Sunday, October 18, 2015
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Welcoming nations are the beneficiaries of immigration! by Luis G. Lobo published by WSJ 9-13-15
http://www.journalnow.com/opinion/columnists/luis-g-lobo-welcoming-nations-are-the-beneficiaries-of-immigration/article_2409821a-3871-5743-8a1d-573c143e94f9.htmlhttp://www.journalnow.com/opinion/columnists/luis-g-lobo-welcoming-nations-are-the-beneficiaries-of-immigration/article_2409821a-3871-5743-8a1d-573c143e94f9.html
Published by the Winston Salem Journal 9-13-15
Except from "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus
Welcoming nations are the beneficiaries of immigration
By Luis G. Lobo
I have often used an article on immigration, written some
years ago by Winston Salem Journal reporter Bert Gutierrez, to illustrate the
circumstances that drove some individuals to flee their native countries in
Latin America in the 1980’s. Political
instability, religious intolerance and economic destitution rank high on the
list of what brought the non-conforming Pilgrims from England to what became
America in 1620, the starving Irish and war-torn Germans in the 1840’s, and
refugees fleeing genocide from Vietnam and Serbia in our most recent past.
Today searing images depict millions of migrants moving
through North Africa and the Middle East, some drowning in the Mediterranean or
asphyxiating in the back of a truck crossing into Europe. The flower of Syria,
Eritrea and West Africa will permanently damage their home countries by their
exodus. Most are unwelcomed and viewed
with suspicion because of their perceived Islamism (apparently Poland and Slovakia
will only allow Christian refugees), their inability to speak European
languages, and the fact that they are “different”. One would expect beneficence
from countries that endured Nazi and Communist atrocities, and were aided by
allied forces and international relief in the 1940’s, again in the 1950’s and
even beyond the fall of communism. Yet, racism along with its close companions
of ignorance and nationalism has shown its ugly face.
There is a sense that the world is less stable than before.
Maybe when the sun could not set on the British Empire or during the 20th
century when the first and second world wars were fought? I am NOT sure when
the world has been stable. The seed of what is being described as the largest
migrations since the near-destruction of Europe at the end of World War II were
planted on September 11, 2001. The
western world’s response to global terrorism and its supporting regimes, along
with access to rapidly democratizing technology, have caused very motivated
people to renounce and attempt to escape their oppressors. A person living in
an isolated village clear across the globe can today “see” that there are other
societies and political structures. Given the choice, we have ample evidence
that the motivated will seek freedom.
American scripture speaks to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit
of Happiness”. All life is precious and thus it is protected by the Bill of
Rights within the Constitution of the United States. We believe what is written in those
documents, not only for ourselves, but also for all human beings. The reason we despair at the picture of a
drowned boy is because we understand and admire those that seek freedom.
Our current political fixation on immigration has its origins
in the calamity experienced by massive unemployment in Mexico and murderous
civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980’s. Driven and motivated
individuals walked across the southern border, or came through air and sea,
some with temporary protected status (TPS), such as was issued to certain
Salvadorians and Nicaraguans ensnarled in the socialism vs. fascism
conflicts. Others came with a tourist
visa and remained past its expiry; others came only with their barest
possessions. The children of these
migrants were evident in the 2000 U.S. Census, which reflected the first significant
increase in the Latino population in the nation. The 2010 U.S. Census evidenced a third
generation.
The Pew Research Center estimates that 75% of the 53 million
Latinos were born in the United States. Today African Americans, Asians and
Latinos make up 1/3 of the nations population.
Last year the birth rate became 51% minority. “In 1960 our population
was 85% white; by 2060 it will be 43% white” according to Paul Taylor,
executive vice president of Pew Research. The current optics, even as Asian
migrations are now outpacing those from Mexico and Latin America, are of a
permanently changed American demographic balance.
I am reminded of the poem “The New Colossus” written by Emma
Lazarus and enshrined at the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled
masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the
golden door”.
The United States is a nation of immigrants. Yet, only the
motivated are willing to change the outcomes of their lives and put themselves
and their progeny at risk. The welcoming countries of Germany, Austria, Britain
and, I hope, the United States and others, will be invigorated by these
motivated migrants and their offspring well into the future.
 |
| Ellis Island Medal of Honor 5-9-15, NY, NY |
 |
| Published by Pew Research, DC |
Luis G. Lobo
September 9, 2015Sunday, June 28, 2015
Pillar of the Costa Rican community honored on June 14, 2015 - Article by Lincoln Times News and comments from Roman Macaya Ambassador of Costa Rica to the US.
