American families rejecting French exchange students

[Grojlach]

French Student Visitors Get the Cold Shoulder

First it was French wines. Then French fries. Now it's French exchange students who are getting the cold shoulder from American families still smarting over France's opposition to the war in Iraq.
Program coordinators and others say that the drooping economy, global tensions and the recent outbreak of SARS have all cut into the summer ritual of students from various countries spending the summer in American homes.
But the programs that seem to have it worst are those selling Americans on the virtues of taking home a little bit of France this summer.
"This has been a horrible year," said Deborah Bertrand, the New York area manager for Loisirs Culturels à L'Étranger, a not-for-profit exchange program based in Paris. "Usually I have no problem finding host families. The only thing I can attribute it to is the anti-French feeling going on because of the Iraq war. My coordinators all up and down the East Coast are having the same problem."
Each year, L.E.C., as the program is known in France, signs up several hundred French teenagers whose parents have paid dearly for them to come to the United States for a summer tradition that has endured for more than three decades. But this year, even though the number of prospective visitors is one-quarter what it once was, the program has yet to find host families for nearly half the 250 teenagers who signed up.
The first wave began arriving on Monday, and unless homes can be found quickly, four Boston-bound teenagers in that group will get refunds instead of trips. At least 100 participants in the program who expected to come in August are also in limbo.
" `Not this year' is what I hear a lot," said Mary Lou Church, an L.E.C. recruiter in Portsmouth, R.I., who is taking extra students into her own home this year rather than turn them away. "This year, with everything that happened with the war, people locally have just taken it personally. When I ask them, `Would you open your home to a French teenager?' they look at me like, `Are you out of your mind? Why would we, when they've been so ungiving to us?' "
Hers is one of the few programs in the Northeast that pays $100 to families to cover groceries and incidentals. So she believes that the economy is an unlikely culprit. "I start talking about exchange programs and they say, `Great.' And when I say they're all from France, end of conversation."
Maybe not here, but in France they are still talking about "the little incident of Carcassonne," as Daniele Thomas Easton, the French honorary consul, put it. A group of 15 students from that city in southwestern France had planned to visit the United States in August at the invitation of the Springside School, a private girls' school in Philadelphia. After four American host families pulled out, the school retracted the invitation, suspending an informal exchange program that has existed since 1976.
When the incident was reported in the European press in June, the French Embassy in Washington interceded, and enough new families stepped forward in the Philadelphia area to receive 10 teenagers after all.
The strained hospitality is hardly one-way. In France in recent weeks, spectators at sporting events have jeered American athletes and renditions of "The Star-Spangled Banner," and one exchange program that sends Americans to France — A.F.S. Intercultural Programs in New York — said its French-bound program took longer to fill this year. Nonetheless, program coordinators say, French host families do not seem to be refusing American students who make the trip.
There is no precise count for the number of French students who enter the United States each summer on tourist visas. Nearly 100 organizations are members of the Council on Standards for International Educational Travel, with many of the largest handling anywhere from 300 to 500 French students each. At a minimum, that suggests that a few thousand French students a year head this way for short stays.
The harsh economy, terrorism and the outbreak of SARS have made finding host families a challenge, according to John Hishmeh, the council's executive director. But globalization, the Internet and cheap airline travel, he said, have conspired in another way as well. "Having a foreign student is no longer a novelty in a lot of communities," he said.
Ms. Bertrand, a Syracuse woman who is L.E.C.'s coordinator for New York and parts of Connecticut, said that most years she has been allowed to make pitches to French classes at five area high schools. This year, she said, only one school granted access. Ads in church bulletins drew little response, and appeals to local newspapers went ignored, she said.
She finally became so exasperated that she drafted an open letter to prospective hosts that was more cri de coeur than letters from the lovelorn.
It started with, "What is wrong with central New York people?" It ran in The Post-Standard in Syracuse, and in slightly altered form — lambasting "Connecticut people" — in The Advocate in Stamford, Conn.
"Are we so self-serving that we've lost touch with the true meaning of America?" it went on. "Are our lives so busy that we can't open our hearts and homes to children who want to learn about our culture? Or perhaps we're still in the anti-French mind-set?"
Though it was not the response she hoped for, her letter drew an immediate reply from John Vogler, a retired machine operator in Syracuse. "Where was France when we needed its support to back us in the war on terrorism against Iraq?" he wrote to his local newspaper. "As far as keeping Franco-American friendship alive, it died six months ago."
In a telephone interview, he added: `That would be the last kid I'd want to take in right now. They can keep their wine and cheese. They'd all be speaking German if it weren't for us."
Things were not much friendlier in southern Connecticut, where L.E.C. also recruits. Wilfrid Malonga, the program's coordinator in Stamford, was so irked by the poor response he was getting that he altered his pitch. His new solicitations sought families who might be interested in being host to a "European" student, with no mention of the fact that the students happened to be French. He said he got more calls, but no takers once details were given.
"Two years ago, I was just inundated," said Mr. Malonga. "I had to select families. Now it's kind of slow." As a native Parisian, he says, he is trying hard not to take the backlash against all things French personally, as he hopes the students in France are doing. "They have nothing to do with the political situation in France, and they are admirers of this country," he said.
Jeremy Ahier, 17, one of the teenagers from Carcassonne who will be in Philadelphia in August, said through an interpreter that he was "most interested in learning more about the Amish." A friend who will be joining him on the trip, Pierre Robin, 17, said he wanted to visit museums and take in a baseball game.
Roland Stern, the managing director of L.E.C. in Paris, said that in years like this one, outreach programs mean more than ever.
Linda Alario, a lawyer who talked her husband into opening their home in Syracuse this year to a French student named Sandra LeClair, said: "I thought this is the year to do it. When the war began, so many people reacted as though the French did not have the right to express their opinion."
And when all else fails, the recruiters are recruiting one another. Late last week, Ms. Church, the Rhode Island recruiter, and her husband, a tugboat operator, bailed out the program when they agreed to receive Sébastien Plantet, a young man from Versailles who arrived on Sunday but had nowhere to go.
Ms. Thomas Easton, the honorary French consul in Philadelphia, expressed confidence that any French teenagers who made it to America this summer would not be disappointed. In the end, she said, they want what every teenager around the world wants, and will find it here.
"They want to be away from Mom and Dad for a while," she said.

