter Hibat, 14, that their parents wanted the Somalis to go back home...
...discipline and reduce the stress on our limited finances and our generosity," he wrote. "Now we need breathing room." The Somali leaders, in turn, accused the mayor of being a bigot. The spat made headlines around the world and prompted Somalis abroad to check in on their friends in Lewiston...
...Somalis, some carrying LOVE THY NEIGHBOR! signs, recently joined one another in a Sunday walk from a downtown church to the local mosque. Hibat, one of the speakers at the march, told the gathering, "No matter what color, race, ethnicity or religion, we are all Americans and citizens of Lewiston...
...trying too. Mohamed recalls that last year a policeman asked her husband to call if he had any problems after Sept. 11, and a concerned teacher asked Hibat if she felt scared. Mohamed says she nods hello to her neighbors and they usually smile back. Indeed, she likes Lewiston so much that she talked it up to her brother in Atlanta, who now lives in the area...