PHIL PERRY
Staff Writer
The life of Luis Gerardo “Jerry” Lobo Avila, one of the founders of the Costa Rican community in Lincoln County, will be honored and remembered on Sunday at St. Dorothy’s Catholic Church in Lincolnton.
A memorial bench on the grounds of the church will be dedicated by Father David Miller. Among other speakers, Roman Macaya, the Costa Rican Ambassador to the United States, will address those attending the ceremony.
In 1964, at the age of 21, Lobo came to the United States from Costa Rica and, within 18 months of his arrival, had secured an apartment, a job and a car. He had found work in the textile industry through Adirondack Mills in Amsterdam, New York, where he worked the third shift as a supervisor. A priest who had fled Cuba during the Fidel Castro-led revolution helped him find work. Adirondack was a division of Fab Industries and, by 1968, he was offered a position at Mohican Mills in Lincolnton.
In 1970, Lobo’s family arrived in Lincolnton, where Jerry and Marta had the distinction of being one of only two Latino families living in the area. Jorge and Ester Ramirez also made their home in town, where Jorge served as a Spanish teacher in the Lincoln County Schools system.
The family of seven, including four sons and one daughter, moved into a house at 813 East Main Street in Lincolnton, beside the Family Dollar store. Today, BB&T Bank has a branch on the plot of land that the Lobo family called home for many years. Brothers Luis and Carlos were the first Latino children to enter Lincoln County Schools in January 1971.
“I can remember how helpful the teachers were to us at S. Ray Lowder Elementary School,” Luis said. “They were very good to us and within six or eight months, we were speaking relatively fluent English.”
Luis is currently the executive vice president and multicultural markets manager with BB&T. Earlier this year, he was honored with the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. The award is presented annually to American citizens who have distinguished themselves within their own ethnic groups while exemplifying the values of the American way of life.
Within a few years, Costa Ricans who had followed the elder Lobo to New York were now moving to Lincolnton, preceding the Mexican migrations of the 1980s.
Lobo was known as a resource for Costa Ricans moving into the area. He assisted them with paperwork, finding jobs and affordable housing. He helped them navigate the language barriers and cultural nuances of their new home. He is recognized as the founder of the Costa Rican community in North Carolina.
“I remember my father helping people,” Luis said. “I can remember knocks at the door at 2 a.m. When the sheriff would need an interpreter or an immigrant would need some help. My father helped all immigrants.”
In an interview with the Lincoln Times-News in 1983, 11 years before his death at 52 from complications related to gastric cancer, Lobo expressed his happiness for being able to bring his family to the U.S.
“I kept dreaming about coming to this country since I was very, very young,” Lobo said. “It’s a dream that almost every Costa Rican has. My goal was to bring my family here. My family wanted to have a better life. (Lincolnton) has been a fine place to raise our children. I have been very, very impressed.”
In that same interview, Lobo said his family spoke Spanish regularly in the home and that it was important for his children to embrace their heritage. They would often spend summer vacations in Costa Rica.
“How could I send my grandchildren to their grandparents and they can’t communicate?” he said. “We don’t want them to lose the language.”
The bench that is being dedicated holds a special meaning for Luis and his siblings, Mark, Carlos, Roberto and Martha.
“My father used to sit under a dogwood tree on a bench and read his Lincoln Times-News,” Luis said. “He loved reading the paper and he loved that tree.”
Fittingly and thoughtfully, the bench is scribed with dogwood leaves in his memory.
The event is scheduled for 11:45 a.m. A Spanish mass will be followed by a dedication and reception.
Image courtesy of Contributed
Sunday, May 24, 2015
Luis G. Lobo: The Lobos come to America, an evolving dream
Posted: Wednesday, May 20, 2015 8:30 pm
Driving through Queens, N.Y. reminded me of watching “All in the Family,” with images of Archie Bunker. The streets on that trip to JFK Airport now reflected Spanish and Korean inhabitants.
When we finally arrived, he again asked what gate, offered American Airlines, and I said sure. We were not going to catch a flight; Carlos and I were there to visit the place, our Ellis Island, where we reunited with our father in September 1965.
After asking several folks, we struck gold and in awe beheld the beautiful and now un-used TWA terminal. My 11-year-old niece did not understand what all the fuss was about, but she hung in there.
My father, Gerardo “Jerry” Lobo, all of 21 years old in 1964, had forsaken the dreams of his own father in coming to the United States. Within 18 months of his arrival, he owned his own car, had his own apartment and was third-shift supervisor at Adirondack Mills in Amsterdam, N.Y., a division of Fab Industries, controlled by the Bitensky family, Polish Jews who fled invasion and murder during the Nazi onslaught. By 1968, they offered him a position at Mohican Mills in Lincolnton.