Source: New York Times

*shakes head in disapproval*
Please tell me that this article is painting an unfair picture of the actual situation... As this entire situation here is really, really sad and utterly moronic at the same time. I still wonder why some people - on both sides - hold childish grudges against an entire nation for what their respective Governments were responsible for.

[ 07-05-2003, 04:34 AM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]

[Barry the Sprout]

This always confuses me. Over here in Britain 80% of the public were against the war, but because Tony Blair decided it was ok there is no bad feeling towards us on that issue. However in France there was, I think, a smaller amount of protestors - but because Chirac said no the whole nation must be reviled. It makes no sense whatsoever.

Seriously... does anyone think that its those specific French kids fault?

[skywalker]

Originally posted by Barry the Sprout: This always confuses me. Over here in Britain 80% of the public were against the war, but because Tony Blair decided it was ok there is no bad feeling towards us on that issue. However in France there was, I think, a smaller amount of protestors - but because Chirac said no the whole nation must be reviled. It makes no sense whatsoever. Seriously... does anyone think that its those specific French kids fault?

It's just an example of good old fashioned ignorance, I really don't understand it either, Barry.

Mark

[Barry the Sprout]

What gets me is that the reason Chirac was against the war was the reason Bush was in favour of it! The war was profitable for some American companies, but not profitable for some French ones... you'd have thought that there would at least have been a kind of respect for the "French" reasoning.

And don't get me wrong Mark, I know this is only a some Americans, and they're hardly representative of what is on the whole a very welcoming country. I know you're not likely to accuse me of anti-americanism, but I wanted to make my position clear for everyone...

[Chewbacca]

I can only apologize on behalf of my less-enlightened countrymen, beginning with Bill O'Reilly of FOX news who used his popularity to really spinned this issue to death.

Shame on him for inciting what amounts to prejudice against all the French for the opinions of the French goverment. Shame on him for taking the great idea of freedom of expression and crapping all over it with his egotistical bias. He is free to have his opinions and I am free to say his opinions on this issue are narrow-minded and elitist.

If the 6 hour special on the American Revolution I enjoyed yesterday taught me anything, it is that I have the French to thank for my freedom of opinion today. Thank You, France!!!!

[Timber Loftis]

Even during the American Revolution, France was pursuing its best interests. OF course, that's what nations do all the time, I guess.

Personally, I feel sad for those few American boys that will miss out on seeing some lovely French girls this summer. I remember exchange students taught me 2 very important lessons: (1) variety is the spice of life and (2) women who are travelling in a foreign country are MUCH more promiscuous. Hooray for the foreign exchange programs. [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

[Iron_Ranger]

Originally posted by Chewbacca: If the 6 hour special on the American Revolution I enjoyed yesterday taught me anything, it is that I have the French to thank for my freedom of opinion today. Thank You, France!!!!

Ok let me see if I got this strait-

Its quiet alright for Americans to praise France for all the help they gave during our independence 227 years ago.

But its not alright for Americans to say 'We saved your ass' for liberating them from Germans 58 years ago?

And as far as O'Reilly goes, anything I have heard him say about the French has been dead on.

[Chewbacca]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: Even during the American Revolution, France was pursuing its best interests. OF course, that's what nations do all the time, I guess. Personally, I feel sad for those few American boys that will miss out on seeing some lovely French girls this summer. I remember exchange students taught me 2 very important lessons: (1) variety is the spice of life and (2) women who are travelling in a foreign country are MUCH more promiscuous. Hooray for the foreign exchange programs. [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img]

LOL!!! Those French girl's accents always make my ears tingle!

[Chewbacca]

Originally posted by Iron_Ranger: quote: Originally posted by Chewbacca: If the 6 hour special on the American Revolution I enjoyed yesterday taught me anything, it is that I have the French to thank for my freedom of opinion today. Thank You, France!!!!

Ok let me see if I got this strait-
...
But its not alright for Americans to say 'We saved your ass' for liberating them from Germans 58 years ago?....

[/QUOTE]Did I say that? No, I didnt say anything like that. Where did you get that idea from? It wasnt from me. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Don't forget the British also helped save their ass, and the French resistance as well.

[Iron_Ranger]

Originally posted by Chewbacca: quote: Originally posted by Iron_Ranger: quote: Originally posted by Chewbacca: If the 6 hour special on the American Revolution I enjoyed yesterday taught me anything, it is that I have the French to thank for my freedom of opinion today. Thank You, France!!!!

Ok let me see if I got this strait-
...
But its not alright for Americans to say 'We saved your ass' for liberating them from Germans 58 years ago?....

[/QUOTE]Did I say that? No, I didnt say anything like that. Where did you get that idea from? It wasnt from me. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Don't forget the British also helped save their ass, and the French resistance as well. [/QUOTE] The popular opinion is that the 'We bailed you out' agument is invalid. I would do a search for it, but the War Forums archives arent up for searcing.

Would it have been possible for the British and French resistance to succced, if we (The US) did not interfere?