I’m not opposed to that, but I don’t think we can speak for other individuals’ wishes/plans at some unknowable point in the future. So I’m open.
Very true. It’s a crying, tragic shame that the situation was allowed to become what it is today.
The percentage of Americans who reject the idea of accepting Muslim refugees based solely on religion (and not on security) is likely very small. The bigger reason is security.
Are there double standards at play here? Would we scrutinize Protestant refugees from countries like Switzerland the same way? Probably not, but we also have no reason to believe that they can’t be trusted. History has not shown us any proof.
I am all for providing assistance to the unfortunate ones, but what concerns me is that no one is talking about a long term plan (please correct me if that issue has been addressed in details). All the talk is about screening. Orphaned kids can be placed in foster families and afopted, so that is good. So we pick young widowed moms with little kids and old grandmas… I am afraid that most likely it will mean that these refugees will be on government assistance for quite a while and/or continue to live in poverty, just like many of the US families where the father figure is missing. Will they be provided mental health support and counseling? Job training? Other services? Tuition assistance for the kids to go college? Will they be placed close to communities providing support to lean on? There has to be a solid plan for integrating these families into the US society and helping them to be able to begin living on their own. Providing public assistance or relying on @zoosermom volunteer help in perpetuity is not a good plan.
Just one sad example how one “star refugee” fell through the cracks… Remember the Lybian “symbol of freedom”? She was granted assylum in the US and is now serving time for assault in CO. The system that was supposed to get her up on her feet failed her, just like our government fails many others with mental issues.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/30/us/libya-rape-victim-sentencing/
And Muslim Syrian immigrants have a history of violence and terrorism? News to me.
The briefing that has been posted a few times addresses that. The refugees are not just dumped at the airport. The US government works with faith-based and other organizations to settle the refugees, get them housing, find jobs, get the kids settled in school. I don’t know if zoosermom’s church sponsors new refugees, but groups like her church are exactly the people who are providing the support.
Groups like zoosermom’s church support the new refugees to start a new life here.
Yes that’s right and I support that as a general matter. And I really would take in a child/children/mother with children if the circumstances arose. Which I have before (not with Syrians in the past, though, obviously).
But it should be noted that some of the resettlement groups (not all) receive a significant amount of funding per person for the refugees it re-settles - which creates its own incentive. There are a lot of people in the Christian community (I’m speaking for my own situation, not making a blanket statement) who take their personal commitment and responsibility to our fellow man very seriously and live our faith that way. Which is not to say that it’s the only way or the most important way, but it is a much bigger thing than many people outside of the community realize, and I’m glad that people here on CC who might be less familiar are getting to hear about these programs and commitments. It’s become an article of faith for some that Christians and “right-wingers” are always hypocrites and don’t put our money/time/homes where our mouths are, but that is patently false in this area as well as others. Does that mean that there aren’t Christian hypocrites? God no! But the kneejerk reaction that Christians are ALWAYS hypocrites (you oppose __, so why don’t you pay for _ or bring it into your house? – more often than many people think, we do those things every day.)
A general rule, I support this incentive. That is, if a church is given some money to resettle a refugee family, on the condition that the church members work and donate to resettle the refugee family, that seems like a good incentive to me. NGOs like churches shouldn’t make a profit on refugees, but they should get help.
We can’t let the good be the enemy of the best. We can never eliminate all fraud. We need to be vigilant, and we should be careful stewards of government money, but we can’t let a demand for 100% perfection stop us from doing things that improve the world.
I actually do, as well, but I wanted to be clear so no one came back and attacked me for failing to disclose that there is a financial motive.
From the National Archives teaching resources:
One could well argue, and I would agree, that the act was particularly horrendous and un-American because 65% were citizens, but I strongly doubt that you would argue that it was okay to intern people’s elderly grandparents because they had never been naturalized.
I think the situation of the Palestinians, who were maintained in camps on the borders of Israel like running sores, rather than being assimilated into other Arab states, then treated like slaves when allowed into Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, to cite two examples, has amply demonstrated exactly how likely that is to happen.
After WWII, the USSR took the easternmost province of Finland, Karelia. You didn’t see Karelian refugee camps on the borders. From Wikipedia:
“In 1939, the Soviet Union attacked Finland, thus starting the Winter War. The Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940 handed most of Finnish Karelia to the Soviet Union. About 400,000 people, virtually the whole population, had to be relocated within Finland. In 1941, Karelia was liberated for three years during the Continuation War of 1941 to 1944 when East Karelia was occupied by the Finns. The Winter War and the resulting Soviet expansion caused considerable bitterness in Finland, which lost its second biggest city, Viipuri, its industrial heartland along the river Vuoksi, the Saimaa canal that connected central Finland to the Gulf of Finland, access to the fishing waters of Lake Ladoga (Finnish: Laatokka), and made an eighth of her citizens refugees without chance of return. (From the areas ceded to the Soviet Union, the whole population was evacuated and resettled in other parts of Finland. The present inhabitants of the former Finnish Karelian parts of Russia, such as the city of Vyborg/Viipuri and the Karelian Isthmus, are post-war immigrants and their descendants.)”
There are support services for refugees - I occasionally work for a company in whose building there’s a refugee organization that helps mostly African and Nepalese (Tibetan) immigrants. Whether or not the amount of support they receive is adequate is something I can’t say. An acquaintance who works there says, some groups are better prepared than others: the more educated and westernized the refugees, the better their odds of finding a footing in American society. By that measure, many of the Syrians seeing asylum- skilled and middle class - would be ones more likely to succeed here.
I don’t know what you heard in the news, but this isn’t true. They mistreat workers from East Asia (specifically Indians and Pakistanis), but not any Palestinians that I could see. They’re horribly bigoted against any who are not their own, but they haven’t treated the Palestinians like “slaves”.
Precisely. And if the media is any indication, several mosques/churches/individuals are willing to extend a helping hand.
I don’t know about that, but I can tell you this: I interviewed for the Census Bureau for several years, doing surveys that provide much of the basic data about the workforce, the housing supply, household economic situation, and so on. I interviewed people from the US, Afghanistan, Burundi, Somalia, Viet Nam, and probably some others I’m forgetting. Some of those people were cooperative, some weren’t. Somalis, in particlar, were very hard to interview: they viewed anyone associated with a government with intense suspicion and fear, which was incredibly frustrating to us, given that it was OUR government that was making their safe lives here possible. Anyway, I interviewed an Iraqi refugee family. The father had worked for the US forces there. They were living in subsidized housing, and undoubtedly got other support as well. Their children were charming, and their teenage daughters had really good English for someone who came here a few years ago with none. When we were done, he stood up formally and said, “I want to tell you something. I want to thank the government of the United States for everything it has done for us.”
Believe me, that was the nicest thing that any interviewee ever said to me.
I live in an area that is a federally designated refugee resettlement area. The federal government provides a lot less aid/support than most people would think. Religious and nonprofit groups pick up a lot of the assistance and I’ve done volunteer work with refugees in my area. I am always pleasantly surprised that the vast majority of the refugees do very well acclimating to their new homes, especially children, given the vast differences in climate, culture, etc. They support one another, work very hard, appreciate their opportunities and have a desire to be successful. Unlike many folks born in the USA, they still believe in the American success story - and I’ve seen them make it happen. In the first group of children I became involved with, many are currently in 4 year colleges and doing well.
I’ve written about this before, but in my literacy volunteer work, I’ve found that immigrants who have no history of literacy in any language have a very hard time for at least two generations in becoming fully self-sufficient and independent, so I do think educated refugees from elsewhere would have that part a bit easier and move faster to settling in if they choose to do so.
“The briefing that has been posted a few times addresses that. The refugees are not just dumped at the airport. The US government works with faith-based and other organizations to settle the refugees, get them housing, find jobs, get the kids settled in school.”
Of course they aren’t dumped at the airport. I am well aware of what short-term help is available to the refugees and that churches get subsidies for doing some of this work (have been involved with a group helping Eastern European refugees in the early nineties). I was talking about long-term support, because bringing in single mothers and elderly will require a lot more effort to get them on their feet than that needed to integrate intact families.
The mood of the country post Paris.
^ So.
The American people are often wrongheaded about things.
It takes courage, something most people lack, to do the right thing in in the face of strong opposition.
^TatinG: whereas the refugees have NOTHING to do with the attacks in Paris (except that this horror is what they’ve lived through and that the people who perpetrated the attacks are those they’re trying to flee.)
The two short videos describe the mood in France well, as far as I can tell from communicating with the people I know there - the people speak French and it’s not subtitled so no all will be able to understand, so I apologize. (I’ve tried to find them subtitled but couldn’t).
http://www.arretsurimages.net/contenu.php?id=8228
I wish we knew the full story of the Paris attacker who dropped the false Syrian passport. I guess we will know at some point.
MYOS, your link is behind a paywall. But here is a subtitled version of the man with the cute little toddler, talking about the attacks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRcevyjpLE8