A town, and team, transformed: immigrants have always inspired strong reactions, both positive and negative. A look at how a boys soccer team made up of refugees and a small town in Georgia are learning to live with each other.

• Author: St. John, Warren

BACKGROUND

Although the U.S. is a nation of immigrants, each new immigrant group has faced discrimination when it first arrived. Today, young refugees from various countries find themselves in Clarkston, Ga., where in spite of some antipathy toward newcomers, their skills on the soccer field are helping them fit in and stand out.

CRITICAL THINKING

* Address a key theme in the story: the collision of cultures. Ask students to discuss how and why many people find it difficult to accept strangers in their midst. Is the negative reaction just a part of human nature? A defensive instinct?

* The article does not address the question of whether or not local residents were asked about the refugee resettlement program. Should refugee agencies try to obtain the consent of local people or gauge public opinion on the subject?

WRITING PROMPT/DISCUSSION

* Tell students to write their own rules for a soccer team made up of refugees from different countries. Their rules should focus on strategies a coach might use to help teens from very different cultures work together as a team.

DISCUSSION QUESTION

* Do you agree with the article's implication that adversity helps make people (like the Fugees) more resilient?

* Does your school have immigrant students? If so, how have other students responded to them?

FAST FACT

* In 2005, California, Florida, and Minnesota were the destinations of 35 percent of refugees coming to the U.S.

* In 2006, the United Nations said there were 24 million "internally displaced" people who were forced to flee their homes but remain in their country. Afghanistan and Lebanon are examples of two such countries.

WEB WATCH

www.refugees.org/article .aspx?id=1082

The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants outlines the step-by-step process refugees must go through before and after they arrive in the U.S.

Until refugees began arriving about 20 years ago, Mayor Lee Swaney likes to say, Clarkston, Georgia, "was just a sleepy little town by the railroad tracks." Since then, this town of 7,100 people east of Atlanta has become one of the most diverse communities in America.

Clarkston High School now has students from more than 50 countries. The local mosque draws more than 800 to Friday prayers. There are congregations of Vietnamese, Sudanese, and Liberian Christians, as well as a Hindu temple. At the shopping center, American stores have been replaced by Vietnamese and Ethiopian restaurants.

The transformation began in the late 1980s, when refugee resettlement agencies decided Clarkston was a perfect place for refugees to...