Tha Neih Ciang is learning vocabulary words with other immigrant students. She’s among four dozen Burmese youngsters at Bollman Bridge Elementary School, which is less than an hour’s drive from Washington.  

Their teacher, Laurel Conran, specializes in teaching English to speakers of other languages.

“Today we were doing text structures,” she says. “I wanted them to know the vocabulary, the language of text structures, so when they go back into the classroom and work with their peers, they can do this successfully in the classroom.”

Lunch-time learning

Tha Neih’s mother, Tin Iang, also practices English with Conran, only their session takes place in the cafeteria of Coastal Sunbelt Produce. Many Burmese refugees work on assembly lines at the fruit and vegetable distributor. Conran started classes here to help them learn English.

“The program is a six-week session,” she says. “It is once a week, on every Wednesday from 12 to one o’clock. So every Wednesday I go to Coastal Sunbelt.”

About 18,000 Burmese refugees have come to the United States each year since 2007.

Once a week, Burmese refugee workers at Coastal Sunbelt Produce, in Maryland, take English lessons during their lunch hour.

Four years ago, when a large number of Burmese refugees first arrived in Howard County, Bollman Bridge Elementary introduced intensive English programs for the children.

While the youngsters learned English, Conran noticed it was hard to connect with their parents.

“Some of them do not know the name of the school that their children attend,” she says.

With help from Lisa Chertok – a school parent and manager at Coastal Sunbelt – Conran developed English lessons to teach at the parents’ workplace. Each Wednesday, during their lunch break, Burmese workers sit in small groups with an English-speaking volunteer to practice their new language skills.

Making a difference

The program has the support of Bollman Bridge’s principal.

“I really see it as the beginning of a great partnership between a business and a school and we have just begun to scratch the surface with how that could benefit, really, the greater community,” says Jonathan Davis, who hopes the lessons help Burmese parents become more comfortable communicating with the school. “Even as simply as making a phone call to say that their son or daughter is sick, even if that is the amount of English that they have gotten from the program, that truly will help us.”

Chertok believes it’s already made a difference in the workplace.

“When the Burmese employees got here, they were very, very shy,” she says. “Now I find that they are more responsive as employees. They are more communicative. They are also, as parents, more involved in their children’s school.”

For their efforts, Chertok and Conran received a 2011 Community Builders Award from Howard County.

“I love this program,” Conran says. “As a community we want to work together, collaboratively, because when everybody works together it is a win-win situation.”

The same group could reach about 70 per cent in Ontario, according to the study which used Canadian census data from 1871 to 2001. Currently, the number of people who are unaffiliated in both Ontario and Canada sits around 15 per cent.

The projections are from a study looking at the rates of religious affiliation in Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland. In the other countries in the study, the projection of growth in people who are unaffiliated with a religious institution by 2050 was also significant.

In Australia it will be 51 per cent of the population; in the Czech Republic 95 per cent; in Ireland, 39 per cent and in Switzerland 66 per cent. According to the latest census data, only 19 per cent of the population in Australia is, in the Czech Republic it’s 59 per cent, in Ireland it is 4 per cent and in Switzerland, 12 per cent.

“The overall results of the study found the fastest growing religious minority in Western democracy is the unaffiliated group,” said Daniel Abrams, a professor of applied mathematics at Northwestern University and co-author of the study. But Abrams cautioned that “any new large-scale migrations or significant changes in immigration policy” could change the numbers but not necessarily the direction of the trend.

The projections into the future were calculated using a mathematical model similar to one that Abrams developed for another project looking at majority and minority languages around the world. Linguists are predicting that 80 to 90 per cent of the world’s languages will face extinction by the end of the century.

Abrams and co-authors Richard Wiener, a physicist at the University of Arizona, and Haley Yaple, a grad student in mathematics at Northwestern, used historical census data from 85 different regions throughout the nine countries.

Then using two rules from sociological research into social conformity, the researchers were able to come up with a mathematical formula that could take the census data and project it into the future, Abrams told the Star. “For decades, authors have commented on the surprisingly rapid decline of organized religion in many regions of the world,” the study said. “The work we have presented … provides a new framework for the understanding of different models of human behaviour in … social systems in which groups compete for members.”

Written by Debra Black, Toronto Star

Eugeniusz Borek, of Scarborough, Zdzislaw Modlinski, of Toronto, and Wlodzimierz Konieczny, of Brampton, celebrate their $50 million lottery win on Wednesday March 16.

Eugeniusz Borek had only one problem with the cheque for $16,666,666.66 he was clutching in his hand.

