unflinching idealism ... since 1997 archivessitemapabouthelpfeedback
ideas, identities and interactions
  • Home
  • InFocus
  • Themes
  • Columns
  • Articles
  • Fiction
  • iLogs
  • Gallery
  • Unplugged
  • Writers
  • Interactors
  • Tags
Sign in | Join Chowk
web chowk
  • Article
  • Interact
  • read writer comments
  • add to favorites
  • get rss feeds
  • print
  • email this link

Little Pakistan: Brooklyn’s Coney Island Avenue

Feroz Qutabshahi April 21, 2008

Latest comments   flat   threaded   latest   oldest   all
listing 1-16   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

#1 Posted by HP on April 21, 2008 9:14:45 am
An excellent article, Feroz.

It is good to see how you detach from your other persona in the articles you write.
When I lived in NY, LP was still growing. I went there couple of times to look for some special food. The culture was almost alien to me as I was raised in Karachi and Hyderabad and was not familiar with the Mirpuri or the central Punjab culture. Still, it was fun to go there when the craving for the Pakistani food became almost unbearable. Another area that I visited often was also somewhere in E. Brooklyn too. I can’t remember the name of the street now.

After the 9-11, I read a few articles in some papers about LP and then I looked at a web site of some South Asian volunteers, both Indians and Pakistani kids, from either queens or LI who were taking care of Pak families in the CIA-Brighton beach neighborhood.

Many assume that most of the Pakistanis in the US are from a middle class background but the community demographics of NY, Chicago, LA, and Houston dispel that notion quickly. All these metro areas are dominated by people who reached here just to provide livelihood to their families back in Pakistan and later moved families here.

Due to their educational background and other social pressures, these groups turned to religion to create the communal cohesiveness thus providing an opening for some of the most orthodox Muslim preachers and uneducated moulvis to take up the mantle of the community leaders. The constant refrains from these community leaders ensured that the folks stop looking beyond the community and the social structure available to them in the US society is not fully availed of.

That leaves the kids with the same mindset that their parents brought with them. The mullah in the mosque further pollutes any growth by shoving the inane religious concepts in to kids’ heads, thus thwarting any avenue of the normal growth and adjustment in the society.

This is almost a repeat of what took place in the mirpuri communities in England, leading to the rise of extremely parochial and convoluted dogma among the kids that prevented them from becoming a part of the mainstream without sacrificing their cultural heritage or the pride in the community. Now all they have left is the community and the mainstream in UK has pretty much shunned them. That means it will take at least couple or more generations to bring them back in to the UK mainstream.

Here in the US, if the same trend continues we may see another generation of Pak growing up with alienating social and community behavior. The only redeeming feature is that the Pak community in the US is not as large as in UK. Still, I think there has to be some intervention now from the middle class Pak in the major metro areas or the US social services are made aware of the possible problems in future.


reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#2 Posted by GT on April 21, 2008 9:34:30 am
Kul,

This is great ... the reason I still visit chowk. Have lots and lots to say .... will definitely interact. Eagerly waiting for a fantastic discussion .... yes, with all the maa-behen etc.

Regards

GT.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#3 Posted by CreateAlpha on April 21, 2008 9:48:34 am
Kul, were the CIA pakis rounded up and sent off or did the leave voluntarily?
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#4 Posted by CreateAlpha on April 21, 2008 9:50:39 am
Actually, the glaring difference between the US and UK wrt to pakistanis is that the US demands integration as a melting pot and doesn't cater to multiculturalist whims of separate but equal.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#5 Posted by GT on April 21, 2008 11:11:55 am
Kul,

I went through your article again (I hardly read FP articles now-a-days) and also went through HP's interact. Of late, I have been writing on networks (groups, tribes) here in chowk ... pertaining to (1) insurance; (2) migration (e.g Mexican "Paisanos"). You provide a nice and short description of a particular "network". What you highlight here, and something which I did not pay attention to earlier, is the potential fragility of a net-work vis-a-vis exogenous socio-political "shocks" (9/11 in your article). You (and especially HP) also highlight how cohesion is provided through religios (social) norms.

I would like to know if you see any internal dynamics (as opposed to exogenous shocks) in todays Little Pakistan which would lead to it getting disolved in the future. After all, the jews did fade away from what is Little Pakistan today.

(Sorry for sounding pseudo-academic).
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#6 Posted by arjun_5 on April 21, 2008 12:32:07 pm
A lot of them were deported...others left because they were scared shitless..

right after 9/11, a lot of pakis were deported from the DC area too..in a lot of cases, rival pizza joints ratted out each other's illegal paki workers..


Deportation surge leaves void in Brooklyn's Little Pakistan

By Tatsha Robertson, Globe Staff | August 14, 2005

NEW YORK -- Business in his modest grocery store in Brooklyn's Little Pakistan has gone down so much that Shafiq Ul Hassan has started stocking what he calls ''American foods" in a desperate attempt to attract different customers. Across from the baby goat meat and the pungent ingredients for curry powder, the immigrant shopkeeper has placed candy bars and loaves of white bread.

''You see how empty the store is. This would normally be packed with Pakistani people," Hassan said, sighing. ''A lot of people have left. Most have gone back home or another state. You just don't see people anymore."

Many of Hassan's Pakistani customers, and possibly 20 percent or more of the neighborhood's residents, have disappeared as a result of a crackdown on undocumented immigrants that the federal government has waged since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Waves of new enforcement programs with names like Operation Community Shield, Operation Predator, and Operation Tarmac produced a record 161,676 deportations nationwide last year, a surge of 60 percent since 2000, and a similarly large increase also has occurred in New York City.

Immigration specialists and residents of Little Pakistan, part of the Midwood section of Brooklyn, say the devastating impact the operations have had on this tiny swath of Brooklyn to some extent mirrors the effect on other Muslim or Arab communities across the nation.

Although Pakistan is an ally of the United States, the Muslim country is also considered a hotbed of Islamic extremism, which has led FBI and immigration agents to knock on many doors in Brooklyn, looking for people it believes pose a potential threat to national security. Brooklyn has the largest concentration of Pakistanis in the country.

The new enforcement programs are part of the federal government's crackdown on an estimated 445,000 illegal immigrants in the country who have evaded deportation orders, as well as undocumented workers employed in areas of national security such as airports and nuclear power plants, officials said. While the number of Muslim and Arab deportations is still relatively small compared with those involving Latin American immigrants, they have been growing rapidly.

Marc Raimondi, spokesman for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, said the initiatives also have helped the government capture a range of lawbreakers, including violent gang members, drug smugglers, and sexual predators, as well as undocumented immigrants.

''In order for a nation to have national security, one of the things it must have is an immigration system with integrity. We must prioritize our efforts to get those who we feel pose the greatest threat to national security and public safety. We have done that through a number of initiatives and programs," Raimondi said.

Federal officials, for example, point to Operation Predator, which they say has helped the government sweep up 7,000 illegal residents accused or charged with sexual crimes nationally. Of those arrested, 2,100 have been sent back to their home countries. Six thousand people have been arrested so far under Operation Community Shield, many of them gang members who smuggle people or drugs into the country, according to federal officials.

''If you smuggle a person looking for a job for profit, you could easily smuggle a terrorist," Raimondi said.

Besides Mexican and other Latin Americans, Pakistanis represented the group most affected by the crackdown, both nationally and in New York City. About 500,000 people with Pakistani ancestry are in the country, with more than 120,000 of them in New York City, according to city officials and Pakistani diplomats.

''There is pressure on Pakistani communities because of people's apprehensions that they might be questioned by the law enforcement agencies and they might go through extensive scrutiny. So yes, it has affected communities, especially Brooklyn," said Mansoor Suhail, a spokesman for Pakistan's mission to the United Nations.

Community leaders in Little Pakistan estimate that since the terror attacks, 4,000 residents have been arrested, detained, or deported, and 15,000 Pakistanis have left New York City during that time, according to Pakistan's government.

Once a bustling neighborhood where Pakistani restaurants were packed with customers and the mosque overflowed with worshipers on Fridays, Little Pakistan has lost some of the energy it had when there were at least 40,000 residents and as many as 100,000, based on the estimates of the Pakistani government and community leaders.

