INSIDE:

NEWS/STORIES/ARTICLES
Book Reviews
Columns/Opinion/Cartoon
Films
International
National
NW/Local
Recipes
Special A.C.E. Stories
Online Paper (PDF)

NW RESOURCE GUIDE
Archives
Consulates
NW Job Market
Organizations
Scholarships
Special Sections

Upcoming

The Asian Reporter Thirteenth Annual Scholarship & Awards Banquet -
April, 2011

May, 2011

Asian Reporter Info

About Us

Advertising Info.

AR Merchandise
Contact Us
Subscription Info. & Back Issues

ASIA LINKS
Asian Studies
Currency Exchange
More Asian Links
Public Holidays
Time Zones


Copyright © 2000 - 2010
AR Home

Where EAST meets the Northwest

SENSELESS SHOOTING. Tina Nguyen, second from left, prays with relatives of shooting victims Lan Ho and Long Huynh outside the American Civic Association in Binghamton, New York. A gunman, Jiverly Wong, killed 13 people in a rampage at an immigrant community center in Binghamton on Friday, April 3. Wong was apparently upset about losing his job at a vacuum plant and about people picking on him for his limited English-language skills. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

From The Asian Reporter, V19, #15 (April 14, 2009), page 8.

By Michael Hill
Associated Press Writer

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — In an all-American city that has seen better days, they are true strangers from lands as far apart as Laos, Mexico, Somalia, and the former Soviet republics.

The American Civic Association was the place they turned to for help navigating their journey. But their bridge to a better life is now a monument of immigrant sorrow, the site of a shooting rampage that killed 14 people, including the gunman.

Perhaps most implausible of all is that the killer was one of their own.

"That this tragedy should have happened in our community, to our friends who only wanted to advance their knowledge and love of America, is almost unbearable," said the association’s board president, Angela Leach.

The volunteer-based civic group, a member agency of the United Way of Broome County, was founded in 1939 by 11 immigrants. It helps roughly 60 to 100 people a day find housing, food, clothing, medical care, and jobs in addition to offering English classes, interpreters, personal counselling, and more.

"It’s like having a mini-United Nations in your community," said Mark Kachadourian, a Binghamton attorney who has been on the association board since 2001. He became involved with the group after it helped his wife, a Canadian, obtain U.S. citizenship.

Some victims of the shooting left violent homelands only to be slain in a quiet, industrial city at the confluence of the Susquehanna and Chenango rivers.

Layla Khalil, an Iraqi woman in her 50s, came to the United States after surviving three car bombings in Iraq, said Imam Kasim Kopuz, leader of the Islamic Organization of the Southern Tier.

She had three children, including a son who is a doctoral student at the Sorbonne in Paris, a daughter who is a Fulbright scholar at Binghamton University, and a son in high school.

The daughter declined an interview because she was planning her mother’s funeral.

Ty Tran, 37, visited the community center with his wife and a friend, My Nguyen, who had lost his green card and needed a new picture. They were charged $8 for a snapshot and walked out the front door at 10:20am — about 10 minutes before the shooting began.

"We were very lucky. If we stay, then we die," said Tran, a cable manufacturing factory worker who has periodically used the center as a resource since emigrating from Vietnam in 1990.

Police chief Joseph Zikuski said the actions of the gunman, Jiverly Wong, 41, an ethnic Chinese who arrived from Vietnam in the early 1990s, should have been no surprise to the man’s family. He believed people he knew were making fun of him for his poor English-language skills, Zikuski said.

Binghamton has always been a lure for immigrants. A century ago, Slavs, Italians, and other European immigrants disembarking at Ellis Island would immediately ask where the Endicott-Johnson shoe company was. Local lore chronicles immigrants showing up in the city and saying, "Which way E-J?"

More than 7,100 immigrants, most of them Asians, have settled in Binghamton since 2005, according to city statistics. They are a cosmopolitan mix of Kurds, Chinese, Filipinos, Africans, Iraqis — but only a fraction of the city’s predominantly white population of 43,000.

Huong Holmes, 59, who came to the U.S. about 30 years ago as a boat person from Vietnam, said the center gave her a firm footing in America.

"They set up my apartment, they collected the furniture, they gave me some money," said Holmes, a resident of nearby Endicott, who for years has volunteered as a translator at the center and is now working on her doctorate of ministry. "I thank the American Civic Association a lot. That’s why I’m doing my best to help all the other people."

The victims were killed as they were bettering themselves, many of them preparing to become citizens.

The center is a stepping stone for recent arrivals, many with poor or nonexistent English-speaking skills. Dolores Yigal, a recent touchdown from the Philippines, was learning English there as she dreamed of getting a job working with children, said her husband, Omri Yigal.

"She wanted to learn English so she could find work," he said. Dolores Yigal was at the center the day of the shooting.

"They said she probably went quickly so she didn’t suffer, I pray," he said, his voice shaking.

The center is a haven for many in a busy new country they were still getting used to. Xiurong Yue, an accountant in China, is learning English there while working as a motel housekeeper, said John Gavazzi, her husband. She was not at the center at the time of the shooting.

"To her, this is her connection," he said, "she has friends in the class."

Cynthia Gordineer of the Red Cross said relief efforts have been complicated because families of victims speak about a half-dozen languages, and many have different customs that have to be respected.

"None of us have ever faced this," she said. "We’re trying to find our way around a situation we’ve never faced."