“The big boss, he has two cents more!” he needled the man standing beside him.

Borek, a bakery delivery driver at Ontario Bread Co. in downtown Toronto, Wlodzimierz Konieczny, also a delivery driver, and Zdzislaw Modlinski, the shop’s night manager, are the three-way winners of Friday’s $50 million lottery jackpot — though Modlinski, it’s true, did get two extra cents.

“Keep it,” said Borek, 51, who has a big enough wad to play with. In fact, two days before the draw, he had a premonition.

“I had a dream of a big wheelbarrow full of bags of money,” he said Wednesday at the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. prize centre in Toronto, admitting he might just act that scene out in waking life — why not?

Modlinski’s daughter, Ewa, said the money would open doors for her hard-working father. “I think after working for 20 years at a bakery, especially night shift, he definitely deserves it.”

This is the third $50 million Lotto Max ticket won in Toronto in a row. But unlike the last two, Borek’s jesting jab was the only dispute around.

In January, 19 employees of a Bell Canada call centre in Scarborough had their prize put on hold after several co-workers came forward to claim a stake. In February, the same thing happened to 24 employees at the Downsview Bombardier plant.

The three friends are all Polish immigrants who have worked at the Dundas St. W. and Ossington Ave. bakery for the past 17 years, and have been buying lottery tickets together since last September.

It was Borek who first discovered they’d won, and he immediately told Modlinski, 62. The two broke the news to Konieczny, 58 — who had previously suffered a heart attack — gently and in person.

“I was screaming, jumping, crying,” Borek said. “I’m already retired.”

Konieczny and Modlinski said they would work a few more weeks until replacement staff are found — Modlinski, in fact, was to show up for work nine hours later.

The trio said they were still too stunned to say how they would spend the cash, but liked the idea of taking a trip together with their families.

Modlinski said he phoned his 90-year-old mother back home. Her reaction: “Come to Poland!”Borek summed up the general idea: “Travel for sure, buy a different house for sure, help out the kids.”

Written by Kate Allen, Toronto Star

The Associated Press

TOPEKA, KAN.—A Republican state lawmaker in Kansas apologized Tuesday for remarks suggesting that illegal immigrants should be shot like feral swine, but his statement didn’t quiet the furor over what he said was a “regrettable” joke.

The League of United Latin American Citizens’ national office in Washington described the comments from state Rep. Virgil Peck, of Tyro, as “despicable” and called upon him to resign. And U.S. Rep. Charles Gonzalez, a Texas Democrat who is chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said such remarks “have no place in our national discourse.”

Leaders of the Kansas House’s Republican majority called the remarks inappropriate but said they accepted Peck’s apology and were confident such a lapse in judgment will not occur again. The leaders’ statement suggested they weren’t planning disciplinary action, but Speaker Mike O’Neal declined to comment further.

Asked whether he intended to resign, Peck said: “Nope.”

Peck made his comments during a Monday meeting of the House Appropriations Committee as it discussed whether the state should try to control the wild hog population by using gunmen in helicopters.

He said, “If shooting these immigrating feral hogs works, maybe we have found a (solution) to our illegal immigration problem.”

His comment drew gasps from the audience and committee members, but after the meeting, he told the Lawrence Journal-World that he was “speaking like a southeast Kansas person,” adding that his constituents are frustrated with illegal immigration.

On Tuesday, other southeast Kansas legislators demanded a public apology. Also, Gov. Sam Brownback, a fellow Republican, called the remark “completely inappropriate,” according to The Topeka Capital-Journal.

Peck issued a statement: “My statements yesterday were regrettable. Please accept my apology.”

But another southeast Kansas legislator, Rep. Bob Grant, a Democrat, said Peck needs to do more than issue a brief statement to fellow legislators and reporters.

“The one-line apology doesn’t cut it,” Grant said. “There were other people at the Appropriations meeting, and I think he needs to apologize to everybody.”

It was the second time in a month that a Republican House member has apologized for a remark touching on immigration issues.

In February, Rep. Connie O’Brien faced criticism for a story she told during a committee hearing about enrolling her son at a community college and observing another student who couldn’t produce a driver’s license or other government identification. O’Brien said she could tell the woman wasn’t from the U.S., noting her “olive complexion.”

O’Brien was discussing a bill to repeal a state law allowing some illegal immigrants to pay the lower tuition charged Kansas residents. She apologized and promised to be more careful with her words in the future.

Reinventing his business didn’t turn out to be as big a challenge as anticipated mostly because his biggest resource was his employees.

 Almost all of them are immigrants as he, himself, is.

