I found this article, about a town not to far from the town I went to college in, a place where there are supposedly a lot of practicing Christians…
From Daily Southtown: Residents oppose shelter for immigrant children
The children rarely leave the federal immigrant shelter, a former nursing home near the city’s lakefront that houses undocumented children found alone in the United States.
Teachers and doctors are brought to them. And aside from occasional field trips or visits to a nearby park, the children spend almost all their time indoors — although it may be months before they know whether they will be deported or allowed to stay.
But plans to provide more room by converting a 2.5-acre estate near Naperville — with an 11,000-square-foot house, tennis court and swimming pool — into a first-of-its-kind shelter for undocumented Indian and Chinese children hit a snag:
Neighbors in wealthy Lisle Township don’t want them.
They say the shelter, which would house as many as 30 children, could create traffic problems, lower property values and strain water and sewer services.
But some also worry that the children could escape and pose a threat to their own children. A flier circulated throughout the neighborhood said the shelter would be “WORSE than a halfway house!”
that’s really messed up – that angers me. is there something i can do to speak up against that neighborhood? what do you think?
That’s horrible. Do you know what’s happened in the past month about this? Is the deal going through or not?
That reminds me of when some residents of Franklin TN were calling the mayors office and saying that they didn’t want any Katrina refugees. The mayor said that if the residents had a problem with it, they could get out. I hope the officials in this town will act the same way.
Here’s the website for for Lisle Township http://www.lisletownship.com/
and the DuPage County http://www.co.dupage.il.us/
There’s email addresses, phone numbers and fax numbers. Please let them know how you feel by sending them a short, well-written message.
If you are a resident of DuPage County, or know a resident of DuPage county, you can use the following link to let the folks in charge know what you think http://heartland.e-actionmax.com/showalert.asp?aaid=2216
Heartland Alliance is the organization who will be running the shelter and they have an action alert campaign to get the County folks to make the right decision.
Woah! Way to go Richard. I just got back and started to search the topic as people were asking about it and here you are doing the work for me!
The second link you gave was too the letter writing, which appears to be done. I looked into the county board and I think they made a decision on this in February. I couldn’t really decipher it but I think it was denied.
Here’s a link to the highlighted section:
http://pages.citebite.com/n1m2q8l9d8fje
and here is the actual text: