Actually when I wrote about the firestorm of citizen comments to an article about would-be Somali rapists in Malta yesterday, I didn’t know there would be a Part II about the “hysteria” so soon.
This is from the Guardian in the UK:
Since 2002 the Maltese government has processed 11,500 refugees and economic migrants, a figure, it says, equating to about 1.7 million arriving in France, Italy or the UK. The tensions are palpable. Anti-immigrant daubings have sprung up amid the sandstone walls of Valletta, Malta’s fortified 16th century capital; Africans say they frequently suffer racism, and a prominent Jesuit charity has been the victim of arson attacks for its outspoken support of migrants.
“There’s an ugly xenophobia developing here and I think the government carries some responsibility for that,” says Dr Neil Falzon, the local representative of the United Nations high commissioner for refugees. “It is selling the idea that Malta can’t cope. The truth is it has to. There’s already a settled African population on this island, they just live in a different reality to the rest of Maltese society. The government should be leading the process of integrating them with jobs, education and homes instead of taking part in this kind of national hysteria.”
Whenever someone uses the word “xenophobia” it infuriates me. It’s like the “racist” label, it is meant to shut good people up!
The people of Malta aren’t afraid of people who are differant from them, they are afraid of losing their way of life, their jobs, the way they grew up, the things that they are comfortable with, their country(!), and that is a normal human reaction. When Somalis in the US join together in apartment buildings and larger communities we don’t call them xenophobic, they just want to live with their kind of people! Or how about if thousands of Europeans went to Somalia and demanded jobs and a piece of the country, the Somalis wouldn’t be called xenophobic (actually the Europeans would be called invaders and the Somalis would kill them).
Back to the Guardian with a prediction from a pro-immigrant Jesuit:
“The result will be a social catastrophe,” says Father Joseph Cassar, of the Jesuit Refugee Service. “In five years I fear we’ll see ghettos, social unrest and a rise of far-right politics.
Ahhhh! The dreaded “far-right politics.”
Josiah, the featured refugee in this story has other plans anyway:
“The Maltese people don’t want us, there’s no work and when we find a job we are paid nothing. In Somalia you live or you die … here I am not dying, but I am not alive. I will go to Italy.”
So what does this have to do with Refugee Resettlement in the US? We are bringing some of these Somali illegals to the US, here.