''It's quieter. People stay in. . . . Everyone is scared," said Shahid Ali Khan, who was arrested in May and held in a detention center in Elizabeth, N.J., for five days until he received a temporary reprieve. Now, he worries about his wife and 10-year-old son, both of whom recently received deportation orders.

Along Coney Island Avenue in the Midwood section, men in white skullcaps still gather for a chat on the sidewalks and women in headdresses handle grain in grocery stores. The smell of beef kababs and smoked tikka waft along the avenue, but fewer people go inside restaurants for lunch. Men head to Friday afternoon prayers as they have done for decades, but the mosque receives only a third of the worshipers it once did, a neighborhood activist said.

Russian and Latino immigrants are beginning to move into the apartments and stores left behind by Pakistanis. Overall, business in Little Pakistan is down 50 percent, according to a survey conducted by the Council of Peoples Organization, a resettlement house on Coney Island Avenue.

Many Pakistani residents, who settled in Brooklyn in the 1950s and 1980s, worked as bankers and doctors in their homeland but found themselves working as laborers and shopkeepers in the United States. Some came on work visas, but many others arrived illegally, residents say. Still, the community thrived until 2001. The government began the controversial program in 2003 that mandated males 16 and older from 24 predominantly Muslim countries to contact the nearest immigration office. ''It was so bad," said Khan.

Because of that and other enforcement actions, some fearful residents decided to leave New York rather than face questions by agents. Mohammad Razvi, founder of the Council of Peoples Organization, recalled a barber leaving his shop without notifying anyone. A video clip of the abandoned shop shows the lights on and brushes and combs left on the tables as if the owner was returning the next day. Later, ''He called and said, 'I am in Canada, and I am not coming back,' " Razvi said.

Thousands have been left in legal limbo or picked up. Khan, 48, who was nearly deported in May, came to this country eight years ago so that his son Mansoor could have heart surgery. The day federal agents arrived with a deportation order, Khan, a former banker in Pakistan, was working as a laborer, but his wife was home dressing their son, who is in a wheelchair and suffers spasms. Khan said one agent was so touched by the mother and disabled son that he later told him, ''You are not the type of people we are looking for, but we have to do what we have to do."

Khan, a polite man who still wears the starched attire of a banker, said things are a little better for now, but he is unsure about his family's future.

The crackdown continues to affect the neighborhood. On Tuesday, Razvi was trying to help a cabdriver who had been called by a federal immigration agent. The next day, Razvi sat in his chair looking drawn and sad. The cabdriver, whose work visa had allegedly expired, had been picked up by authorities but not deported.

Razvi sees hope for Little Pakistan, though. While business is not improving, at least it is not getting worse. He also said federal agents are no longer searching for anyone who might lack proper immigration papers, and instead are targeting certain individuals who have overstayed their visas.

Established residents like Hassan, who has owned his grocery store for nearly two decades, are trying to change with the times. Another store owner converted his jewelry shop into a 99-cent store once he realized most of his customers would not return. He thought it would be easier to run a convenience store because of a drop-off in business at the jewelry store, which was heavily patronized by Pakistanis.

New Pakistani arrivals, Razvi said, have their immigration papers in order. ''They have their T's crossed and their I's dotted," he said, rubbing his weary eyes and smiling.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#7 Posted by arjun_5 on April 21, 2008 12:35:39 pm

but a tremendous majority, if not all, detest extremism and terrorism, or use of any violence to achieve even the legitimate goals


Kulharee, with all due respect, this is BS...before 9/11, the vast majority of pakis on the internet or otherwise were completely supportive of the jihad in kashmir and the taliban in afghanistan....they used to brag openly about dropping money in chanda boxes when they went back home..

either you're ignorant(willfully or otherwise) or not being honest..

reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#8 Posted by aslam644 on April 21, 2008 12:59:26 pm
Thanks feroz for the article
I’ve visited Brooklyn couple of times my cousin used to live there.the difference I saw between UK and there, was the welfare state was virtually non-existent there,which made people work which is a good thing for integration. Another thing I noticed was the lack of good desi restaurants, in UK there is one around virtually every street corner, there is at least 9000 of them, though most are run by Bengalis.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#9 Posted by ana on April 21, 2008 3:24:04 pm
Kulharee,

I haven't read the article yet, but I'm still reeling from arjun's beginning a post with "with all due respect". My goodness, how often does he say that with regard to us "pakis." Please make sure you give him a good clean argument! :)
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#10 Posted by ShoreSahib on April 21, 2008 5:56:51 pm
IS Feroz Qutabshahi the same person as Kulharee?
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#11 Posted by ahmedmadani on April 21, 2008 5:58:38 pm
America is useing poor people of world and when they do not like something racism comes up against dark,brown skin ewaring personas.
But one should not feel dishearted as democracy is great idea based on quantity and if sufficient number of people are thre if they vote things change. Today no English man in Bradford English city can Ignore faithfuls. Slowly but surely regions will develop with even 20% population can have effect of making a region as like in part of Lahore or Karachi. Demography is great tool and can be effectively used. Once some numbers reaches then anti believers gate anxious and abandon areas and that all areas for capture. It has great thing of democratic defeat of other people and expansion of territory and in sense liberation from western elite influence and mental liberation and freedom to resort old culturalways without any shame. Soon in heart of Europe , england , france, germany , denmark there will be such liberated areas , you can find job and profession without dealing with recoist locals and then they will respect believers. German people destroyed Roman empire they were shunned by Italians as Barbarians but german tribes decided future rome. Patience is virtue,Demography is sleeping bomb, victory is certain on its now waiting game. Those who does discrimination will be defeated in long term , immigrant has patience and ready wait for generations he has no desire to return back home,he has left home for good as he left home in hope of finding better society of white people and justice and equality and raising himself up. Just like Mohajirs of India poured and changed demography and dynamics and became overlords of Urban sindh and taught lessons to locals, our Dispharia will teach lessons to local recists.In the beginning new immigrants are afraid of white people soon their children will give hell to whites as north Africans are teaching lesson to snobby french. After all it is survival of fittest in classical way. I read in England they are putting statues of pakistani leaders and inaugarated by white politicians toget good rating. It is inspiring story of people to read thanks.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#12 Posted by jayp on April 21, 2008 6:00:33 pm
"As it is, an estimated one million NYC residents are undocumented migrants but because of circumstances Paks paid the price for being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Feroz,

It is the above type of stupid statements and sentiments that is causing major problem to the pakistanis every where. If pakis are being targeted every where, there is reason. The london bombers, the latest hijackers, most of teh 9/11 people, they all were in pakistan, most are of pakistani origin, though lived in the UK for long.

There is simething intrinsic in the paki mindset that leads them to terrorism.

If it is pure islam, it should be the saudis, if it is pure poverty it should be the bangldeshis or teh sudanese,

In pakistan the entire society and the govt are in suppiort fo terrorism. The western and teh saudi monies have vanished to support terror, but it is flourishing in pakistan.

Think feroz, think, why is pakistan the terror central
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#13 Posted by jayp on April 21, 2008 6:04:26 pm
Re: # 7

on the chowk, one can see the posts by tahmed, romair etc following the indian aircraft hijacking. teh action was praised sky high by the romairs and others on chowk.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#14 Posted by akcheema on April 21, 2008 6:21:10 pm
Re: # 9; ana

I don' think Arjun has a problem with Pakis per se. It seems more of a personal issue with another character around (feel free to correct me Arjun).

If left to its devices, nature does have a balance of sorts; the two seem to achieve that quite well!
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#15 Posted by ahmedmadani on April 21, 2008 6:39:30 pm
Re: # 13 Jayp,Arjun People change as they mature or degenerate with time. Above gentle men have matured and also global experience is different thing. Old times I used to teach students why earth is round and some reasoning etc.But once satellites went in sky and pictures came of round earth as white orange ,said no reason to think ,it is round you can see. It stopped flat earthers in track.
There are evil people like you who never liked any and can hard to reason with. If one changes due to knowledge and changed situation or heavenly enlightenment (Thunderstorm heating head) one changes opinion then you will say you changed opinion. You lost for you forgot people are principled and loyal but we change principles to correct ourselves.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#16 Posted by izuber on April 21, 2008 7:10:52 pm
Bonehead-Arjun wont get it(after all it takes brain+wisdom too bad Arjun doesnt seem to possess either)so here it goes:

Article URL: http://americandaily.com/article/16838 Copyright ©2007 AmericanDaily.Com


Illegal Immigration: India Invades America
By Guest Author: William H. Calhoun (12/18/06)


An ex-Army intelligence officer recently said, "We are under attack. And it's not just Mexico. It's all Central and South American countries. It's India. It's China. It's most of the non-European world. And if we do not fight back soon, America will be third-world sewer within 30 years!."

America is currently being invaded from all corners of the world. Mexico. China. Africa. India. They all are invading and carving out their enclaves. And you know what? They are backed by big business and the American government.

A perfect case in point is India. The Indian Government and American corporations have been lobbying the US for more H-1B visas to allow Indians to move to the United States.

American companies use the H-1B to drive down American wages. An associate of mine who works for a high-tech company in California (whose name I cannot say for legal reasons) recently watched about 90% of his fellow American employees be fired from his company. They were replaced with H-1B imports from India, who were paid about one-third of what the Americans were making.

GW Bush has largely supported this H-1B invasion, portraying it as sound policy. He, however, and the mainstream media always fail to mention that large companies are using the H-1B to drive down wages whereby they fire American employees and replace them with low-paid foreigners. They also fail to mention that India has the largest Muslim population, the most terrorist cells, and now the most reported cases of HIV in the world.

At my friend's high-tech company in California, within a few months of the firings, two of the Indian employees had already spread HIV to three Americans, three of the other Indians had known ties to terrorist cells in India, and the Indians would openly speak of "exterminating the European race." Was any of this reported in the mainstream media? Of course not. Did any of these people serve jail time? Of course not. In essence, because of H-1B provisions, they have more rights than American citizens. Nor is this incident isolated.

As previously reported, I was at the airport recently in Los Angeles, and I could overhear the conversation of some younger Indians waiting for a flight from India. These youths were obviously raised in America, as they did not have accents, unlike their parents sitting next to them. The Indian youth, after debating their favorite rappers, began to discuss how recent DNA studies show that Indians are closely related to Sub-Saharan Africans. They then began to speak approvingly of India invading California, and went on to say that they should "wipe out all the whites." Now, the parents, seeing that I was listening, lightly admonished the youth, not really because of what they said, but only because others could hear.

This is the norm all across America. After previously publishing my experience in the Los Angeles airport, I received many emails from patriots saying they had experienced very similar situations.

And you know what? GW Bush and Condoleezza Rice just gave these people more nuclear technology.

The same ex-intelligence Army officer said to me, "This policy of giving nuclear technology to India is borderline treason. The motivating factor was big business, not national security. All of our intelligence has shown that now it is just a matter of when, not if, an Indian detonates a backpack nuke within the United States or sells one to a Mexican nationalist."

And Bush has sworn to uphold the US Constitution? perduellio est communist!

If we don't immediately lose our country via a backpack nuke, then we most certainly will lose our jobs and standard of living. Americans' wages are dropping every year (adjusted for inflation) due to legal and illegal immigration. We are being ambushed from every angle.

Patriotic Americas had better wake up! We are under attack. Be vigilant and prepare! Stop the third-world invasion!

--------------
William H. Calhoun is a writer, paleoconservative, and a farmer who lives on his ancestral estate.

Article URL: http://americandaily.com/article/16838 Copyright ©2007 AmericanDaily.Com
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#17 Posted by ahmedmadani on April 21, 2008 7:48:49 pm
Re: # 16 Great story.

It is interesting Thesis and can easily get PhD in economics if you add little masala of graphs and references.

Immigrants are like new male cat on block and have all that energy and voracious appetite for getting things.( most irritating for male native cats is outsider cats gets native cat girl friends. Now this local cat girls have curiosity of dark outsider cats. Its very hard for local mens manness. But people are different and liberal minded and people like lovbe stories.)

This farmer should have no complaint. His father did farming with mules and oxen and he does with tractor but he can not do code coolie job or has no nerve to drive cabs in Newyork city. He is whiner and antimuslim and has wrong notion muslims are involved in terrorism.
Even nonmuslim leaders like TonyBlair, Mr.Putin mr.Singh even Mr. Bush all have praised Islam as religion of peace. But always emphasised by this big leaders again and again Islam means submission and peace. But we can not expect man with agriculture to listen to his president.

I had similar experience. Once I went Thatta Sindh. I was watching fisherman native sindhi man throwing fishnet and catching meger number of fishes. He told me people like me come to karachi and destroy sindhi people and language etc.
I asked him can you do my work he said he can not. I asked him what his father did, he said fishing , grand father fishing. Then I said when your children start doing work work I do then I will pack up. I told him I do not catch fish and has not taken your job and all other good stuff.
Its dilemma what to say. One feels guilty at same time not sad. But its harsh on nat8ives for sure every where to see loosing cities , the ethos of natives it is heart wrenching when you think. I hope he forgave me for to understand all is to forgive all. I try to rationalise answer in my mind but being unkind is hard to accept, even though there is quite degree of truth , it diminishes you.
Good day.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#18 Posted by ahmedmadani on April 21, 2008 7:48:58 pm
Re: # 16 Great story.

It is interesting Thesis and can easily get PhD in economics if you add little masala of graphs and references.

Immigrants are like new male cat on block and have all that energy and voracious appetite for getting things.( most irritating for male native cats is outsider cats gets native cat girl friends. Now this local cat girls have curiosity of dark outsider cats. Its very hard for local mens manness. But people are different and liberal minded and people like lovbe stories.)

This farmer should have no complaint. His father did farming with mules and oxen and he does with tractor but he can not do code coolie job or has no nerve to drive cabs in Newyork city. He is whiner and antimuslim and has wrong notion muslims are involved in terrorism.
Even nonmuslim leaders like TonyBlair, Mr.Putin mr.Singh even Mr. Bush all have praised Islam as religion of peace. But always emphasised by this big leaders again and again Islam means submission and peace. But we can not expect man with agriculture to listen to his president.

I had similar experience. Once I went Thatta Sindh. I was watching fisherman native sindhi man throwing fishnet and catching meger number of fishes. He told me people like me come to karachi and destroy sindhi people and language etc.
I asked him can you do my work he said he can not. I asked him what his father did, he said fishing , grand father fishing. Then I said when your children start doing work work I do then I will pack up. I told him I do not catch fish and has not taken your job and all other good stuff.
Its dilemma what to say. One feels guilty at same time not sad. But its harsh on nat8ives for sure every where to see loosing cities , the ethos of natives it is heart wrenching when you think. I hope he forgave me for to understand all is to forgive all. I try to rationalise answer in my mind but being unkind is hard to accept, even though there is quite degree of truth , it diminishes you.
Good day.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#19 Posted by ahmedmadani on April 21, 2008 7:49:14 pm
Re: # 16 Great story.

It is interesting Thesis and can easily get PhD in economics if you add little masala of graphs and references.

Immigrants are like new male cat on block and have all that energy and voracious appetite for getting things.( most irritating for male native cats is outsider cats gets native cat girl friends. Now this local cat girls have curiosity of dark outsider cats. Its very hard for local mens manness. But people are different and liberal minded and people like lovbe stories.)

This farmer should have no complaint. His father did farming with mules and oxen and he does with tractor but he can not do code coolie job or has no nerve to drive cabs in Newyork city. He is whiner and antimuslim and has wrong notion muslims are involved in terrorism.
Even nonmuslim leaders like TonyBlair, Mr.Putin mr.Singh even Mr. Bush all have praised Islam as religion of peace. But always emphasised by this big leaders again and again Islam means submission and peace. But we can not expect man with agriculture to listen to his president.

I had similar experience. Once I went Thatta Sindh. I was watching fisherman native sindhi man throwing fishnet and catching meger number of fishes. He told me people like me come to karachi and destroy sindhi people and language etc.
I asked him can you do my work he said he can not. I asked him what his father did, he said fishing , grand father fishing. Then I said when your children start doing work work I do then I will pack up. I told him I do not catch fish and has not taken your job and all other good stuff.
Its dilemma what to say. One feels guilty at same time not sad. But its harsh on nat8ives for sure every where to see loosing cities , the ethos of natives it is heart wrenching when you think. I hope he forgave me for to understand all is to forgive all. I try to rationalise answer in my mind but being unkind is hard to accept, even though there is quite degree of truth , it diminishes you.
Good day.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#20 Posted by jayp on April 21, 2008 8:16:16 pm
Re: # 16

izuber,

I cannot see any problems with the article. Every one expecxts countries like india and china and others 9 except pakistan ) to prosper and the relative wealth of the US will come down. It may not come down without a major war, but that is another issue.

