Did you ever hear of the ‘big lie theory?’ Basically it says that the lie is so colossal no one would believe you made it up. But, one of many big lies perpetrated by the refugee resettlement industry is the one which says pouring thousands of impoverished immigrants into a dying city will revive it—-a concept which defies logic and commonsense!
Here is a story in The Atlantic (not some right wing blog!) about how the city of Syracuse is becoming more impoverished as the refugees pour in.
For our readers from Minnesota, read the whole thing, because Somalis who are resettled in Syracuse are hightailing it to your neighborhood in search of jobs and better welfare (one Somali says he has to get money to send ‘home’ to Somalia). Which reminds me that phony-baloney studies on how immigrants supposedly bring boom times to cities, NEVER factor in the remittances the immigrants send out of the country thus making those dollars unavailable to the local economy.
Refugees falling into “perpetual poverty.”
SYRACUSE—Drive around this economically depressed city and the signs of the more than 10,000 refugees who have settled here are everywhere, from the ethnic grocery stores on the Northside to clusters of Somali Bantu women sitting in brightly colored veils and dresses in Central Village, one of the city’s housing projects in the Southside.
The number of refugees arriving in America is nearing a recent high, and will continue to track upward following an announcement by President Obama last month that the country would welcome at least 10,000 displaced Syrians.
Syracuse, like other cities in the North and Midwest that have experienced population losses, has put out the welcome mat for refugees, with Mayor Stephanie Miner joining 17 mayors in a letter to President Obama encouraging the country to accept even more Syrian refugees.
But Syracuse, like many other cities with large populations of refugees, is grappling with the challenges of bringing strangers from abroad to a down-and-out area. More than 70 different languages are spoken in Syracuse City schools, which a court has declared underfunded. Nearby Utica banned 17-to-20-year-olds from city schools, instead choosing to bus them to a school where they can’t earn a diploma. Syracuse is still trying to figure out how to find housing for refugees who can’t afford much and how to ensure, in a region where jobs are hard to come by, that refugees don’t fall into perpetual poverty.
So far, the city has struggled to deliver on those goals. According to analysis by Paul Jargowsky, a fellow at the Century Foundation, the number of high-poverty census tracts doubled in Syracuse from 2000 to 2013. Many of the areas that saw the highest jumps in concentrated poverty were Northside neighborhoods where large populations of refugees have resettled. Even there, refugees have a hard time finding affordable housing.
There is so much more, but I am running out of time. Please read it all yourself especially if you are in a ‘pocket of resistance’ and need more ammunition to persuade your local government to keep refugee contractors out of your cities and towns.
Because there is so much other interesting news today, apologies to all who were waiting for a report from my trip to Washington yesterday, I am likely not going to get to it until later today or tomorrow…other duties call.
Click here for our many, many posts on Syracuse.
