Immigrants, Then And Now

I just finished reading “The Tenement Museum” in your April issue. It brought tears to my eyes, because the stories about the families who lived there could be the stories of the refugee families my church has sponsored. St. Paul Lutheran Church in Fort Worth, Texas, has worked with refugees from Bosnia, Iraq, Sudan, Burma, Croatia, and Vietnam since the fall of 1996. These refugees still encounter prejudice in some quarters, and parents still struggle to learn English and to find jobs that will let them support their families. The joy of working with them is their children, who learn English quickly and seem to carry few scars from their past experiences. Sometimes we wish we could afford to place them in better homes, but after reading about families who lived in tenement apartments of only 325 square feet, the 1,100 or so square feet enjoyed by our refugee families seems luxurious.

This article is just the latest example of why I enjoy your magazine so much: Learning about the past is critical if we are to do a better job in the present. Keep up the good work!