“When we lost at the Sixth Circuit [in 2013], I told Uwe that he would go back to Germany over my dead body,” Farris said in the HSLDA release. “I’m glad that wasn’t necessary! This is a courageous family and one that deserves to stay here. They are modern day Pilgrims.”
Monday’s Supreme Court ruling all but sealed the family’s fate before Homeland Security stepped in.
“Our entire family is deeply grateful for all the support of our friends and fellow homeschoolers and especially HSLDA,” Uwe Romeike said in the HSLDA release. “I thank God for his hand of blessing and protection over our family. We thank the American government for allowing us to stay here and to peacefully homeschool our children — it’s all we ever wanted.”
The HSLDA says the Romeikes were granted “indefinite deferred action status” and can stay in the U.S. for the foreseeable future. Monday’s Supreme Court ruling showed that the U.S. government does not consider home schooling a fundamental human right; the Department of Homeland Security’s decision goes against that.
Still, the family will not be U.S. citizens. The Romeikes will remain in the U.S. as, essentially, refugees.
“As long as we can live at peace here, we are happy,” Uwe Romeike told the HSLDA.
A homeschooling German family that was granted asylum six years ago and was on the verge of being deported after the Supreme Court rejected its final appeal on Monday will be allowed to remain in the country after all.
The Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday the Romeike family could remain in the U.S. — without receiving citizenship.
“This is an incredible victory that I can only credit to Almighty God. I also want to thank those who spoke up on this issue — including that long ago White House petition,” Home School Legal Defense Association Chairman Michael Farris said in a press release. “We believe that the public outcry made a huge impact. What an amazing turnaround — in just 24 hours.”
The case stems from the family’s belief that its children should be home schooled. Germany would not allow that practice, and Uwe and Hannelore Romeike — who have raised their children as devout Christians and began home schooling three of them in 2006 — feared they would lose custody of them after German authorities visited the family’s home and began issuing fines. Attending state-approved schools is mandatory in Germany.
How does a liberal, permissive society that celebrates diversity impose its values on a militant immigrant minority that rejects them?
Answer: It doesn't. All the rest is chatter.
This is what James Burnham meant when he wrote that liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide.
In the past few days, there has been a lot of discussion of this subject of multiculturalism. And it is coming from Europe, as Patrick is writing about in this column. I may not have believed it had not there been video evidence:
Yes, this is still a controversial subject everywhere in the Western world. Pat Buchanan has been writing about the death of the West for a long time, but it is now a subject that has is being brought up quite frequently in the EU.
Multiculturalism has "totally failed," says German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"State multiculturalism has had disastrous results," says Britain's David Cameron.
Is multiculturalism a failure in France? "My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure," says President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Ex-Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar has declared multiculturalism a failure in Spain, saying it divides and debilitates Western societies.
Only in Canada and the U.S., it seems, is the issue still in dispute.
Yet these European leaders are not leading anyone. They are far behind the people, and their belated appreciation of the idea of national identity is but a product of political panic. Take Merkel in Germany.
Last summer, Thilo Sarrazin published a book the title of which may be translated as "Germany Abolishes Itself."
Sarrazin argued that Germany's gastarbeiters, guest workers – Turks, Kurds, Arabs – are dumbing down the nation. While Germany's birth rate fell below replacement levels decades ago, these foreigners with less intelligence and much higher dropout, welfare and crime rates are rapidly replacing the declining German population.
"It is a matter of culture," said Sarrazin, and "Islam is the culture." This is why Muslim immigrants are "socially, culturally and intellectually inferior to most everyone else." Yet Sarrazin did use the phrase a "genetic minus" to describe migrants from the Middle East.
Were these the ravings of a neo-fascist intellectual and closet admirer of the late Fuhrer? Not at all. Sarrazin was a proud member of the Social Democratic Party of Willy Brandt and a board member of the Bundesbank.
With Merkel and the German establishment howling for his head, Thilo resigned, unrepentant. Two-thirds of Germans said he had a right to speak his mind, a third said they agreed with him, and "Germany Abolishes Itself" has sold over a million copies.
It was in response to the firestorm of the Sarrazin affair that Merkel discovered that multiculturalism was a failure. Her EU colleagues have since been falling all over one another to agree.
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