If you think that American Christians are slowly losing their rights, just
consider the following story of a German Christian family who found
political asylum in the USA, because they were being persecuted by their own
government, simply because they wanted to home school their five children.
If you try to home school in Germany, you are headed for deep trouble!

On a related note, if -- as some people believe -- the coming ungodly leader
known as the Beast were to rise to power in a European SuperState, and
gather ten other nations -- horns -- under his wings, given the current
attitudes in Germany, I can easily see how Germany could possibly be his
power base, under a new "Holy Roman Empire". Germany and France are the two
strongest nations in the European Union.

I am not saying that this is how the Beast will rise to power; and I do have
other beliefs and speculations concerning this topic, as I outline in my
articles; but the anti-Christian nature/attitude of German politics would
certainly be the perfect environment for the Beast.

Following is an article from the New York Times.


Judge Grants Asylum to German Home Schoolers

By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON - NYT

February 28, 2010


MORRISTOWN, Tenn. -- On a quiet street in this little town in the foothills
of the Smoky Mountains lives a family of refugees who were granted asylum in
the United States because they feared persecution in their home country.

The family came to the United States in 2008 from Germany, where children
are required to attend an officially recognized school, be it public,
private or religious.

The reason for that fear has rarely, if ever, been the basis of an asylum
case. The parents, Uwe and Hannelore Romeike, want to home-school their five
children, ranging in age from 2 to 12, a practice illegal in their native
land, Germany.

Among European countries, Germany is nearly alone in requiring, and
enforcing, attendance of children at an officially recognized school. The
school can be private or religious, but it must be a school. Exceptions can
be made for health reasons but not for principled objections.

But the Romeikes, who are devout Christians, said they wanted their children
to learn in a different environment. Mr. Romeike (pronounced ro-MY-kuh), 38,
a soft-spoken piano teacher whose young children greet strangers at the
front door with a startlingly grown-up politeness, said the unruly behavior
of students that was allowed by many teachers had kept his children from
learning. The stories in German readers, in which devils, witches and
disobedient children are often portrayed as heroes, set bad examples, he
said.

"I don't expect the school to teach about the Bible," he said,
but "part of
education should be character-building."

In Germany, he said, home-schoolers are seen as "fundamentalist religious
nuts who don't want their children to get to know what is going on in the
world, who want to protect them from everything."

"In fact," he said, sitting on his sofa as his three older
children wrote in
workbooks at the dining table, "I want my children to learn the truth and to
learn about what's going on in the world so that they can deal with it."

The reasoning behind the German law, cited by officials and in court cases,
is to foster social integration, ensure exposure to people from different
backgrounds and prevent what some call "parallel societies."

"We have had this legal basis ever since the state was founded,"
said Thomas
Hilsenbeck, a spokesman for the Ministry for Culture, Youth and Sport in the
Romeikes' state, Baden-Wuerttemberg. "This is broadly accepted among the
general public."

The family has been here for some time, having left Germany in 2008. But it
was not until Jan. 26 that a federal immigration judge in Memphis granted
them political asylum, ruling that they had a reasonable fear of persecution
for their beliefs if they returned.

In a harshly worded decision, the judge, Lawrence O. Burman, denounced the
German policy, calling it "utterly repellent to everything we believe as
Americans," and expressed shock at the heavy fines and other penalties the
government has levied on home-schooling parents, including taking custody of
their children.

Describing home-schoolers as a distinct group of people who have a
"principled opposition to government policy," he ruled that the Romeikes
would face persecution both because of their religious beliefs and because
they were "members of a particular social group," two standards
for granting
asylum.

"It is definitely new," said Prof. Philip G. Schrag, the director of
Georgetown Law School's asylum law program, who added that he had never
heard of such a case. "What's novel about the argument is the nature of the
social group."

But, he said, given the severity of the penalties that German home-schoolers
potentially face, the judge's decision "does not seem far outside the
margin."

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has appealed the decision, Mr. Romeike's
lawyer said Friday. A spokesman for the agency declined to comment, citing
the litigation.

The Romeikes had never heard of home schooling when they set out to find an
alternative to the local public school in Germany, where their two oldest
children -- now 11 and 12 -- were having trouble with rowdy classmates. The
nearby private and religious schools, Mr. Romeike said, were just as bad or
even worse.

Then a woman in their church mentioned that some families, though none in
the church itself, had taken their children out of school altogether.

"She knew a family, but she didn't want to mention their name because it
wasn't legal," Mr. Romeike said.

Months of research followed: the Romeikes read articles, sat in on court
cases and talked to other home-schoolers in Germany. Eventually they decided
to give it a try. Working with a curriculum from a private Christian
correspondence school -- one not recognized by the German government -- they
expected to be punished with moderate fines and otherwise left alone.

But they soon discovered differently, he said, facing fines eventually
totaling over $11,000, threats that they would lose custody of their
children and, one morning, a visit by the police, who took the children to
school in a police van. Those were among the fines and potential penalties
that Judge Burman said rose to the level of persecution.

Mr. Romeike began looking to other countries, but his inability to speak
anything other than German or English limited his options. Then, at a
conference for home-schoolers in 2007, he saw Mike Donnelly, a lawyer for
the Home School Legal Defense Association, a Virginia-based advocacy
organization

Long before the Romeikes had begun their fight, lawyers at the association
had been discussing the situation in Germany. They had tried litigating
cases one by one, usually unsuccessfully.

In 2006, after the European Court of Human Rights declined to hear a
petition by home-schooling parents that had failed in German courts, lawyers
at the association decided to add a political line of attack to the legal
one, both to raise awareness of the German policies and to find some broader
solution to the issue.

At a brainstorming session, one of the lawyers, Jim Mason, came up with the
idea of petitioning for political asylum.

"I don't know German law or German courts," Mr. Mason said,
"but I do know
American courts."

Another German home-schooling family had already moved to Morristown, so the
Romeikes sold many of their belongings, including their grand piano, and
came here too. The court battle lasted over a year, and while the Romeikes'
lawyers said they had expected to succeed, they were surprised by the vigor
of the judge's opinion. So was the German government.

"We're all surprised because we consider the German educational system as
very excellent," said Lutz Hermann Goergens, the German consul general in
Atlanta. He defended Germany's policy on the grounds of fostering the
ability "to peacefully interact with different values and different
religions."

Mr. Romeike said he would like to return to Germany if the laws became more
amenable to home schooling. There is still hope, he said, though the
political landscape does not look too promising right now.

In the meantime, he added, "it's a good learning experience."



Jeff Snyder, SysOp - Armageddon BBS  Visit us at endtimeprophecy.org port 23
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your Download Center 4 Mac BBS Software & Christian Files.  We Use Hermes II


--- Hermes Web Tosser 1.1