Chelsea Conaboy is a reporter for the Concord Monitor and wrote an article yesterday that begins:
Augustin Ntabaganyimana sat one sticky afternoon last month with a dozen Bhutanese people newly arrived in Concord from refugee camps in Nepal. He walked them through a cultural orientation, explaining tasks such as how to pay rent, use food stamps and apply for green cards.
One man asked how he would be able to pay $850 for his apartment and support his family if he was making just $1,000 a month.
“That is a very good question,” Ntabaganyimana said, while another man translated. “I had that question when I came here as a refugee myself.”
The reporter then goes into a long story about how former refugee Mr. N. escaped Africa and made a success of himself in America—-working for a volag resettling more refugees—for the remainder of her article.
I would like to know how Mr. Ntabaganyimana answered the refugee’s question. How does a refugee pay $850 for rent on a take home pay of $1000 a month and support a family? That is one of the primary questions citizens in Hagerstown (see September Forum category for everything that happened in my county) asked last summer and fall as people struggled to understand how the economics of refugee resettlement actually works.
I know the answer—it is welfare. See my post yesterday on Mark Krikorian’s new book. I don’t know why the federal government and these volags can’t just be straight with the public and say it. Everyone knows what the truth is, that the taxpayer is picking up the rest of the tab, and the obvious silence on the subject just gets people angrier.