Have We Already Evicted Our Adul Sam-on

[Rodney Roe]

A story today was  about Adul Sam-on, a 14 year old boy who is one of the rescued Thai soccer team. Adul is an illegal immigrant.

Adul is a member of the Wa, a Burmese tribe once feared as headhunters. Adul’s impoverished and illiterate parents smuggled him across the border of Thailand in hopes that he would get an education and have a better life.

When British divers showed up initially it was Adul who translated. 

Adul is fluent in Thai. Wa, Burmese, English,and Mandarin. He lives in a church.

He got all the information the boys wantedand politely told the rescuers that they needed food.

it would have been so easy to send Adul back.

who knows which undocumented immigrant from Central America will

be a polymath? Will we ever know?

[koshersalaami]

Immigrants don't need to be polymaths to be good for the country

[Rodney Roe]

No, they don’t, but an argument against closing immigration is that industry would no longer have access to highly educated foreign students. Immigrants bring lots of gifts that often are not apparent.

[Rodney Roe]

The current POTUS and his father “old man Trump” are the argument against open borders.

[Safe Bet's Amy]

Did you know that immigration laws were put in place primarily because of white American support of Darwinian "eugenics" and white supremacist fear of "racial taint"  not from Blacks or Mexicans/Central/South Americans, but from Chinese immigrants?  Did you also know that these "new" laws were supported and passed by several other Presidents (including Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson [a Democrat, btw])

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_laws_concerning_immigratio...

[Jonathan Wolfman]

I WILL AIR THIS SIMPLE, GORGEOUS PIECE, NEXT WEEK, ROD.

[Anna Herrington]

Thanks for bringing us this information about one of the Thai kids rescued, how cool to know. If I wished to re-do anything about my life, I'd have kept up with learning languages. I got going, then stopped before what languages I'd learned became fluent enough to stick, with disuse.

And, as Amy added, we could have been lamenting the same thing with other presidents, even Obama, the smooth and cool Deporter in Chief, as he was known - although it's so easy to blame the current guy with his crass and greedy, scammer, cruel, heartless manner in all things, especially immigration - in fact it's almost impossible not to blame him for every horrible action going on in the world. personally....

[Rodney Roe]

Anna. I have the same regret. In the 1950s boys interested in science, math, and engineering took German. Girls interested  “classic” education took French. Those interested in an Ivy League school took Latin. Spanish was easy if you just needed a foreign language. .

A.very strange son of an acquaintance took Mandarin and Arabic by correspondence. He seems to have a command of both.

i would like to learn something more practical like Spanish or French. I envy polyglots.

[Rodney Roe]

There was a person whose nom de plume on open salon was cartouche who I was told spoke 7 languages.