The immigrant dream is not always vertical or at least upwardly sloping. When my brother Roberto was born in Amsterdam, my mother suffered what we know today to have been postpartum depression. We were without family nearby, still challenged by the language barrier, and undeterred. We all returned to Costa Rica without my dad on Christmas Eve, 1967.
I love airports, and I also hate them. They have been places of wonderful reunions and heart-breaking separations.
We were elated on that day in December 1970 when we deplaned at Douglas Airport in Charlotte and took our first steps in North Carolina. Carlos and I were the first Latino children to enter Lincoln County Public Schools in January 1971. Mrs. Prue Houser was my fourth-grade teacher. There have been stories written in the past about this time; in one, the principal tells of Mrs. Houser not knowing what steps to take. The principal said, “We will just do our best.” Carlos and I were chatting like parrots within six months of arrival. I remained in contact with Mrs. Houser through the end of her life.
We were a novelty in Lincolnton, given that there was only one other Hispanic family following my father’s arrival: Jorge and Ester Ramirez, the Spanish teacher at the local high school and his wife.
The birth of a brother and sister in Lincolnton made for a large family. People live where they can, and so my parents moved us into 813 E. Main Street in Lincolnton, right beside the Family Dollar store, near the black neighborhoods and away from where the finest people lived.
I remember the loneliness of my parent’s lives. They worked in the mills managed by Fab Industries, sometimes second and third shift. Within a few years, Costa Ricans who had followed my father, first to Amsterdam, N.Y., were now moving to Lincolnton. Then came the great Mexican migrations of the 1980s.
It was not a bowl of cherries being the first Latino kids in the schools. To be a minority up to that point meant being black. Change is never lovingly received. However, St. Dorothy’s Catholic Church became our community center, and along with the support of educators and friends, we prospered.
In time, a third generation has been born in America; they consider themselves Latinos and do not speak a word of Español.
Recently I was watching my favorite Sunday morning program, and they were speaking about Lawrence Welk. They mentioned that when little Lawrence went to school, he, the son of German immigrants to Strasburg, N.D., could not speak English. Wait a minute, I told my wife - they blame Latinos for not teaching their children to speak English and here are the Germans, a century before, with the same poor civic attitude!
After that cab ride to JFK, we all reconvened in lower Manhattan, put on our Sunday best, and remembered my father as I had the great honor of receiving the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. This is a great country, not without its faults, but full of generous people known the world over as Americans.
Luis G. Lobo is an executive vice president and multicultural markets manager for BB&T. The Ellis Island Medal of Honor is presented annually to American citizens who have distinguished themselves within their own ethnic groups while exemplifying the values of the American way of life.
The Journal welcomes original submissions for guest columns on local, regional and statewide topics. Essay length should not exceed 750 words. The writer should have some authority for writing about his or her subject. Our email address is: Let-ters@wsjournal.com. Essays may also be mailed to: The Readers' Forum, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27102. Please include your name and address and a daytime telephone number.
Saturday, May 2, 2015
Samson Bitensky, a Polish Jew, helped spawn the Costa Rican and wider Latino community in NC.
 |
| Gerardo "Jerry" Lobo |
 |
| Samson Bitensky |
How Samson Bitensky, a Jew, opened doors of opportunity for others in NY and NC
"In 1955, Bitensky founded Fab-Lace, Incorporated, a specialty lace company. He began manufacturing operations at a former rug mill in upstate Amsterdam, N.Y. In 1966, John MacArthur asked Bitensky to take over a foreclosed North Carolina textile mill. Bitensky reorganized his company as Fab Industries, and added MacArthur to the board. He began the large-scale manufacturing of tricot knits and other fabrics. The company went public in 1968". - from the obit above.
So the story of the Costa Rican settlements in Amsterdam, NY, then NJ and later in NC begins with this man. A Jew escaped from Poland before the invasion by the Nazi's in 1939 which effectively decimated the Jewish population of eastern Europe in what is today know as the Holocaust. Bitensky fled to Far Rockaway, NY at 18, volunteered in the US Armed Forces and participated in the invasion of Italy and went on to innovate textiles in NY.
