Thursday, September 07, 2006

Dearborn Federation of Teachers Funding Target/Refugees Program

Underground resister Darby Shaw writes this interesting bit about the Dearborn teacher’s union:

This past summer the National Teacher's Federation accepted a resolution supporting Israel. Mr. Kevin Harris the President of the Dearborn Federation of Teacher's Union made various public protests but, was outnumbered and it passed anyway. Here is his new humanitarian mission:

From: Harris, Kevin Sent: Wed 9/6/2006

Good Morning,

Given the recent events that have taken place in the Middle East, the DFT Executive Board has decided to provide help in obtaining school supplies for those students and their families who have come to our community to escape the devastation in their homeland. We are asking for your help in identifying those students who have both a demonstrated need and would be considered refugees from the Middle East.


Once you have identified these students, we need to know: student's name, teacher's name, administrator's name and school. Please forward this information to the DFT office. You can either call the office at 313-584-5311, or email the information to dft@dft681.org .

Once we receive the information, we will contact the school to verify what has been submitted, and the Union will forward a Target gift card to the school, to be given to the student's family.

The goal is to make this transition for your students as seamless as possible and make the start to their school year a positive one. Any assistance you can provide us in expediting this would be greatly appreciated.


Kevin R. Harris, President
Dearborn Federation of Teachers



What does all this mean? Dearborn school employees are being asked to “identify” students who have a “demonstrated need” and “considered refugees.” These questions immediately come to mind:

  • Where are these "refugees" from? I am unaware of any U.S. refugee programs recently put into place.
  • What should employees consider when attempting to ID a refugee?
  • What qualifies as a “demonstrated need”?
  • Should they have accents or speak no English at all?
  • Should they look Jewish? Arabic? This is racial profiling and racial profiling is bad.


When the Dearborn Public School staff ID a refugee, they are instructed to contact the union office. The union office will verify information submitted by the student’s family. These are public school student records. Are they clear to access them without violating privacy laws? They are verifying refugee status but, what if the student is not a refugee? It’s possible the student could turn out to be an illegal immigrant. This could be dangerous for Mr. Harris and Dearborn Federation of Teachers. Families who are in our country illegally are according to our immigration laws, subject to deportation. It is possible the families will have a negative view of unsolicited racial profiling and private record verification. Racial profiling and snooping in private records - Osama Siblani from Dearborn’s Arab-American Anti Discrimination Committee should be notified.


I am guessing the students do not have legal refugee status. This would make them illegal refugees, or what the United States Government calls them: “illegal immigrants." They make it into the U.S., and then Dearborn’s own Social Welfare agency “for Arabs” -
ACCESS - covers them in a soft blanket of protection. The blanket is funded by our tax dollars so we know it is very warm and cozy. ACCESS appears to follow its own model of government reflecting socialist or communist style welfare. They take tax dollars from American citizens to fund programs offering “refugees” free access to healthcare, housing, food, and clothing. It is a very generous endeavor and I am sure the American and Dearborn governments are highly regarded for their generosity. ACCESS also uses grant money but, even if some of the grants are private the monies are still gutted from the public domain.

Darby Shaw
Dearborn, Michigan

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