Friday, June 14, 2019

Texas city seeks French, African dialect speakers to help with hundreds of released African border-crossers

Ariana Drehsler/AFP/Getty Images
The border crisis in major Texas city has gone multilingual as border-crossing migrants from Africa are set to be released into the city of San Antonio.
Interim Assistant City Manager Dr. Collen Bridger told local CBS affiliate KENS on Thursday in a story that details how the city is now scrambling to find French-speaking volunteers to deal with the recent influx.
“We didn’t get a heads up,” Bridger told the outlet. “When we called Border Patrol to confirm, they said, ‘yea another 200 to 300 from the Congo and Angola will be coming to San Antonio.'”
Bridger told the news station that Congolese migrants began to arrive in the city on Tuesday. The migrants told local officials that they came with a group that went through Ecuador to the U.S. southern border. One of them told the news outlet that he came to the border to seek asylum and bring his family over from the Congo region.
And that large number of asylum seekers from Francophonic portions of the African continent has city officials on the lookout for anyone who can come help break down the language barrier and get them to their final destination.
“If you speak primarily French and can come spend 6,7,8 hours, that would be really helpful,” Bridger said.
Read the rest of the story HERE.

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