Easily the first question anyone asks who is hearing for the first time that we have admitted to the US, at great taxpayer expense, hundreds of thousands of refugees over the last four decades is this:
Why aren’t we taking care of our own vulnerable people first?
The other day when I said that we need a grassroots group called ‘Migration Moratorium Now!’ I figure the subtitle would be something like this: ‘Take Care of Americans First!’
And, that is the gist of this letter, thanks to reader Joanne for sharing it, at Syracuse.com:
Syracuse is falling apart, and Mayor Walsh’s priority is refugees?
The writer, Paul Strail, is responding to a lengthy opinion piece written by the latest liberal mayor of Syracuse, Ben Walsh, with the help of Michael Melara executive director of Catholic Charities of Onondaga County.
Here is just a bit of Mr. Strail’s response to the mayor:
The Post-Standard recently reported that Syracuse is still one of the poorest cities in the country. Nevertheless, Mayor Ben Walsh wrote in your paper that President Donald Trump was wrong to limit the number of refugees that the United States could allow (“Dear President Trump, Syracuse wants refugees,” Sept. 26, 2019).
This seems like a strange priority for Walsh to stake out, especially because his city is falling apart . At times, there seem to be homeless men and women panhandling on every street corner. Many of these folks are veterans.
[….]
The murder rate in Syracuse is too high. Academic achievement in the city schools is too low. So, when the mayor should be focused on meeting the many vital needs of his own city, he has to let everyone know that his real concern lies in preventing Trump from restricting the flow of foreign refugees into his city. How that misguided priority will help improve the crime rate, boost academic achievement in the schools, elevate the standard of living of the city’s poor and homeless, and give struggling homeowners some kind of tax relief, is anyone’s guess.
The truth is that Syracuse’s reputation as a sanctuary city must be maintained if Walsh hopes to win the support (and donations) of enough liberal Democrats in the next election. Loudly criticizing the president is the best way to do that. The suggestion that the president must hate refugees because he is an extraordinary bigot is the means by which Walsh is feeding red meat to Syracuse’s Trump-haters.
I dare not copy any more of it, please read Mr. Strail’s sensible analysis.
One of the first things I would ask the mayor is this: Since Syracuse has ‘welcomed’ 10,000 refugees to the city over a recent ten year period, where is the proof that they have revitalized the city?
Indeed are they still there, or like the Bosnians who supposedly helped boost the economy of St. Louis have they moved out of a city run by progressive politicians?
Amazing how either people don’t read, or have very short memories.
In 2015 we reported on a story from the Atlantic about how Syracuse is falling into perpetual poverty as its poorer sections become poorer with the importation of already impoverished refugees!
I call this illogical argument—that refugees bring economic boom times to struggling cities—the big lie!
That letter could just as easily have been about any city or town in any region of New York State outside of the New York City metro area. New York is always at least in the top five and, over the last few years, has been the number one state showing a net loss of citizens. Sensible people get sick of high taxes, no jobs, and looking at falling apart, run-down EVERYTHING and leave, leaving me to wonder at which point they will run out of people who can prop the whole corrupt mess up. The suckiest job I ever held involved me doing project management work that had me living Western NY and driving through all those dying places in the Western, Southern, and Upstate regions of that state and I was always in awe of what a complete dump the place was, with many of those towns looking like nothing new other than some fast food or Walmart’s had been built since the 1950’s, frozen in time, paint peeling off the walls of old wood-frame houses that probably looked really nice around 1920 or so. Almost everywhere looked like that and it made me reflect on what life in Cuba might be like.
I watch the fate of New York with interest because, unlike California, it does not have nice weather going for it but, rather, very cold winters and a lot of rain and snow, punishing its already ragged and decaying infrastructure. Plenty of cops, though, all over the roads with laser detectors and speed traps to fleece the public and bolster their failing budgets–I saw more cops per capita in those rural areas than I did living in Chicago! A bad, oppressive vibe everywhere you went. The simple answer to the guy’s question in that letter is, if they weren’t filling those wrecks of towns and cities up with refugees, they’d stay empty and sink into the mud like they deserve. From what I experienced, greater New York State seems poised to be the biggest welfare state / slum in the history of the USA unless they do something to fix taxes and the economy to attract productive people and businesses back to the area (not likely). Oh, but it’s a “nice place to raise a family”, though. For some reason people trying to defend the place always say that. Never understood how they came up with that but it cracks me up.