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Romeike family: Parents had no right to direct the education of their own children because that was a responsibility of the State

Germany gets an assist from Obama, cracks down on home schooling



Germany has followed up its arrest of home-schooling parents in Darmstadt with apparent back channel communication to Washington, leading to a move to deport the Romeike family, who claimed asylum in 2008 in Tennessee so that they could home school their kids.
German couple Uwe and Hanalore Romeike immigrated to America in order to educate their seven children at home, instead of in the German public school system where home schooling is illegal. Tennessee must have seemed relatively ideal compared to their previous experiences. Uwe Romeike explained his reason for moving to America: "We are being persecuted, as are many other home schooling families in Germany. Parents should have the right to choose the best education for their children. That's what's lacking in Germany. We don't have freedom of education. We started home schooling because our two oldest children were in public school for a few years and from the beginning had problems. Our daughter started having headaches and stomach aches, our son's personality changed. After we started home schooling all these symptoms disappeared. We didn't want to stop." Originally a federal immigration judge, Lawrence Burman, granted asylum to the family stating: “We can’t expect every country to follow our Constitution. The world might be a better place if it did. However, the rights being violated here are basic human rights that no country has a right to violate.”

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But the Obama Administration appealed through the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE), and an appeals court viewed their position favorably. ICE cited the Konrad case in the European Court of Human Rights stating “the public education laws of Germany do not violate basic human rights.” The subsequent ruling inferred that parents had no right to direct the education of their own children because that was a responsibility of the State. The case is now on hold to see if the US Supreme Court will hear it. Apparently members of ICE and the Obama administration don’t understand the concept of asylum. The avocation by ICE that “the public education laws of Germany do not violate basic human rights”, seeks to break precedent on the basic foundation of asylum law. If American law is to consistently judge that laws of other nations are paramount then there can never be a basis for asylum. The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) estimates there are 400 German families in the US specifically to home school their children because of persecution; such as the teaching of objectionable material that includes explicit lessons on sex, the promotion of the occult and witchcraft and an effort to teach children to disrespect authority figures.

German government believes schooling is critical to socialization

According to World News Daily, the German government believes schooling is critical to socialization, as evident in its response to another set of parents who objected to police officers picking up their child at home and delivering him to a public school. A government letter on the matter stated: “The minister of education does not share your attitudes toward so-called homeschooling. You complain about the forced school escort of primary school children by the responsible local police officers. … In order to avoid this in future, the education authority is in conversation with the affected family in order to look for possibilities to bring the religious convictions of the family into line with the unalterable school attendance requirement.” This statement underscores the commitment of the German government of Statehood first, with religious conviction submitted to it. Since the beginning of America, European families have fled such oppressive attitudes but now the current administration has decided that Ellis Island is closed (to Europeans anyway), Lady Liberty is retiring, and asylum seekers need to make a u-turn. Meanwhile the persecution in Germany is nothing new. Dirk and Petra Wunderlich’s children were taken away by German police and placed in temporary care earlier this year, simply because they were being home schooled. Michael Donnelly, a lawyer for the HSLDA explains: "There was no other question about this family - they weren't abusing or neglecting their children - the only issue was that they were not in school. It's really quite striking when you look at a free country - as Germany claims to be - and you see how they treat parents who want to exercise a freedom." In this case the Wunderlich’s saw 20 armed police, social workers & special agents outside their home. Mr. Wunderlich recalls “I looked through a window and saw many people, police, and special agents, all armed. They told me they wanted to come in to speak with me. I tried to ask questions, but within seconds, three police officers brought a battering ram and were about to break the door in, so I opened it. The police shoved me into a chair and wouldn’t let me even make a phone call at first. It was chaotic as they told me they had an order to take the children. At my slightest movement the agents would grab me, as if I were a terrorist. You would never expect anything like this to happen in our calm, peaceful village. It was like a scene out of a science fiction movie. Our neighbors and children have been traumatized by this invasion.” Ironically statistics show that home-schooled children fare better than those educated by the State. Additionally there is much educational and psychological thinking that State-run education begins too early with children simply not ready to benefit from the structure of school before the age of eight. This comes as news to the educational establishment, teacher unions, as well as the German authorities who want nothing more than to get their hands on the kids as early and often as possible. These people would be surprised to learn that CS Lewis, Florence Nightingale and Theodore Roosevelt were all home-schooled. Germany is not about to change and the current American justice system will do business with European traditional thinking since it believes that’s what America should become. It’s unfortunate that Barack Obama Senior was not denied access the USA in the first place given his disrespect for the American way. According to the Arizona Republic in 2011 "President Barack Obama's father was forced to leave Harvard University before completing his Ph.D. in economics because the school was concerned about his personal life and finances, according to newly public immigration records." He got to stay five years in America despite obvious character flaws that saw him forcibly removed from Harvard. But his son, the President, doesn’t think foreigners who want to home-school their children should be allowed to stay, regardless of how productive they have proved to be.


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David C. Jennings -- Bio and Archives

David Jennings is an ex-pat Brit. living in California.

A Christian Minister he advocates for Traditional & Conservative causes.

David is also an avid fan of Liverpool Football Club and writes for the supporters club in America

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