If the americans at all levels accept that teh decline is inevitable, then it would be a smooth trasition. No one can have a monopoly for ever on anything.

Change is the un-changing law of life.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#21 Posted by harish_hyd on April 21, 2008 9:55:07 pm
#16 by izuber

So behind the facade of civility, you are after all just another jealous Paki. The fact that you needed to dig out an article by a racist conservative speaks volumes about your desperation. Didn't you notice that it speaks damningly about your coreligionists? That India is suspect because it has the largest Muslim community? Or did the hatred blind you to the point that you'd cut your nose to spite your face?
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#22 Posted by aslam644 on April 21, 2008 11:02:29 pm
The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature. One is that by the very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have occurred: at each stage in their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be real or imaginary. By the same token, they attract little attention in comparison with current troubles, which are both indisputable and pressing: whence the besetting temptation of all politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future.
Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: "If only," they love to think, "if only people wouldn't talk about it, it probably wouldn't happen." Perhaps this habit goes back to the primitive belief that the word and the thing, the name and the object, are identical.
At all events, the discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidable evils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for the politician. Those who knowingly shirk it deserve, and not infrequently receive, the curses of those who come after.
A week or two ago I fell into conversation with a constituent, a middle-aged, quite ordinary working man employed in one of our nationalised industries. After a sentence or two about the weather, he suddenly said: "If I had the money to go, I wouldn't stay in this country." I made some deprecatory reply to the effect that even this government wouldn't last for ever; but he took no notice, and continued: "I have three children, all of them been through grammar school and two of them married now, with family. I shan't be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas. In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man."
I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation?
The answer is that I do not have the right not to do so. Here is a decent, ordinary fellow Englishman, who in broad daylight in my own town says to me, his Member of Parliament, that his country will not be worth living in for his children. I simply do not have the right to shrug my shoulders and think about something else. What he is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking - not throughout Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history.
In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General's Office. There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of Greater London. Of course, it will not be evenly distributed from Margate to Aberystwyth and from Penzance to Aberdeen. Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population.
As time goes on, the proportion of this total who are immigrant descendants, those born in England, who arrived here by exactly the same route as the rest of us, will rapidly increase. Already by 1985 the native-born would constitute the majority. It is this fact which creates the extreme urgency of action now, of just that kind of action which is hardest for politicians to take, action where the difficulties lie in the present but the evils to be prevented or minimised lie several parliaments ahead.
The natural and rational first question with a nation confronted by such a prospect is to ask: "How can its dimensions he reduced?" Granted it be not wholly preventable, can it be limited, bearing in mind that numbers are of the essence: the significance and consequences of an alien element introduced into a country or population are profoundly different according to whether that element is 1 per cent or 10 per cent. The answers to the simple and rational question are equally simple and rational: by stopping, or virtually stopping, further inflow, and by promoting the maximum outflow. Both answers are part of the official policy of the Conservative Party.
It almost passes belief that at this moment 20 or 30 additional immigrant children are arriving from overseas in Wolverhampton alone every week - and that means 15 or 20 additional families a decade or two hence. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiancés whom they have never seen.
Let no one suppose that the flow of dependants will automatically tail off. On the contrary, even at the present admission rate of only 5,000 a year by voucher, there is sufficient for a further 25,000 dependants per annum ad infinitum, without taking into account the huge reservoir of existing relations in this country - and I am making no allowance at all for fraudulent entry. In these circumstances nothing will suffice but that the total inflow for settlement should be reduced at once to negligible proportions, and that the necessary legislative and administrative measures be taken without delay.
I stress the words "for settlement." This has nothing to do with the entry of Commonwealth citizens, any more than of aliens, into this country, for the purposes of study or of improving their qualifications, like (for instance) the Commonwealth doctors who, to the advantage of their own countries, have enabled our hospital service to be expanded faster than would otherwise have been possible. There are not, and never have been, immigrants.
I turn to re-emigration. If all immigration ended tomorrow, the rate of growth of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population would be substantially reduced, but the prospective size of this element in the population would still leave the basic character of the national danger unaffected. This can only be tackled while a considerable proportion of the total still comprises persons who entered this country during the last ten years or so.
Hence the urgency of implementing now the second element of the Conservative Party's policy: the encouragement of re-emigration. Nobody can make an estimate of the numbers which, with generous assistance, would choose either to return to their countries of origin or to go to other countries anxious to receive the manpower and the skills they represent. Nobody knows, because no such policy has yet been attempted. I can only say that, even at present, immigrants in my own constituency from time to time come to me, asking if I can find them assistance to return home. If such a policy were adopted and pursued with the determination which the gravity of the alternative justifies, the resultant outflow could appreciably alter the prospects.
The third element of the Conservative Party's policy is that all who are in this country as citizens should be equal before the law and that there shall be no discrimination or difference made between them by public authority. As Mr Heath has put it we will have no "first-class citizens" and "second-class citizens." This does not mean that the immigrant and his descendent should be elevated into a privileged or special class or that the citizen should be denied his right to discriminate in the management of his own affairs between one fellow-citizen and another or that he should be subjected to imposition as to his reasons and motive for behaving in one lawful manner rather than another.
There could be no grosser misconception of the realities than is entertained by those who vociferously demand legislation as they call it "against discrimination", whether they be leader-writers of the same kidney and sometimes on the same newspapers which year after year in the 1930s tried to blind this country to the rising peril which confronted it, or archbishops who live in palaces, faring delicately with the bedclothes pulled right up over their heads. They have got it exactly and diametrically wrong. The discrimination and the deprivation, the sense of alarm and of resentment, lies not with the immigrant population but with those among whom they have come and are still coming. This is why to enact legislation of the kind before parliament at this moment is to risk throwing a match on to gunpowder. The kindest thing that can be said about those who propose and support it is that they know not what they do.
Nothing is more misleading than comparison between the Commonwealth immigrant in Britain and the American Negro. The Negro population of the United States, which was already in existence before the United States became a nation, started literally as slaves and were later given the franchise and other rights of citizenship, to the exercise of which they have only gradually and still incompletely come. The Commonwealth immigrant came to Britain as a full citizen, to a country which knew no discrimination between one citizen and another, and he entered instantly into the possession of the rights of every citizen, from the vote to free treatment under the National Health Service. Whatever drawbacks attended the immigrants arose not from the law or from public policy or from administration, but from those personal circumstances and accidents which cause, and always will cause, the fortunes and experience of one man to be different from another's.
But while, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and opportunities eagerly sought, the impact upon the existing population was very different. For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.
They found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their plans and prospects for the future defeated; at work they found that employers hesitated to apply to the immigrant worker the standards of discipline and competence required of the native-born worker; they began to hear, as time went by, more and more voices which told them that they were now the unwanted. They now learn that a one-way privilege is to be established by act of parliament; a law which cannot, and is not intended to, operate to protect them or redress their grievances is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent-provocateur the power to pillory them for their private actions.
In the hundreds upon hundreds of letters I received when I last spoke on this subject two or three months ago, there was one striking feature which was largely new and which I find ominous. All Members of Parliament are used to the typical anonymous correspondent; but what surprised and alarmed me was the high proportion of ordinary, decent, sensible people, writing a rational and often well-educated letter, who believed that they had to omit their address because it was dangerous to have committed themselves to paper to a Member of Parliament agreeing with the views I had expressed, and that they would risk penalties or reprisals if they were known to have done so. The sense of being a persecuted minority which is growing among ordinary English people in the areas of the country which are affected is something that those without direct experience can hardly imagine. I am going to allow just one of those hundreds of people to speak for me:
'Eight years ago in a respectable street in Wolverhampton a house was sold to a Negro. Now only one white (a woman old-age pensioner) lives there. This is her story. She lost her husband and both her sons in the war. So she turned her seven-roomed house, her only asset, into a boarding house. She worked hard and did well, paid off her mortgage and began to put something by for her old age. Then the immigrants moved in. With growing fear, she saw one house after another taken over. The quiet street became a place of noise and confusion. Regretfully, her white tenants moved out.
'The day after the last one left, she was awakened at 7am by two Negroes who wanted to use her 'phone to contact their employer. When she refused, as she would have refused any stranger at such an hour, she was abused and feared she would have been attacked but for the chain on her door. Immigrant families have tried to rent rooms in her house, but she always refused. Her little store of money went, and after paying rates, she has less than £2 per week. She went to apply for a rate reduction and was seen by a young girl, who on hearing she had a seven-roomed house, suggested she should let part of it. When she said the only people she could get were Negroes, the girl said, "Racial prejudice won't get you anywhere in this country." So she went home.
'The telephone is her lifeline. Her family pay the bill, and help her out as best they can. Immigrants have offered to buy her house - at a price which the prospective landlord would be able to recover from his tenants in weeks, or at most a few months. She is becoming afraid to go out. Windows are broken. She finds excreta pushed through her letter box. When she goes to the shops, she is followed by children, charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies. They cannot speak English, but one word they know. "Racialist," they chant. When the new Race Relations Bill is passed, this woman is convinced she will go to prison. And is she so wrong? I begin to wonder.'
The other dangerous delusion from which those who are wilfully or otherwise blind to realities suffer, is summed up in the word "integration." To be integrated into a population means to become for all practical purposes indistinguishable from its other members. Now, at all times, where there are marked physical differences, especially of colour, integration is difficult though, over a period, not impossible. There are among the Commonwealth immigrants who have come to live here in the last fifteen years or so, many thousands whose wish and purpose is to be integrated and whose every thought and endeavour is bent in that direction. But to imagine that such a thing enters the heads of a great and growing majority of immigrants and their descendants is a ludicrous misconception, and a dangerous one.
We are on the verge here of a change. Hitherto it has been force of circumstance and of background which has rendered the very idea of integration inaccessible to the greater part of the immigrant population - that they never conceived or intended such a thing, and that their numbers and physical concentration meant the pressures towards integration which normally bear upon any small minority did not operate.
Now we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population. The cloud no bigger than a man's hand, that can so rapidly overcast the sky, has been visible recently in Wolverhampton and has shown signs of spreading quickly. The words I am about to use, verbatim as they appeared in the local press on 17 February, are not mine, but those of a Labour Member of Parliament who is a minister in the present government:
'The Sikh communities' campaign to maintain customs inappropriate in Britain is much to be regretted. Working in Britain, particularly in the public services, they should be prepared to accept the terms and conditions of their employment. To claim special communal rights (or should one say rites?) leads to a dangerous fragmentation within society. This communalism is a canker; whether practised by one colour or another it is to be strongly condemned.'
All credit to John Stonehouse for having had the insight to perceive that, and the courage to say it.
For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill is the very pabulum they need to flourish. Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood."
That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century.
Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.

reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#23 Posted by jayp on April 21, 2008 11:34:16 pm
izuber,

We also employ americans.

from abc usa



Outsourcing in Reverse: Cheerleaders in India
Mix of Beer, Sport and Scantily Clad Women Proves Popular Import in India
By NICK SHIFRIN
April 21, 2008



M. CHINNASWAMY STADIUM, BANGALORE, India — After the rock concert, after the dancers inside inflatable balls and the girls on the three-foot stilts, after the cheerleaders waving their pompoms and after the laser light show, there was cricket.
cheerleaders
The Washington Redskins' cheerleaders practice before performing in front of an Indian audience in Bangalore.
(ABC)
More Photos

But this weekend's debut of the Indian Premiere League, the world's most expensive cricket tournament, was not about the route that the Calcutta Knight Riders took to beat the Bangalore Royal Challengers under the Friday night lights.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#24 Posted by majumdar on April 21, 2008 11:45:17 pm
Izuber/Harishbhai,

(within a few months of the firings, two of the Indian employees had already spread HIV to three Americans)

How is that possible? Why wud any red blooded Yank associate with a bhindi? When Paki sheekh kababs were available?

Regards
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#25 Posted by akcheema on April 22, 2008 12:01:28 am
Re: # 22; aslam sahib

I come from Manchester and can totally relate to what you wrote; well said sir.

In my humble opinion a sense of belonging is extremely important. If kids are taught all their lives about 'a mother country' that doesn't happen to be the same where they live and grow up, it creates a great sense of 'dissociation' amongst those affected. This happens to be the tragedy of quite easily more than 90% of the ex-pat Pakistani population in the UK.

When as a child growing up, I took 'ownership' for England and its internal issues etc, it was frowned upon by those closest to me. According to my parents, we were living in a 'foreign' land where 'we didn't belong'. Thankfully I had the opportunity to spend some time in Pakistan as well and was able to make 'grown-up' and informed decisions of my own; but that didn't happen until much later (in the interest of brevity, I would skip small details here).

Contrary to others, I never met any significant racism either. In retrospect, England would have to be the least racist country I have ever lived in!(believe me, I've been around). This was quite the reverse from Pakistan; perhaps the most racist place I have ever visited!! If we consider the shoe being on the other foot, Pakistanis don't fare that well, unfortunately. This is going to rile a lot of people up and I don't care, they can scream and shout all they like!

Even now when I support the England Cricket team against the Pakistanis, it is always met with a great sense of 'suspicion' to put it mildly. After getting fed up of this non-sense, my wife and I decided to emigrate to Australia; essentially to 'be ourselves'. We still visit once or twice a year; admittedly I get deeply nostalgic about 'home' walking around the streets in North Manchester. Perhaps not dissimilar to what I felt when I visited Lahore after ten years of absense, a couple of years ago; if anything, England has been more of a home to me than Pakistan ever was, though I do love them both!

The "ex-pats" would have to realise that England (substitute appropriately) is as much their country as anyone else's. They live there, take advantage of all it has to offer, and that is what they 'consciously' chose for themselves. With this comes some sense of loyalty and responsibility. When we take credit/advantage of what is 'good' about England, then its faults/shortcomings become 'ours' as well. It becomes, in a true sense of the term, OUR LAND/DESH. Ultimately, our 'dukh sukh' becomes 'saanjha' with the indigenous population!

When one brings up their children with some sense of 'belonging' that comes close to this model, only then we cease to see 7/7 repeats because what would be destroyed would be OURS and sensible people don't burn down their own homes!
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#26 Posted by aslam644 on April 22, 2008 12:15:09 am
Re: # 25
Cheema sahab
The article I posted was from a speech by Enoch powell, it seems this guy was a prophet what ever he foretold has more or less come true and that was in 1968 when colored immigrants had just started arriving, rightwingers claim he was the best prime minister never had.

reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#27 Posted by harish_hyd on April 22, 2008 12:15:53 am
#25 by akcheema

Great post Cheema bhai!
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#28 Posted by aslam644 on April 22, 2008 12:16:39 am
Re: # 26
correction
rightwingers claim he was the best prime minister UK never had.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#29 Posted by akcheema on April 22, 2008 12:27:57 am
Re: # 27; harish

Thanks

Re: No: 26: aslam644

I suppose not having him as PM wasn't all bad but I could see his POV!

I chose to live out in the coutry in Australia; there has been similar ghetto-isation here in places like Sydney, but nowhere close to the UK. Also, the migrants tend to be from a varied backgroung; lot of South-east Asians from different nationalities, Indian subcontinent (mostly professionals), parts of Europe (Italy, Greece, Turkey), middleeast (mostly Lebanon); so a general mix which allows for things to flourish to some extent rather than limit the thought process too much! Besides, no one group is over-represented which keeps some balance, I reckon.

My parents have now moved to Birmingham and at times it feels 'claustrophobic' in their neighbourhood. Anyway, I better get off before I get too carried away; I could go on for hours on this!
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#30 Posted by Kulharee on April 22, 2008 1:27:56 am
I haven’t read all the interacts, but I will in my lunch break. Just glanced, and here’re my initial thoughts: The essay has generated the kind of discussion I hoped that it will. After that,

(#1). Thank you HP Sahib, I try to keep business and pleasure separated. Thank you for your kind observations. There still a lot is to be figured about this little place. I am on a mission, as my kids grow and my wife and I become empty nesters, I plan to spend all my time with doing whatever I can to get deep inside my community’s ass.