My father had arrived in Amsterdam, NY February 1964 and was unemployed for about 6 months. That Spring he got a job in an Italian restaurant as a dishwasher because you do not need to know English to wash dishes, he just needed a JOB! Week after week he pestered the head waiter to give him a table because he wanted to earn a higher wage. Then, one day a waiter is out sick, and my dad is, like : "PUT ME IN COACH, PUT ME IN!" He has memorized the menu. He had trained night after night, reading the menu, understanding how to pronounce the words, listening to the waiters and asking lots of questions while waiting his turn as a dish washer. I am not sure if it happened on his first night or shortly thereafter. A table of well-dressed businessmen came in, 5 or 6. My father, all of 21 at the time, proceeded to welcome them and take their order. He had the uncanny skill of being able to take an order without writing down the details, how cooked, with what kind of beverage, etc. (my brother Roberto has this gift too).
The gentleman at the "head of the table" later beckoned my Dad and asked about his origins, noting my father's accent. He proceeded to tell him that he had recently arrived from Costa Rica and had left his two sons and wife behind and was determined to make his life in the US. The gentleman asked my father what sort of work he wished to do. My father told him that he was "good" with his hands, indeed my Dad could disassemble and put back together whatever, and had many years of experience working for his own father in their dry good store in Costa Rica since infancy. The gentleman, speaking his English with a heavy Polish accent, pulled out a business card, handed it to my father, and told him to call the name and number on the card, they would be awaiting his call. That gentleman was Samson Bitensky, founder of FAB industries, first in Amsterdam, NY and later in Lincoln and Catawba counties in NC. The name on the card was that of Al Delavale and he hired my Dad on the spot that week, his first job was sweeping in the 3rd shift , 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM. He was IN! In short order he became a crack knitter , then trained on the German machinery, by the time we arrived 9-65 he was a third shift supervisor at Adirondack Mills in Amsterdam, he had been in the US all of 18 months. In the mid-1960's FAB moved to purchase mills in NC, my father relocated and thus began a tremendous migration of Costa Ricans that had first followed my father and his cousins, Horacio Lobo and William Montero, first to Amsterdam, then to northern NJ, then to Lincolnton, NC.
So, tell me we are not capable of tremendous change? Tell me we are not capable of changing reality? Tell me we are not able to escape our origins and create a life for ourselves through focus and perseverance?
I guess no one told my Dad it could not be done, and he never told us either.
HAPPY 50th ANNIVERSARY on your one-way ticket with destiny
In the final analysis, your attitude determines your effectiveness in everything, every time! LGL www.LuisLobo.Biz
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Luis G. Lobo, faculty member conducts Multicultural Banking class at the ABA Stonier Graduate School of Banking - The Wharton School of Business - University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA June 8th, 2015
ABA – STONIER GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BANKING
The Wharton School of Business
University of Pennsylvania
http://www.abastonier.com
The Wharton School of Business
University of Pennsylvania
http://www.abastonier.com
MULTICULTURAL BANKING
Luis G. Lobo
Executive Vice President
BB&T
Stonier Faculty Member
Past Chairman Stonier Board of Advisors
Past Chairman Stonier Board of Advisors
June 2015 Elective Class - 1.5 hour
OUTLINE
PURPOSE:
The purpose of the class is to create awareness of the vast
demographic shifts that are impacting the nation. The financial repercussions from the
behaviors of these populations will impact the economic growth of the
United States. The banking industry, as the
owner of financial knowledge, has the primary responsibility to engage these
non-traditional households, widely represented as individuals, families and
business entities. By 2030, minority populations become the majority, even as the birth rate has already shifted to 51% minority as of
August 2014.
STRUCTURE:
The class will be an interactive discussion between the
participants and led by the instructor responding to these major topics:
A.
The historical impact of immigration from the
founding of the republic through the modern era.
B.
Key distinguishing characteristics of the
African American, Asian and Latino communities.
C.
Identifying minority segments within branch
distribution markets.
D.
The HUGE role of the branch in acquiring and
serving multicultural clients through diverse and
integrated platforms.
integrated platforms.
E.
Sharing financial knowledge “where people ARE” –
a competitive advantage.
a.
The work place.
b.
The faith community.
c.
The education space.
d.
Bank branches.
F.
Client segmentation according to life-cycle needs
and financial resources.
MATERIALS:
A.V. platform with web connect.
PowerPoint presentation.
Copy of book “The Next America” for each participant.
AUDIENCE:
The class will be conducted for two (2) distinct classes of
approximately 15 students, both on the same day, for Monday June 8th,
2015.
Luis G. Lobo
Executive Vice President
BB&T Multicultural Banking
200 W. 2nd St.
Winston Salem, NC
27101
336-733-2663
www.LuisLobo.Biz
www.itisyourattitude.blogspot.com
www.itisyourattitude.blogspot.com
http://youtu.be/fe_JCmtZczs
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