Immigrants: Lynn school woes not our fault

LYNN – Local immigrants are tired of feeling like scapegoats for the ills facing the city and are ready to sound off about it.”The mayor and the superintendent are dividing our community,” said School Committee member Maria Carrasco, who will attend a planned rally at City Hall Tuesday. “You say the reputation of this city is it embraces everyone ? but this is hate against immigrants.”Jose Palma from Neighbor to Neighbor announced Friday that there will be a press conference and rally in front of City Hall Tuesday at noon to highlight the fact that unaccompanied minors and refugees are not to blame for the problems of the city’s educational system.Palma said Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy and Superintendent Catherine Latham have been outspoken regarding an overwhelming number of refugees and unaccompanied minors that have come into the system in the last four years costing causing a financial burden.Both he and Carrasco said it’s time to stop blaming the kids.”Our schools have been underfunded for years,” he said.”We need to look for solutions and not blame the immigrants,” Carrasco said. “(Kennedy) talks about us like we’re not human beings. Like we’re nobody.”There has been much in the news lately about Gordon College, which has been accused of seeking to discriminate against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Carrasco said when officials talk about that, they talk about compassion and the need to be accepting of all, but that doesn’t seem to translate to the unaccompanied minors or refugees.She said people need to understand the children are coming to this country because their lives are in danger in their own country due to extreme violence.”It’s not a war or a revolution,” Carrasco said. “It’s just violence.”She said gangs will threaten families to hand over their children as young as 9 years old, and if they don’t, the gangs will kill them, so families are trying to get their children to safety.They are coming to Lynn because they have family here, Carrasco said.If the U.S. really wanted to remedy the situation, it would go into countries like El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala and try and fix the violence, she said.”Help make it so they don’t have to leave, so they’re not afraid,” she said.Palma said Kennedy and Latham have to stop using the refugee children and unaccompanied minors to justify crumbling schools and outdated textbooks.Kennedy has been careful not to begrudge the children, noting that Lynn has always been a city that welcomes immigrants because it was built by immigrants. However, she has said publicly that “enough is enough.”Palma said it is increasingly frustrating to watch city officials take aim at the unaccompanied minors and refugee children who are here seeking a better life and an education. He said Tuesday they will call upon Kennedy and Latham to stop blaming the children and for city officials to fully fund the schools, which they insist is not currently being done.”This is really dividing our community,” Carrasco reiterated. “This may not be popular for me to say, but I don’t care.”She said it wasn’t that long ago that society was turning its backs on Irish and Italian immigrants.”Now it’s the Latinos,” she said.