 The company now designs and makes theatre seats, ergonomic dentist chairs and snowmobile parts at its 23,000-sq.-ft. plant.

 Revenues have doubled over the last five years to $5 million.

 He credits his design and engineering team, many of whom are immigrants.

 Ko’s story is one of an accidental entrepreneur who never forgot his roots. He came to Canada in 1972 and graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from Concordia University, then a masters in welding.

 “I was working one day and someone came to me and said they had a problem with some welds — it wasn’t even our customer,” he said. “They were rejecting a high number of the parts because of bad welds.”

 Ko looked at the problem and knew he could engineer a solution and soon found himself in business while he was still working his day job.

 “I had to set up a shop and get equipment,” he said. “So I had to keep working. I worked four days a week and, then, at 5 p.m., I would go and work at my business. I worked Fridays and weekends, too.”

 Soon his reputation attracted more customers and he went full time.

 “I was going from white collar to blue collar; I was the engineer, the welder and the janitor.”

 He saw an opportunity in an everyday challenge.

 “My niece is a dentist in Australia,” he said. “She told me that dentists have a lot of back problems from bending over a chair all day.”

 He looked at the problem and designed a chair with forearm rests to take the pressure off the dentist’s or hygienist’s back. The healthcare worker can sit on the chair and lean into the patient on the reclining motorized chair without stress on their back.

 “I only made two prototypes and we sent them to Germany for a dental equipment show,” he said. “I sold them right away and then had orders for more.”

 “I’m not a salesman or a marketing guy,” he laughs. “Most of my business just comes to me.”

 When the Kimmel Centre for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia needed precision welded brackets for 2,500 seats, Kobotics provided them.

 Knowing it’s hard for skilled immigrants to land jobs, Ko goes out of his way to encourage applications from new Canadians because it pays off. He sees ability where other employers see only a lack of Canadian experience.

 Wilson Yu, 30, has been working at Kobotics since he graduated as a mechanical engineer four years ago. Yu has been in Canada since he was 15, but says he found getting work hard, even though he has a degree.

 “Lots of interviews, but only Kam hired me,” he says. “I have a friend who went to school with me and he gave up looking for a job and went back to get his Master’s degree. He’s still looking for a job even with his Master’s in Engineering.”

 It’s that elusive “Canadian experience” which dogs so many new Canadians in their job search.

 “What I like about working here is that I can work with the customers, getting the quotation and right through to the finish product,” Yu said. “That’s great experience for me.”

 Yu is getting married soon to a woman he met at Kobotics.

 Ko knows what he’s looking for: Vision and the ability to adapt.

 It’s the ability to think outside the box Ko wants.

 “We were making stainless steel baskets for a gluten-free pasta making company,” he said. “And they had to fit into this cart which was 10 feet tall by six feet. The challenge was you couldn’t reach the top without a ladder and they wanted us to design a ladder onto it.”

 He threw the challenge to his team. They designed a robot strong enough to put the baskets into the cart and flexible so it could work in tight spaces.

 Ko wants to foster the entrepreneurial spirit in his employees.

 “I like it when they open their own businesses, too,” he says.

 A former employee is now going back and forth importing Chinese goods, and exporting Canadian goods.

 Many of his team are gaining work experience for their certification under the Professional Engineers Ontario. Ko encourages others to take upgrade courses and pays for their programs when they graduate.

 Written by Ian Harvey, Toronto Star

Nancy and Howard Kleinberg, Holocaust survivors who lived through a Nazi death camp and immigrated to Toronto in 1947, were featured on Regis and Kelly as part of an ongoing Valentine’s week segment.

“I never had the capacity to dream that my destiny is such that I’m going to survive, have a wonderful wife, wonderful family and wind up in New York at a show telling our life story,” Howard Kleinberg told the Star, minutes after appearing live on the American talk show, which is broadcast in Canada on CTV. “It’s unbelievable.”

The Kleinbergs’ remarkable story is not only one of love and commitment, but also survival.

As Jewish teenagers in war-torn Germany, they were both imprisoned in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, which was liberated by British troops on April 15, 1945.

On that hopeful day, Howard was clinging to life amid a pile of corpses, when Nancy — then 16-year-old Nechema Baum — saw his body move.

“All you saw was corpses, and there was one moving a little,” she said in a pre-taped interview aired on the show.

There were no gas chambers at Bergen-Belsen, but more than 50,000 prisoners died due to inhumane treatment, such as a lack of food and medical care.

“The day of liberation. . . found me completely at the end of my strength,” Howard said in the interview after the show. “I was waiting for my maker. However, God, from above, didn’t want me to come up yet.”

