Tan Le: My Immigration Story (TED Talk)

Published: August 19, 2013 at 3:03pm




10 Comments Comment

  1. Follower says:
    August 19, 2013 at 3:33 pm

    Such an incredible and strong woman. Wish the Maltese can see through the asylum seekers’ pain and allow them to integrate. They can bring us diversity and reinvent our nation with different cultures and beliefs.

    It is very hard. Even for Jesus it was very hard to change people’s minds. Though He gave himself to help the poor, He was seen as a threat to the norm.

    Unfortunately, He paid for it with his own life. I am not trying to preach the gospel but unfortunately history is repeating itself.

    Reply
    • Kevin says:
      August 19, 2013 at 3:57 pm

      Jesus? As if the majority of the Maltese know what Christianity truly means.

      Just look at the string of comments on the article in yesterday’s Times on the young migrant (http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130818/local/migrant-recounts-his-story-says-he-will-rather-die-than-go-back.482512).

      Disgusting and despicable. The various commentators make North Africa sound like Eden and the trip across the Med like a “xalata” to Gozo.

      Even if the asylum seekers bring absolutely nothing to the country (after all, anyone can open a computer shop and a beauty parlour or become a political activist), we are duty bound to empathise and help.

      Reply
      • Lorry says:
        August 19, 2013 at 4:42 pm

        This is one of the comments:

        “Kevin McBill

        Yesterday, 23:15

        Stay in your country and fight for your rights there and leave us and the Libyans in peace.

        Your country needs you, don’t run away in the hour of need coward.

        We fought the Turks, the French, the Italians and the Germans.

        We as a nations suffered but we won”

        Incredible!

      • Kevin says:
        August 19, 2013 at 5:27 pm

        This one is nice too:

        “Lawrence J.M. Galea
        Yesterday, 14:02

        http://www.ukwirednews.com/news.php/1488908-Swiss-back-tighter-asylum-rules

        Switzerland 1 asylum seeker every 332 Swiss.
        EU average 1 asylum seeker every 625 inhabitants.
        Malta more than 16,500 illegal immigrants, 400,000 Maltese citizens apart from others from other countries and continents

        400,000/16,000 = 25. WE HAVE ONE AFRICAN illegal immigrant for every 25 Maltese citizens.” (sic)

        [Daphne – This Lawrence Galea was given a three-and-a-half month prison term for distributing, by throwing them out of his car window while driving around the university ring-road, homemade flyers with the most appalling slander about me. When the police seized his computer, they found in preparation flyers with similar slander about other individuals, and also some really horrible ‘holy pictures’ that took the shape and form and pictorial images of regular ones, but which carried a prayer to the Virgin Mary to have people like me struck down with cancer and other horrible diseases. His lawyer, Anglu Farrugia, pleaded ‘depression’ as his defence. This was in 2008.]

  2. winston psaila says:
    August 19, 2013 at 4:37 pm

    A Chinese girl who went to Australia, without two pennies to rub together, and eventually to the United States and learned how to speak impeccable English – probably much better than any Australian or American I know.

    Who knows? Maybe one day we shall come across a Nigerian or a Somali or any ‘unannounced, unwelcome and illegal’ immigrant who will be able to teach the many idiots, so keen on safeguarding our culture, but who cannot ‘string two words together’ in either English or Maltese how to speak and write in both languages.

    Reply
  3. dutchie says:
    August 20, 2013 at 6:40 am

    Very moving Daphne, thanks for sharing.

    Also an example for Lara Billboard, the way she talks about her grandfather:

    ” ..I never knew him in real life, but our lives are much more than our memories. My grandmother never let me forget his life. My duty was not to allow it to have been in vain.”

    That is something to be proud of.

    Reply
  4. AE says:
    August 20, 2013 at 11:00 am

    A moving story, a remarkable and insightful lady. We have so much to learn from those who have not been born in comfort.

    Reply
  5. hopeful says:
    August 22, 2013 at 11:47 am

    I knew Paul Boffa (may he rest in peace) and I was at the Labour Party meeting in Qui-Si-Sana, Sliema, in the 1950s when Mintoff launched the despicable and shameful attack on him while he was in London on official business.

    It was a really shameful and cowardly attack. Boffa was a gentleman – respected even by his adversaries. Mintoff was neither.

    Reply
  6. Paul Bonnici says:
    August 22, 2013 at 8:05 pm

    I would welcome Asians with open arms, they integrate, unfortunately Muslims do not integrate into society. They intermarry and isolate themselves into ghettos, these are the sort of immigrants Malta and Europe is getting now.

    [Daphne – “They intermarry and isolate themselves in ghettos.” Just like Maltese immigrants, then, who after 50 years in Australia, Canada or the USA, still can’t speak English well or even at all – especially the women, who never even left their Maltese ghettos to go to work.]

    Reply

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