U.S. Reaches Out To Poor Immigrants In France

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ARI SHAPIRO, host:

Moving now from Iraq to France. The Parisian suburb of Bondi is gritty, poor and plagued by high unemployment. It has a large Muslim population, which has made Bondi one of the targets of a U.S. government initiative to court second- and third-generation immigrants across Europe.

Anita Elash has more.

ANITA ELASH: The young people at this editorial meeting of the well-known Bondi blog live in one of the poorest suburbs in the Paris region. Some are unemployed and many are Muslim, children of immigrants that French society has often pushed aside.

You might expect to find a lot of anti-French, anti-Western sentiment here, the sort that terrorist recruiters try to exploit. But when a phone call from the American embassy in Paris interrupts their meeting, there's a palpable excitement.

Unidentified Man: (Foreign language spoken)

ELASH: The caller is inviting one of the bloggers to the ambassador's residence to meet First Lady Laura Bush.

Unidentified Man: (Foreign language spoken)

ELASH: There's no hesitation. Bushra Zarawall(ph), a 28-year-old student of Moroccan origin, shoots up her hand and volunteers to go.

Ms. BUSHRA ZARAWALL (Student): I was pretty surprised to know that it was about the U.S. embassy because why and how are they interested in the suburbs?

ELASH: The U.S. embassy in France started issuing invitations like this after the September 11th attacks in 2001. Embassies were told to make contact with minority groups for whom the United States had become a potential target. The goal was partly to make terrorism recruiters less appealing.

In France, the embassy's efforts have focused on people like Mohammed Hamdi(ph), a 35-year-old schoolteacher.

Mr. MOHAMMED HAMDI (Teacher): But you have two here in the (unintelligible) where I grew up.

ELASH: Hamdi helped set up the Bondi blog. He's a familiar face in the cafes of Bondi, where he grew up. He's one of three men of Muslim background who have just returned from a three-week visit to the United States as part of the International Visitor Leadership Program.

The program has existed for decades but until recently, participants were chosen from the elites. While he was in the United States, Hamdi visited a tough Washington, D.C., neighborhood and a Muslim clinic in L.A. He traveled with a police officer in Jackson, Mississippi, and met Barack Obama. He says now he's better equipped to assess events in the United States.

Mr. HAMDI: I know, for example, that things are more complicated than we think. When I have a discussion about the American situation I can say it. Me, what I saw, for example, when I was in the neighborhoods of Los Angeles, I saw that and I saw that. I saw Islamic people; I saw poor people; I saw the situation of the black people, of the Spanish people.

ELASH: The fact he was invited on the exchange has had a big impact on his fellow bloggers, like Axel Ardes(ph), a 30-year-old French teacher. Ardes says that many young people in the poor suburbs are upset by years of neglect and confrontations with French leaders, so they're more open to help from the American embassy than they are to anything that might come from their own government.

Mr. AXEL ARDES (Teacher): The American embassy is different. They could be a mix between the French government and us.

ELASH: The embassy's efforts in the French suburbs are still small. About six people will travel to the United States on the International Visitor Leadership Program this year. About $30,000 will go to support community projects.

For NPR News, I'm Anita Elash in Bondi, France.

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