As he waited to die, Howard heard Nancy’s voice, urgently telling another woman that she saw him move and that they needed to save him.

“I said, ‘He’s not dead. If we let him lie here, he’ll die for sure,’” she said.

They carried Howard into a nearby abandoned barrack and for two weeks Nancy fed and cleaned him, trying to nurse him back to health.

At the beginning of the third week, when Nancy was not around, Howard made a “desperate attempt” to save his life by crawling to the closest road. He was picked up by British soldiers and taken to a military hospital, where he stayed for the next six months.

“When I came out, the girl that saved me wasn’t around, I couldn’t find her,” he said.

Two years later, on May 3, 1947, Howard immigrated to Toronto.

The following month, word spread through the city’s community of Holocaust survivors that Nancy had also come over.

“Toronto was a very small town in those days,” Nancy said on the show. “Everybody knew each other. He found out the girl who saved his life had arrived.”

So Howard found where Nancy lived and surprised her with a knock at the door and a bouquet of flowers.

“I opened the door and almost fainted,” she said.

Broke and jobless, Howard said he could not afford to get married at the time. But he got a job in upholstery, saved some money and three years later got down on his knees to propose to the woman who rescued him.

Next month the couple, who live in Downsview, will celebrate their 61st wedding anniversary.

“Our romance is still very much alive. There are many times I feel we are closer to each other now than when we were younger,” Howard said on the show.

As part of their prize, the Kleinbergs won a dinner party for their entire family — four children, 11 grandchildren and one great-grandchild — at 398 West, a kosher fine-dining restaurant in North Toronto; a professional photographer to document the night; and $3,000 in cash.

The Kleinburgs are in competition with five other couples, whose stories are featured on the show all week.

Viewers will vote on the couple they believe has the World’s Greatest Love Story. The winner will receive a trip to Bora Bora, in the South Pacific.

Howard could barely describe his feelings in the rushed interview following his live television appearance.

“But thank God we are here. We have a wonderful life, and I would advise each one that once you get married, make sure that you don’t argue with your wife, that you love her, that you take care of her, and you’ll live a happy life.”

Written by Brendan Kennedy, Toronto Star

Written by By Louise Elliott, CBC News

Parents wanting to come to Canada ‘won’t be able to make it alive’

wriiten By Louise Elliott, CBC News

A day after Canada reported a record number of newcomers received last year, internal government documents reveal that Ottawa is planning to reduce its annual quota for parents and grandparents joining their families here.

At a news conference in Ottawa Monday, New Democrat immigration critic Olivia Chow said information obtained under an Access to Information request shows the federal government will further reduce the targets for such sponsorships from 15,300 in 2010 to 11,000.

More than 148,000 parents and grandparents overseas are already waiting as long as five years to be reunited with their Canadian children and grandchildren. The reduced quotas will mainly affect applicants from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America, Chow said.

“Immigrants in the application queue are waiting longer than ever before to be reunited,” said Chow. “Clearly, the Conservatives have implemented a discriminatory policy, based on race and age, in certain countries and no longer abide by the ‘first come, first served’ rule when processing applications.”

On Sunday, Kenney announced Canada admitted more than 280,000 landed immigrants in 2010, the highest level in 57 years. That exceeded the annual maximum target of 265,000 by 6 per cent.

The government maintains that spouses and children of Canadian citizens and permanent residents remain the priority for sponsorships, while parents and grandparents can visit Canada on multiple-entry visas while waiting for their chance. Last year, 44,000 spouses and children were allowed into Canada under the family reunification program.

“We can’t satisfy 100 per cent of our immigrant stakeholders. We have to make choices to balance our objectives,” Kenney told the Star in a phone interview.

However, in response to an earlier appeal by the Chinese Canadian community, Ottawa has decided to increase the quota for sponsorship of parents and grandparents in the Beijing visa office from 1,000 in 2010 to 2,650 in 2011, at the expense of other countries.

“Restricting family reunification visas will only make it harder for those who immigrated legally to adapt to Canada. The presence of family … can make a huge difference as to whether someone settles here and integrates effectively,” said Queen’s University immigration law professor Sharry Aiken.

Liberal MP Joe Volpe, a former immigration minister, questioned the Conservatives’ much trumpeted family-values platform.

“The Conservatives tell families to be responsible for their own child care when parents go to work, but the fact is new Canadians entering the workforce often rely on parents and grandparents for child care and help around the home. They are taking away a necessary support system,” Volpe said in a statement.

Written by Nicholas Keung, Toronto Star