The unspoken trueths about the eyeranian community in the US

Magazines and other services that depend on advertizers money to survive often exagerate the income levels of their readers or viewers in order to convince advertizers to buy advertizing space with them.

It annoys me so much when I read here and there how the people in the gay community are wealthy supposedly because they don't have kids. It is simply not true. I can analyze this for you, but I'll skip it for now.

Similarly, I constantly read and hear about how successful the iranian community is in the US. Mainly I hear this from magazines and TV stations that need advertisers money. I just like to mention that a good chunk of the iranian community living in the US were the rich people of Iran before the revolution. Around 1979 they started going to the US with all their money. These were not poor Mexican people having to start from zero. These were rich people to beggin with. Its much easier to make money when you have money!! There is no merrit to it.

A while ago one internet magazine published a Video reportage playing around with the topic of iranian homeless people in Los Angeles. The report can be accessed at the bottom of this post. I responded to that post with a heartbreaking and scary story that happened to me relating to the topic.

I've reproduced my comments here as well:

Homeless Iranian by the McDonnalds in Northridge California.
by irannostalgia.com on Thu Sep 20, 2007 09:12 PM CDT

I find the report or video posted on iranian.com somewhat annoying. The way the presenter acts is as if he is putting in doubt that there are homeless iranians in the US.

Here is a story that happened to me:

In 2003, I was living in Northridge California not very far from Westwood. By the way I was unemployed and scared and with rare exception the iranian community was very unhelpful. The job ads on the radio went unanswered and the job postings in the iranian news papers in LA are all either slave driving jobs or people offering themselves to work as nannies.

Anyway, since I was unemployed I would go and eat at McDonalds. I must say that, the experience has made me appreciate McDonalds quite a bit. I would go there mainly for the vanilla ice cream they have which they used to sell for less than a dollar. It would help with the ulcer I was getting from depression.

One morning at the McDonalds we all heard some homeless guy screaming. It was wild screaming. It was really wild and crazy. You couldnt tell what he was saying and it was scarry. Since I knew how it felt to be ignored when needing help, I decided to try to help. I went outside to see who it was. So far I hadn't seen his face. Man, I got out there and I saw Saskuwash!!! You know, the furry guy from Star Wars!! The guys hair and beared had gotten so long that he looked like a ball of hair. He was sitting on the sidewalk of the driveway. I went to sit next to him, but he smelled so bad and was so extrely dirty that I had to sit far away. I started talking with him, but because of the extreme level of his mental problems he would scream half way through and it was hard to figure out anything except one thing: He was iranian. When I heard his iranian name shivers went down my body. Basically I saw myself in him. I was like: If I dont find a job soon I could end up exactly like him.

So, if you are wondering, there is definitly homeless iranians, though Westwood, the rich part of town, is not the best place to look for them. Homelessnes is a serious problem and the reporter should not be laughing around about it.

Nobody helps them, and this sort of report saying that they go to las vegas or they are drug addicts doesnt help.

The guy I saw in Northridge had no money to eat and I bought him food while being unemployed. He was in such bad state that nobody dared to even go close to him. I was the only person probably through simpathy.

By the way, back then I did eventually find a short term job in LA that saved me! But it wasn't the iranian community that hired me, it was an office of the Spanish government in LA that hired me.

by Dario Margeli (AKA irannostalgia.com )

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And here is the link to the original article on homeless iranians in Los Angeles. The video is not very interesting because its part 1 of a 2 part series and in part one the reporter is trying to show how there is a denial within iranians. Its in part 2 that they show what really is going on. However, read the comments, I have placed a story that happened to me there. I've used the "irannostalgia.com" name for my comments: