I’ve been thinking about the U. S.’s accepting refugees and I’ve come up with an analogy that I think captures my thoughts.
If the residents of progressive strongholds like Scarsdale, New York, Dover, Mass., or San Rafael, California want to accept refugees, I won’t stand in their way. I think they should take as many refugees as they care to from wherever they care to accept them.
However, if the good burghers of those municipalities want to settle these refugees in Birdseye, Indiana or Bauxite, Arkansas or Bear Dance, Montana, I think the very least they can do is ask the residents’ of those villages permission. Having more votes isn’t nearly enough.
It’s like inviting guests out to dinner and then sticking the people at the next table with the check. That’s not philanthropy. It’s rude at the very least.
In theory, it sorta works that way, the State Department hands off to nine NGOs who do the actual settling while HHS pays the bills. I assume (and we know what that means) say Church World Services, NCCB would get let the locals know.
Methinks the problem is a loss of credibility because of high handedness, conflicting messages, and a failure to write a nice wrap up for the Sunday paper explaining it all.
For insomnia, start here with the office of Refugee Settlement at DHHS.
Consider this example of Syrian refugees resettled in Indiana. That doesn’t sound like any sort of democratic process to me. Quite to the contrary it sounds like people with good intentions leaving it to their neighbors to fulfill those intentions.
Reading that article, it sound like the people of Indiana (that church) were the ones actually inviting the refugees there. Are there any instances where states were actually forced to take refugees they didn’t want and weren’t being invited by someone in that state?
Steve
Steve, there was time when no one wanted the jail birds from the Mariel boat lift so Carter sent them to FT Chafee in Arkansas to Clinton’s displeasure. Vietnamese were settled in California despite the Governor’s opposition and lastly nobody wanted Haitian refugees and so Reagan sent them all back
Walt- Folks in boats on your shore is different than accepting people from Syria. We helped create the Vietnamese refugees. So, I will take your answer as a no, there is no example of us taking refugees of the kind we see with Syria and forcing them upon people.
Steve