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i. A New Beginning
– Standing on Our Own Feet within Minnesota Communities |
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Introduction |
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| In our role as leaders of our Hmong Minneapolis Community, we are well
informed through regular contact with city, county, state and federal agencies
about the suggestions, recommendations and mainstream community plans for
development. Government, starting with the U.S. Congress nearly one decade
ago and continuing whether federal or local through its agencies is “in
business” to make independence from government support – welfare
– a prized goal for all families. We support this notion and yet we
find difficulty in responding to many of these recommended initiatives.
Whatever may be the case, through the federal and state social support
system our people new to America have come to recognize the basic support
structure – public assistance -- and its annual cost elements, including: This looks like a great deal of money especially to our Hmong refugees who arrived with little more than the shirt on their backs. “Free” has a value all its own. Certainly we appreciate the very largesse as it represents the tax share of all Minnesotans working together to help raise the stakes of those facing the greatest challenges. But the “system” provides more than security net if improperly viewed. It can be a whole from which pulling oneself up to true freedom and self-sufficiency can be very difficult. America has chosen the path of technology to lighten the burdens of the day. Mainstream American children are born and raised into this system and are expected to adopt it wholeheartedly. The majority of American youth are provided daily opportunities within their native English language to explore the very technologies – greatly expanded – that placed a man on the moon. To them, it is a reasonable extension of the wondrous technical devices found in their homes especially in the wealthier suburbs. For our Hmong immigrants, however, it is not so easy or clear-cut. The children are aware of the new technology, but seldom have access in any favorable share of time to test and assimilate it. Knowledge of its operation can be learned by rote, but this is a far cry from understanding by growing up with the devices and excelling in explanation and display of their use. Dropping behind in school, falling near last place each time an opportunity at a work site arises to demonstrate learned skills, our Hmong people, young and mature, shy away further. The so often called upon subsistence funds become the only source of income to be expected. And the heart and spirit wither at the thought of the next competition. In this circumstance, due to the very plethora of everyday technology and life based on the economics of credit rather than the silver coins of old Laos, our new Americans must often be cajoled to take English classes to catch up with mainstream Americans, much in the way that the mainstreamers take seminar courses to update their career licenses. HAMAA knows this must change and has adopted a primary role in helping our neighbors enter the education system. |
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i. A New Beginning – Standing on Our Own Feet within Minnesota Communities |
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| Over the past decade, HAMAA has placed hundreds of people on the job to
bring enough income to put food on the table for the children. We have demonstrated
that once the welfare recipient lands a job they will no longer qualify
for some or many of the economic supports identified above. But we know
that we can let parts of this support structure fall away by family circumstance
if we carefully construct the family finances on an annual basis solidly
founded on the bedrock of education and job training.
First, we must recognize that a worker for whom we found a regular job has, thanks to our American pay as you go tax structure, become an instantaneous taxpayer. For example, if HAMAA Employment Counselors assist a Client, let us say the father of a family of ten, locate a job promising an annual income of $20,000 (circa $10.00/hour for a forty hour week), that Client pays roughly 15 percent tax across the board as all lower income bracket workers. In our case our Client would pay about $3,000 per year in taxes. This is not only feasible for the first individual but can be done on a regular basis for both individual families and the Hmong Community. In aggregate employment placements, numbering over 450 adults in the past four years, we have attained hourly placement wages of $9.62. Carrying this financial equation of employment to logical ends, if only our HAMAA Agency maintains a minimum average of 132 placements per year, we would foresee for the tax rolls a savings of $2,640,000 in terminated payouts per year while receiving $396,000 in new tax revenue from the newly employed, now economically self-sufficient Hmong Minneapolis families. And this only counts the father. We have been hard at work making special placements for our Hmong mothers who are on MFIP and are locating a job at the same time they are entering our courses for ISO-ESL as will be described hereunder. |
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ii. Housing and Family Homes |
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| Continuing the economic model discussion, housing, at one time for our
Hmong almost entirely the realm of the Public Housing Agency, now most often
is unsubsidized, owner occupied and maintained. This is generally true in
the Frogtown and Summit neighborhoods of St. Paul and especially so for
the area of North Minneapolis and the northern suburbs of Hennepin County
(Brooklyn Center and Brooklyn Park) where lower cost, older and somewhat
rundown housing still exists to which our families moved as the Minneapolis
Hollman Housing Site was demolished.
Maintenance costs and the knowledge of home ownership activities to complete on an annual basis remains a long-term concern, especially given the advanced age of many of the units and the excessive costs incurred in the housing rush of 1999-2000 to obtain a home. Mortgages, obtained in a rush, at relatively high rates or at premiums through non-traditional lenders pose a much greater concern in the near term as so many new buyers exhausted all savings of the extended family to purchase the houses. In many cases these units are older (averaging 50 years to 33 years as one travels north from our Glenwood-Lyndale site) and often require a substantial repair such as roof, furnace or other structural work. But many of our Hmong Community are now homeowners in every right. |
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iii. Strengthening our Hmong Communities through Education |
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| Governor Ventura convened in 1999 an Interagency Workforce Development
“Mini-Cabinet” to examine the way state government supports
workforce development. Among the many issues, solutions and recommendations
submitted was “Principle 3: : The state affirms its commitment to
assist the unemployed and economically distressed but emphasizes the importance
of education and training for achieving self-sufficiency.” As we work
through the employment and housing issues, we arrive at the recognition
that there are essentially only a few methods to resolve the career development
and unemployment problem of the limited English proficiency of our Hmong
New Americans: 1. Find for our Hmong adults essentially manual labor jobs to resolve the crises of welfare reform, enabling them to provide food for the children and a proper home for the family, and; 2. Establish English Classes for adults to improve their English after work so that some day they can change their lives to work in step with the new technology age; 3. Establish English Classes for our young Hmong commencing at age six years and continuing with a strong emphasis on teens who arrived late in the immigration cycle and are suffering a difficult time in gaining English language skills that interferes with their education; 4. Conduct activity to engage and bring in the HAMAA Center those young Hmong who have previously failed in school then dropped out and assist them through dedicated English and Hmong-based classes to come in from the streets and restart their education process. To support our Hmong Community within the spirit of the new path, we adopt the goals of the Governor’s Workforce Development Plan for 2000.
Our young Hmong know the value of the advanced education degrees as they observe their friends succeed. They can obtain the education their parents sacrificed so much to provide for them. Yet many of the youth become frustration at their inability to keep up in class work. For them it is too easy to dropout. As discussed in the Citizens League report, A Failing Grade for School Completion: We Must Increase School Completion in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, we must engage our youth and their parents at the school site and gather them at the HAMAA Center after school for enhanced tutoring and learning sessions. Their future ability to gain substantially from the American network, and their ability to function within it demand no less. Nowhere is this more important than in the pursuit of community activities through our Minneapolis Public School system. We are engaging at various points with MPS through the Twelve Point Plan goals.
In so doing we reinforce one of the most important requirements, the ability to join not only with our Hmong neighbors but the greater Minneapolis neighborhood as well. As homeowners, we have purchased houses interspersed among neighbors of many cultures. It is important that we develop the ability to fully communicate and work closely with our neighbors. Where once, in the early years just after arrival and as we started our new families it was accepted practice for the men to obtain language skills for work as the women stayed at home with the children, time has now changed that formula. Many, if not a majority of our Hmong women are now entering the workplace as a result of either the high cost of housing and paying for a new mortgage, or, regrettably, as a result of becoming a single parent and meeting or exiting MFIP at least through a partial work week. The workplace and the neighborhood both require strong English language skills and becoming a good neighbor includes taking the American Citizenship examination. For all of these needs, HAMAA hosts an intensive array of English and math classes, with computer skills through our ISO-ESL Language Center. The demand for language support is high and certain to go higher. Sufficient teachers and classroom space for classes for students of all ages, teens to veterans must be available to conduct daily courses up to twelve in number. |
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iv. Hmong Minneapolis Health Initiative |
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| Here we broach a problem at once compelling and nearly without solution.
Our Hmong Community as new Americans not possessing a cultural medical/health
background not predominantly European-based must contend with the clashes
of advice, services and procedures available. When understood, the choice
may be a very rational combination of methods. But therein lies the rub:
with limited English language capability and virtually non-existent health
network prior to arrival in America, we must start at the bottom rung in
every medical and health field.
Many of our people are suffering from some level of traumatic stress syndrome if for no other reason than the loss of everything they grew to know and love. How much we do not know, since a survey of published health-related research studies indicates that Hmong-specific studies have never been conducted on even the more basic health issues including youth sexual relations and STD. True enough the people can function on a daily basis as long as all actions are as anticipated, without great problem and according to a basic time schedule. But changes even as simple to mainstream Americans as changing shifts at a job creates tremendous stress. Our young people know this through their own experience, but only now after the initial new American generation selected social work to assist with the system are our young people of generation two beginning to look into medical and health practice as their avocation. We are looking at twenty years or more to build an adequate health support infrastructure. We could count upon local resources such as Hennepin County or City of Minneapolis Health agencies to assist. But until most recently the solution adopted in the face of limited language and culturally competent personnel was to redirect all clients to the nascent health network in St. Paul/Ramsey County. This might work well for those who live in those areas, but left our Minneapolis residents with even less direct support. Added to this have been the reports issued for years from federal, state and county agencies identifying the shortfall in health services outreach to communities of color and limited income, which shortfall we can most certainly confirm. Discussions and programs, at the same time, have been directed in large part to the two-thirds majority of our Hmong Community residing in St. Paul while leaving our Minneapolis Community high and dry as usual from anti-smoking campaigns to such basic community needs as a culturally relevant funeral home. Clearly we must get past the period of hand wringing and shortfall reports and locate health professionals as team members with whom we may build a comprehensive health outreach program for our city members. |
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v. Fostering Small Business Development in Minneapolis |
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| Even as we enhance the minds and circumstances of our Hmong residents through education and job skills development, we must also harness the individual spirit of our people. Nowhere is this spirit more alive and charged than in the hearts of our Hmong entrepreneurs. Having struggled through the resettlement process, attained English language skills, and often having participated as an employee in a firm similar to their personal driving interest, they are ready to commit to establishing their small business in Minneapolis. We know that they will be successful in large part as we look to the earlier business developments of the Summit and Frogtown areas of St. Paul. With experienced Hmong business and Community leaders now arriving in Minneapolis fresh from their successes in St. Paul and directly entering such activities as the Minneapolis Empowerment Zone, HousingMinnesota, and the Northway Action Plan, we can expect similar business stimulation in the very near term. Our eyes are focused on our traditional corridors of Glenwood-Lyndale and Lowry Avenue, heretofore not readily developed by such small shops as hardware and electrical goods stores, clothing and accessories boutiques, law offices, insurance agencies, hair salons/barbershops and numerous family support shops. Our goal must be to enhance the ability of our Hmong newcomers to surmount the remaining language problems and learn the rules of paper-driven business enterprises including tax and financial planning and reporting methodologies as they approach banks and business partners within the mainstream communities. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
vi. Safety and Security for All Residents of our Neighborhoods |
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| As we gain additional ground in education it is certain that our young
people who stray from the path into the arms of the local police will drop
in numbers. But the problem of safety and security within neighborhoods
remains at two levels: ? Our senior citizens and those shut in for any reason must receive regular home visits to assure health, diet and physical safety in older, drafty homes; ? Crisis response to family conflict and battered spouse incidents, and; ? Businesses too require security from the prowlers who would inflict damage through theft, vandalism or graffiti. Once there were Community Liaison representatives drawn from our Hmong Community to assist in making the connections between languages and cultures. We were oftentimes successful in averting family conflicts and tragedies through quick response of dedicated staff members remaining vigilant for the calls late at night. Those days and many of the original Block Watch Captains are gone. We look to a period when we have a central figure guiding the activities side by side with our Minneapolis Police Department, coordinating our emergency response to crises and working with the Hmong Sub-Clan Leaders Network to re-energize the Black Watch throughout our North Minneapolis Hmong Community. |
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vii. Planning Hmong Communities in Greater Minnesota |
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| To a large extent unlike other primary resettlement states such as California, North Carolina or Wisconsin, our Hmong Community in Minnesota has remained fixed largely in the Twin Cities, very concentrated in select sectors of Minneapolis and St. Paul. We originally adopted this approach in the 1980s with the knowledge that housing, either agency public housing or starter affordable housing was relatively plentiful and cost effective for our limited budgets. Education was made available through agencies and schools for basic English. We never really looked at alternatives nor expanded from this base with the exception of a few isolated families and a small branch established in western Minnesota at the call and supported by the local poultry businesses. We intend to explore possibilities of supporting extension of our Hmong Twin Cities Community into Greater Minnesota even as we all work our way out of the current economic downturn. Our desire will be to meet with city planners from towns throughout Minnesota that would be searching for strong families with good adult employees and homeowners who would bring their children to stay and grow in that community. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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