(# 7) Arjun yaar, this community is not like other Pakistani communities. If you don’t believe me, go visit it. Having a beard or a Shalwar Kameez is not akin to being a terrorist sympathizer. You want to know something? Yesterday I visited GW with my son, and one of the staunchest Taliban sympathizers I met in my entire life is a guy doing his doctorate there, with full access to Iraq Prison files at the Pentagon under FOIL. Pakistanis living in Little Pakistan are simple folks whose only interest is to make a decent living for themselves and for their children. Please don’t think that everyone stuffing a buck in a tin box is a terrorist. How about them sincerely hoping that they are helping orphans, widows, young girls. It is not really that hard to imagine.

(#25) Cheema Sahib, As a student I lived in England for some 6 years and the British experience has always been an area of interest to me (I find English as the most colorful and interesting people). My own experiences there made me sometimes feel that while Pakistanis in Pakistan have moved on but the Pakistanis in Britain stand still (mind you, I was still a little jerk back then, so my experiences there are only through the eyes of a stupid overseas student. However, I have visited England a few times since then). As I mentioned in the article, that discussion requires a dedicated place and it can be quite exhausting to discuss the reasons for that diasporas’ experience. We will talk.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#31 Posted by masadi on April 22, 2008 1:38:59 am
HP writes "This is almost a repeat of what took place in the mirpuri communities in England, leading to the rise of extremely parochial and convoluted dogma among the kids that prevented them from becoming a part of the mainstream without sacrificing their cultural heritage or the pride in the community."

Another segregated ghetto that the white man has constructed and maintains through social precident for the colored folk- no integration is allowed, the initial rejection/racism is what maintains the borders of the ghetto, not to mention the active police force that ctively amaintains it by their attitude and discriminatory behavior- rejected by the mainstreams social structure they develop their own and religion figures in prominently in filling in this void bother materially and meaning wise...
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#32 Posted by masadi on April 22, 2008 1:39:47 am
that actively maintains
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#33 Posted by masadi on April 22, 2008 1:46:44 am
#16

William H. Calhoun is a writer, paleoconservative, and a farmer who lives on his ancestral estate that was stolen from the natives and built up by using forced slave labor of the Africans

You forgot that part.................
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#34 Posted by aslam644 on April 22, 2008 1:48:34 am
Analysis: Segregated Britain?


The head of the Commission for Racial Equality Trevor Phillips is warning of increased segregation. But it should come as no surprise - it has been on the government's books since the riots of 2001 in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham. The most damning report into the disturbances, by Ted Cantle, a former council chief and expert in local communities, warned of communities living "parallel lives" and recommended wide-ranging changes to policy. The words chosen by Mr Phillips for his speech are more strident - but they amount to the same thing: People share space in Britain's towns and cities but do not know who each other are. The CRE chairman has already attacked what many increasingly regard as the heart of the problem, multiculturalism, a concept that few people agree on.
ts critics, multiculturalism means defining people as different - black, white, Asian, Muslim, Irish and so on - and then treating them differently. At its most stark, critics say it means policy makers decide how to treat people based first on their ethnicity, rather than their rights as citizens; in turn, this encourages people to see themselves as different, as separate, rather than sharing common goals. On the other hand, the supporters of multiculturalism say it cannot be blamed for segregation in society; they argue that public displays of difference - such as a laissez-faire attitude to building of places of worship, can strengthen communities by building civic pride into identities. In his speech, Mr Phillips argues that the nation is becoming more divided by race and religion, with young people being brought up in enclaves. He warns that Britain is "sleep-walking" its way towards segregation on a scale already seen in the USA. The evidence is there to be seen, says Mr Phillips, it's just going unspoken. 'Enclaves growing' So what is the evidence? Last month the Royal Geographical Society published a study that suggested ethnic "enclaves" are growing in the UK's cities. In major cities they found groups isolated by ethnicity. Some of the widest separation occurred with people of Pakistani or Bangladeshi backgrounds, some of the poorest groups in society. In short, government policy needs to be much more sophisticated in how it stops this kind of seemingly permanent division, argued the paper. However, there is evidence that points in completely the other direction - not least within the figures of the BBC's Born Abroad project, published this month. Ethnic mixing Those maps of the UK, based on research carried out for the Institute of Public Policy Research, show not only the homogenous clusters that worry Trevor Phillips - but also ethnic mixing seemingly taking place through choice.
Two major ethnicities, for example, the Caribbean-born and the India-born, can be seen quite clearly in the Born Abroad maps moving out of inner cities into the leafier suburbs as the years pass. In other words, people who can afford to do so often appear to have little problem mixing on Acacia Avenue. And as older, economically-established ethnicities move out of the cities, Born Abroad shows new and more diverse peoples moving in - particularly young people drawn by the attractions of London. Building citizenship So what does this mean for policy? One of the big issues over the past five years has been whether or not government should be taking a leading role in defining what it is to be a British citizen.
Former Home Secretary David Blunkett was a fan of the idea and introduced citizenship ceremonies - but Britain has so far shied away from wrapping its people in the flag in the same way as you would find in America. Perhaps more importantly, although America has more than its fair share of a common national ethos, it is precisely the place that Trevor Phillips is warning Britain not to become. Since the London bombings there has been a return to these ideas, with a wide spectrum of thinkers - both from the left and the right - arguing that more needs to be done to build a sense among young people that this country is for all of them. Ted Cantle, the man who authored that key report into the 2001 riots, is soon to launch an institute dedicated to studying how to create "community cohesion". But once that's done, how much difference can remain? Should councils produce literature in English alone? Lambeth in London, for instance, produces literature in at least 10 languages. On the other hand, have policies aimed at fostering tolerance led to indifference towards each other, rather than an effort to build common values? Segregation first and foremost starts in the mind. The question is whether there is an easy way to get neighbours who may think the same, but not know it, to stop treating each other differently.

reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#35 Posted by arjun_5 on April 22, 2008 2:24:59 am
#34 Posted by aslam644 on April 22, 2008 1:48:34 am

what's up with pakis rioting in bradford against the St George's day parade or something...the brits have their unwashed undies in a knot about this all over the internet..can you please let them march so they'll stop spilling over to the rest of the internet and correcting everyone's grammar?
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#36 Posted by arjun_5 on April 22, 2008 2:26:57 am
#33 Posted by masadi(whose ancestors came from iraq as invaders and stole the land from the natives) on April 22, 2008 1:46:44 am


You forgot that part.......


there...fixed it...
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#37 Posted by akcheema on April 22, 2008 2:32:22 am
Re: # 35; arjun mian

I suggest a solution to the Bradford problem.

Those not happy to remain in Britain for religious/cultural reasons, not happy to be accommodative enough towards their fellow citizens and not happy to participate in the socio-cultural structure that defines Britain, should be invited to renounce their British citizenships and leave for wherever they describe as their "mother country".

Enough of this multi-culturalist non-sense!!
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#38 Posted by arjun_5 on April 22, 2008 2:34:52 am
#14 Posted by akcheema on April 21, 2008 6:21:10 pm


I don' think Arjun has a problem with Pakis per se. It seems more of a personal issue with another character around (feel free to correct me Arjun).


There's pakistanis and there are pakis..

you are of the pakistani persuasion.I have a lot of pakistani friends..get along fine with them..

goatbrain tahir and peeweemax are pakis...

that should make it all clear...
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#39 Posted by aslam644 on April 22, 2008 2:37:49 am
Re: # 35
There hasn’t been a riot in Bradford to the best of my knowledge, the parade has been cancelled for some inexplicable reason, anyhow Bradford is a different place from the infamous riots with billions poured into it especially education.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#40 Posted by aslam644 on April 22, 2008 4:17:45 am
Rates of participation obviously have implications
for the collective wealth of these different South Asian
communities: One in two Indians is in employment, but
only one in 3.5 Pakistanis or Bangladeshis, and average
incomes for the latter groups are also lower. The figures
do not of course reflect the high involvement of
Pakistanis and South Asians more generally in the informal
economy, and in casual work in the ethnic economy.
According to the census, over 10,000 Indians were in the
highest-ranking business and public service professional
occupations, but only 4,500 Pakistanis and Bangladeshis
were (3,500 Pakistanis). Taking account, however, of the
lower class resources of Kashmiris, who comprise more
than half the Pakistani settler population, entry rates of
Pakistani non-Kashmiris into business and public service
professional occupations appear similar to those of
Indians. This strengthens the argument that the South
Asian community cannot be disaggregated simply by
nationality or religion, but must be looked at in terms of
class background, migration history, and subcontinental
regional origins.
The figures indicate a growing polarization between
the haves and have-nots among Pakistanis in particular.
Class and Economic Activity 481
Skog-III-47-73.qxd 14/06/2004 03:19 PM Page 481
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#41 Posted by dost_mittar on April 22, 2008 4:20:16 am
A great article. This is what chowk should be about.

