Then he found a better job, he said, at a manufacturing plant on Amnicola Highway. For a while, he lived in Alton Park with two other Latino men. Now he rents an apartment in North Chattanooga and he's taking classes at Chattanooga State. Eventually, he said, he'll return to Guatemala and the home his money built there. His dream is to be a singer, he said, but he's also studying computers.
Dads come, bring families and sometimes bring neighbors.
But it does have an impact on schools. Dalton's Erwin Mitchell, a founder of the Georgia Project, has said the same thing, but he's seen, firsthand, schools where children just didn't speak because they understood nothing said to them. Here it is. We encourage these workers to come here, but then when they come with their families, as they should, the community has not been prepared to teach them. It's selfish not to train these young people.