Whenever the US State Department sends out a representative to praise a local community (and spin the media) about their good work in resettling refugees, I suspect something is going horribly wrong. In fact, Buffalo has graced our pages with many problems over the years.
Here is one post from May of 2012 where we learned that the Christian and Jewish populations of that part of New York are declining as the Muslim population increases through refugee resettlement. We began that post with this:
Ho hum, as the US Conference of Catholic Bishops asks the US State Department for more Muslims to resettle in your towns and cities, the number of Catholics and Jews are declining in “welcoming” Buffalo.
[If you are interested, here is a database to help you figure out who is coming to your town.]
Before reading on, you might want to check our archives on Buffalo here. Wow! We have a lot of stories from Buffalo! It was just two weeks ago we read about the Somali father who beat his young son to death in Buffalo over homework.
Here is the glowing report yesterday from Buffalo’s WBFO:
Given the high number of refugees the federal government has helped resettle in Buffalo, officials with the U.S. State Department were in town this week to assess the program.
Read and listen yourself to Simon Henshaw, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary with the Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration tell us about how immigrants are rebuilding the economically distressed community. Then here is Henshaw gushing about the culturally diverse school system (is that where the problem is?).
“I don’t remember how many different nationalities they said, but it was 20-30 different nationalities.
We watched the kids leaving the school all in different dresses, all with different ethnicity. And it was just so great to meet the leadership of the school…and listen how they’re integrating, how they’re working, how they’re maintaining the cultures of the different students that are there and also making them apart of their community,” said Henshaw.
If anyone sees more recent news from “welcoming” Buffalo, please send it my way. I’m wondering if Buffalo has signaled that they need a break like so many other cities?