I think that the Pakistani community in LP should turn out to be different from the Pak communities in Britain. From what you tell, it seems that most of the parents are quite keen on sending their kids to school and colleges and achieve the american dream. Also, times have changed, even Britain of today is less accepting of the kind of extremism espoused by the firebrands in that country until the July 2005 attack on London Tube. So, the chances of the kids being exposed to similar propaganda are much slimmer.

I think that the Western societies should take especial note of what goes on in the masjids. From what I hear, most of them receive large sums of money from the Saudis who insist upon appointing an imam who teaches their version of wahabi islam. Desi muslims would do well to support their own masjids and import moderate barelvi imams from Pakistan.

While excessive association with home country can be damaging, in some cases, it actually can work out to be quite advantageous, especially in middle class families. I know of two cases, an Indian and a Pakistani, where the families sent their wayward son (typical North American brats, disrespectful, irresponsible, etc.) to India/Pakistan to spend a couple of years with relatives there. In both cases, they returned quite chastened and have done quite well in their studies.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#42 Posted by banneditem on April 22, 2008 4:31:11 am
Dear Sir,
Once again you have bored us with useless statistics that dont add up. If 20-40% of kids(paks descent) in your neighborhood wear pants with their bunds showing and cussing with no accent is not something to be proud off, this should be the # 1 concern affecting all Pakistani families in your neighborhood or soon it will be renamed from LP to "bed-stu"istan. Bunds attract violence amongst other things that are coveted by Pathans.
I do have a question. Does the line for Jumma prayers form on the sidewalks when it rains? or are the worshippers more atuned to the "fair-weather"?

Warmest Regards
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#43 Posted by arjun_5 on April 22, 2008 4:53:56 am
#41 Posted by dost_mittar on April 22, 2008 4:20:16 am


an Indian and a Pakistani, where the families sent their wayward son (typical North American brats, disrespectful, irresponsible, etc.) to India/Pakistan to spend a couple of years with relatives there.


The london bombers visited pakistan...that turned out quite well..then there were the hayats..visiting pakiland for anything more than a few weeks is automatic grounds for additional scrutiny..

let's not pretend like we don't know about pakis in the US who've been busted planning acts of terrorism..25% of young american muslims think suicide bombing is justified...that's gotta mean something even for the koolaid drinkers..
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#44 Posted by arjun_5 on April 22, 2008 5:01:24 am
#40 Posted by aslam644 on April 22, 2008 4:17:45 am


Taking account, however, of the
lower class resources of Kashmiris


1. you have no numbers to back that up
2. The "kashmiris" are pakis when it suits you and kashmiris when it doesn't?
3. the "kashmiris" aren't fresh off the boat. a lot of them are second and third generation..they were raised in the same country and had access to the same resources as any other immigrant..
4. you're ignoring the role of islam. exactly why do 4 brits of the paki persuasion, with access to education, healthcare and opportunities that other muslims can only dream of, have to blow up their british fellow citizens because of british actions in afghanistan or iraq? the irish at least had a direct reason to be pissed off..not that it justifies whatever the IRA did..the bottom line is that the "anger" among brit-pakis is because of islam..the whole concept of ummah and how their brothers in afghanistan and iraq are being oppressed..
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#45 Posted by dost_mittar on April 22, 2008 5:06:31 am
arjun#43:

Let go of your venom some times.
I said "in some cases". These cases were not of kids being brought up in a religious environment and they were not sent to their home country for religious education but to spend time with their middle class families back home to learn some of the attributes that make us successful immigrants here, like hard work, kinship and desire to do better than our parents through education and hard work.


reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#46 Posted by aslam644 on April 22, 2008 5:39:05 am
Re: # 44
The reason why they refer to them as kashmiris is because not all are from mirpur some are from other districts of AK as well.

It’s not question of fresh off the boat, it’s the question of social class since vast majority of mirpuris/kashmiris are from rural background they had no social/cultural capital to pass onto their offsprings. I’m very hopeful for the future though because of the governments big push in education things should improve in the future.

Gujrati-muslim,urdu-speakers, pak-panjabis are doing just as well as Indians.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#47 Posted by arjun_5 on April 22, 2008 5:55:15 am
#45 Posted by dost_mittar on April 22, 2008 5:06:31 am


Let go of your venom some times.


your buddies are trying to blow shit up.
you are being an apologist for them

and I'm the one full of venom?

now while it may not fit the kuldip nayyar alternate worldview but it is a fact..a paki-american going to pakiland for more than a few months is automatically under suspicion...are you saying the whole national security establishment of the US is "full of venom"..what about the fact that pakis were the first required to register?

I have news for you pal..pakis, even the once you consider moderate, know who the kooks are and who's talking the extremist BS..

does drinking kool-aid neutralize the "venom"..
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#48 Posted by dost_mittar on April 22, 2008 6:09:13 am
arjun#47:
It's your delusion that I support those who blow up. I was pointing out to normal parents who want their children to be successful in north america, you are talking about people who send their kids for islami taleem - two different set of people.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#49 Posted by arjun_5 on April 22, 2008 7:10:11 am
#48 Posted by dost_mittar on April 22, 2008 6:09:13 am

you don't have to actually help them put on the suicide vests..being an apologists for them and denying their existence is just as bad...you are an enabler..

like i was taught in the bad old days: the devil's greatest trick was to convince people that he didn't exist..
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#50 Posted by masadi on April 22, 2008 7:51:49 am
arjun writes masadi(whose ancestors came from iraq as invaders and stole the land from the natives) on April 22, 2008 1:46:44 am

Fool unlike the US where the white man owns the major property and the indigeneous folk are relegated to reservations or have been exterminated, people of Iraqi descent (who did not come as invaders) have blended into the indigeneous population- I thought you might have half a brain because of your ability to "bot" on here but you remain a dimwit.....there is no comparison in what I wrote and what you presented, except that you made a fool of yourself
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#51 Posted by masadi on April 22, 2008 7:56:46 am
#31 a slight correction:

rejected by the mainstream social structure they develop their own and religion figures in prominently in filling this void in binding the community together both materially (economic) and meaning (social/psychological) wise...
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#52 Posted by Kulharee on April 22, 2008 8:03:02 am
Arjun Yaar, if you really believe that those Chanda Box stuffers and poor cabbies and laborers are terrorist or their sympathizers, I have a news for you. The new generation of terrorists hold degrees from elite schools, have professional jobs, work for global businesses and live in affluent areas. I am not disagreeing with you about some groups that have been implicated in terrorism connections but this write-up is very “specifically” about a peaceful Pakistani community that has been unfairly treated. This is about Pakistanis that make Coney Island their home. They are not terrorists by any stretch of the imagination. Not a single one has ever been found to be associated with any act of terror.

Masadi Sahib, what do you propose that the residents of Little Pakistan do to realize their full potential, as some other Pakistanis in the west have attained?.
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#53 Posted by masadi on April 22, 2008 8:14:47 am
Kulharee writes "Masadi Sahib, what do you propose that the residents of Little Pakistan do to realize their full potential, as some other Pakistanis in the west have attained?. "

I sense a slight change in you for the better, don't destroy it like Hamid does after his conscience seeps through in one post or the other. The Pakistanis that have succeeded in the system of oppression by cloning themselves after the white man are not "successful" in my opinion and there is nothing those other Pakistanis that are segregated can do to be like them because the white man will never level the playing field, he will allow only those that think like him and yet never challenge their subordiation or faithfulness to the system. The BEST thing for those Pakistanis to do is hook up with other segregated and oppressed folk, the AAs, the NAs, the MAs, and the women folk and give the system hell and keep giving it hell until the oppressive rule of the white elite and his system based on injustice and mythology collapses- though the gains will be incremental. Next, they should shun their current power structure with the mullah and his hidden hands behind them, start in their own community like Elijah M did with the Black Muslims and then spillover to the other oppressed from there. Simple in principle but difficult to achieve because the white man's control and enslavement mechanism will kick in the moment they see the community developing consciousness and rejecting their slave status in that society......

reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#54 Posted by masadi on April 22, 2008 8:16:51 am
g'night
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#55 Posted by CreateAlpha on April 22, 2008 8:44:35 am
Kul, what assadhi is saying is that..pakis shoudl stop trying to succeed in the US like hinjews, jews, chinese, japs, koreans etc etc..have done by integrating into the system and using it to better the lives of their children and themselves.

This chutiya thinks that those kids of chinese laborers in flushing, NY should look to be more like those livingin lefrak city or bradford complaining about the system and "the man" instead of studying, excelling and moving up the socio economic ladder, like every other immigrant group aspires to.

assadhi, you are an idiot!!!
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#56 Posted by mohar11 on April 22, 2008 9:26:45 am
Re: # 52 Kul
[...The new generation of terrorists hold degrees from elite schools...]

It's clear that the potential terrorists and their sympathisers cut across class... that kind of validates Arjun's point... I mean, from the non-mulsims POV, what the heck? How do we make sense of these people?...
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#57 Posted by aslam644 on April 22, 2008 9:42:56 am
An inspiring stories of hard work, sweat and rags to riches of pak panjabies entrepreneurs in Manchester, believe me 100s if not 1000s have became millionaires.

“
Entrepreneurial Chains

Manchester has traditionally been the business and commercial metropolis of a wide area, and the economic structure of the city has provided opportunities for Pakistani enterprise not always found elsewhere. Whilst the small Lancashire cotton-mill towns attracted an unskilled and low-paid labour force occupied in primary cloth manufacturing, Pakistanis in Manchester turned, almost from the start, to the manufacturing and distributing of ready-made garments, following other migrants before them into the local 'rag trade'.

The first Pakistani immigrant entrepreneurs in Manchester were men from Jullunder and some adjacent districts in East Punjab. The majority came from families of small farmers, and after Partition, they were joined by relatives and friends who had settled in Pakistan as refugees. By the early 1950s these migrants from Jullunder were already estab-lished as pedlars, market traders and wholesalers. Pakistani entrepreneurship thus tended during its formative years to take the form of entrepreneurial chainswith the consequent creation of clusters of migrants from the same areas of origin in particular sections of the trade. These networks provide essential information on the setting up of businesses, the length of time they take to establish, the initial outlay required, the particular problems typical of the business, the expertise needed, the availability of labour. Such information cannot be measured adequately in quantitative terms, but it is clearly essential for the establishment of viable small businesses during their formative years. In these chains the pioneers form pivotal points of growth. To give substance to these chains let me recount briefly a few of the links which clustered around one of the early, and legendary, Pakistani pioneers in the local garment industry.

______________________________________________________

50

One of the first wholesale houses in the cite was run as a partnership between two unrelated men from the Arniit caste group. The two not only established this first major Pakistani commercial enterprise, but they were also prominent in the foundation of the Pakistan society and other communal associations. For mane years thev and the cohort of migrants they sponsored effectively controlled the Central Mosque in Manchester. Other migrants who follov,,ed them are today market traders or wholesalers in their own right The basis for the fortunes of this particular wholesale house was its monopoly over the sale of seconds purchased from one of the large chain stores, well known for the high quality of its knitwear. The son of this first pioneer told me the family tale, or legendof these early settlers:


reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#58 Posted by masadi on April 22, 2008 10:49:17 am
CreateAlpha writes "Kul, what assadhi is saying is that..pakis shoudl stop trying to succeed in the US like hinjews, jews, chinese, japs, koreans etc etc..have done by integrating into the system and using it to better the lives of their children and themselves. "

So over multiple generations they have not been working hard, just goofing off and eating cheetos? You are the idiot who wants the system that allows a handful to succeed to remain and for the rest to work their asses off as they are doing now and not budging from the class the system has put them in. You can be damn sure if interclass mobility based on race was so equitable in the US there would be no segregation to speak of and there would certainly not be the class difference based on race that is quite evident in social statistics. If the white elite notice any man of color distorting their system of superior/subordinate you can be damn sure they wont just sit back and relax. The people who got ghettoized were prevented and are prevented from integration, read any survey in any European and even US society and how they feel about immigrants of color, and this a-hole blames the victim without having any clue about the class structure in the US and its reproduction through material opportunity and the resulting subjective response including the reverse "affirmative action" that benefits the white race at the expense of others. History and scholarship is on my side, BS and ignorance is on yours, the people here can take their pick.................
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#59 Posted by masadi on April 22, 2008 10:58:24 am
(quote)Asian immigrants to the U.S. tend to be already highly educated and from the middle or upper class, for a number of reasons. Thus, they get a completely different start in life in the U.S. compared to other minorities. Although Asians achieve a much greater degree of success in the U.S., the "model minority" stereotype is a myth because Asian-Americans still bump into the glass ceiling, receive lower pay even with the same qualifications, and have higher poverty rates. The image of boat people escaping the ravages of war and communism to take full advantage of American opportunities is also a myth, in that Southeast Asians actually have the lowest success rate of all Asians.
(end quote)

http://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/model02.htm
reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#60 Posted by CreateAlpha on April 22, 2008 11:09:58 am
what handful moron? I grew up in the US, I grew up lower middle class, went to public schools in NYC, went to top ten schools for bachelor and MBA, worked at the best insitutions in the world. What are you babbbling about? I cna point to thousands upon thousands of examples of people who did that, across the minority landscape. The problem with you is that you are a slacker..a scape goater...a middling fool who blames everyone else for his ineptitude.

Integration in the US and europe are two different models. US succeeds while Europe fails time and time again.

Th eissues with the paksitani community is unique....most lower income families have only one breadwinner...(women are still nto allowed to work), most have one leg here nad another leg back home (this is not preserving your culture, this is doing things halfassed)...most are completely misognystic (daughters are bascially screwed to the point that they are either sent packing to pakistan after highschool or married to some chutiya from the village in order to bring him over..and perpetuate the cycle) Too many example of that. the fault doesn;'t lie with the US, many others have done it and done it well. some internal inspection is necessary to prevent brandfords from being created in brooklyn. As long as they are going to be created, US policies (which are thankfully not like the UK or european) will cause more articles like these to be written.


reply to this interact write a new interact add to favorites flag objectionable content
#61 Posted by aslam644 on April 22, 2008 11:38:20 am
There are 100s of mirpuri millionaires in Bradford as I have said before Bradford has turned the corner and its on the way up, this may surprise some but mirpuris have left Brooklyn to come to live in the UK.

"From small acorns do giant oak trees grow"
Widely acknowledged as one of the first Asian Bakeries in Bradford, Kashmir Crown Bakeries has a turnover of millions and reaches every corner of the globe. The Asian sweets, biscuits and savouries are famed throughout the world. Until now, not much was known about the man behind the success.
What is the story behind the success?
It is a classic story of rags to riches, of a man driven by ambition and desire to succeed, spanning two continents and now into a third generation. From Bagh Sheri near Mirpur, Kashmir to Bradford in the United Kingdom.
The Early Years
The man behind this phenomenal business success, Mohammed Saleem, spent his early life in Pakistan. His father worked in a small rest house and the young Saleem grew up in Bagh Sheri near Mirpur Kashmir. Although Saleem wanted to go to college he knew all to well that it would not be possible. Saleem said "I wanted to study but it was too expensive. My father would have liked me to go to college but he knew that it was out of our reach. Instead I sat my Matriculation at 16, and then a family friend, who was an electrical engineer, got me a job in a mill at Zenat Textile Mill – Faisalabad Pakistan".
He earned 70 rupees a month. After a couple of months he moved to a textile mill in Jhelum and his monthly wage increased to 90 rupees. But Saleem had a burning ambition in heart. He yearned to run hi