Chi Trib's Colleen Mastony has a page one Metro Near West story about Elmwood Park, its Italian immigrants of two generations past vs. Latin Americans of today, with dollop about Poles also of today -- Poles are second only to Italians now, reports Trib, which would not surprise someone who shops at Caputo's on Harlem near Diversey. The story jumps off from recent put-down of Elmwood Park (EP) schools for not taking an Ecuadorean kid on immigrant-status grounds. It was the last straw, apparently, for tightly knit, stranger-shy EP, but higher-ups put them down and they had to take the kid.
Point is, older immigrants resent new ones.
Second-generation immigrant families, mindful of how their parents and grandparents once struggled to gain a foothold in the U.S., now find themselves arguing about the rights of new immigrants,
OK, but the next sentence stops the careful reader, who hasn't got all the time in the world to read what Trib has to say, even if he lives near EP and wrote about it recently and used to eat bagels there:
Among recent arrivals, some wonder if it is right to extend social services to those who subverted laws to come to this country. Others think basics such as education should be available to all, especially to children, who are not responsible for their immigration status.
Which thanks to dangling phrase means that some recent arrivals question social services for recent arrivals. The reader trying to take Trib seriously -- Mastony and her apparently MIA copy editors -- wonders what's going on here? A wrinkle he hadn't realized? Nope. Another irritating boo-boo by the once world's greatest newspaper.
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