Resettling Refugees – A Thought Experiment
Consider a country with a vicious ongoing multi-sided Civil War which includes some amount of deliberate large scale civilian extermination. You know the sort of thing: Syria today is just the most recent example, but there are other well-known examples from the last few decades. To keep things generic, let us refer to the various sides in the Civil War as A, B, C, etc.
Militias from each group have been caught massacring civilians from the other group. Or maybe the evidence points toward only one side being responsible for such atrocities. Truth to tell, nobody in the US really has a firm and unbiased grasp of what is going on. If this sounds like the vast majority of wars since 1945, it should.
Now, let us say that the US has a pre-existing immigrant population from Group A. For whatever reason, they have mostly settled in Lincoln, NE. (I picked Lincoln completely at random. I understand some Thai and Burmese refugees have settled in Lincoln, but I would say that for the most part, the city doesn’t have a strong connotation with refugees among the general public.). Lincoln now has a neighborhood called “Little X” where “X” is the capital of the country with the ongoing Civil War.
If the Civil War results in more people from Group A are admitted to the US as refugees, it is natural to relocate them or at least encourage them to live in Lincoln. But what if refugees from Group B are also admitted in not-insignificant numbers? Groups A and B have a long history of distrust, and are vicious enemies in the current Civil War. And if there is one thing Americans have managed to figure out about the ongoing war that is accurate, it is that there are some horrific atrocities going on.
So… should it be the policy of the US government to try to settle the new refugees from Group B in Lincoln, NE? There would be scale economies due to similar language, culture, food, and possibly even religion. Or should it be the policy of the US government to try to get the refugees to settle somewhere far away from Lincoln, NE to minimize the possibility of conflict and ill will? And does your answer change if we manage to learn that both sides are not equally at fault? For example, do we make the same decision vis a vis Lincoln, NE if Group B was responsible for all or most of the atrocities and committed them against A, or vice versa? You can assume that all the refugees are properly vetted and that none of them are known to have been involved in committing the atrocities.
Disperse them all. There are about 300 cities in the U.S. with more than 100,000 residents that they could go to.
An ACTUAL experiment: Kimel’s alter ego is now a WH official, after having designed much of Trump’s nonsense (or as Trump spells it on Twitter, non-sense:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/michael-anton-is-the-most-interesting-man-in-the-white-house-211930901.html
I have a Shia mosque and a Sunni mosque both within two miles of my house. They all get along fine and everyone gets along fine with them.
Your thought experiment has the fallacy that the conditions that caused conflict between two groups also exist in the U.S.
QED: Your thought experiment is BS. We have actual evidence.
BillB,
I hate to be the one to pry your head out if the sand but my question was not hypothetical. There are many examples from Europe. Here is one in which the German authorities have to consider separating Christian and Muskim refugees to reduce violence: http://m.dw.com/en/refugees-dont-leave-their-conflicts-behind/a-18746390
There are plenty of others. Perhaps the most ironic are the cases where Christian refugees on boats heading to Europe were actually killed by refugees who viewed them as infidels.
Point still goes to BillB. Once they’re actually here, in a presumably safe environment, we can expect (legally anyhow) that the refugees will behave like law abiding residents rather than active-duty soldiers. And if some of the type-A immigrants decide they really can’t get along with the type-Bs, they can move away from Lincoln once they get their feet beneath them again. Maybe we wind up with 75,000 As and Bs in Lincoln and 25,000 Bs in Tulsa; it can be lived with. Plenty of precedent for dispersion.
Wow, Mike. Has there EVER been an attack by Sunnis against Shia, or the reverse–or Christian Middle Eastern immigrants against Muslim ones, or the reverse–in, say, southeastern MI, which has a VERY LARGE Middle Eastern immigrant population?
Do tell, cuz I sure never heard of one.
What a god-awful, alt-right nutcase.
It seems to me that Kimel’s thought experiment is predicated on an assertion that warring tribes in a native political / cultural / religious / racial environment will continue to war with one another when some from each tribe chose to move to a new and very different political / cultural / religious / racial environment in which both tribes are in the tiny minority.
In other words it’s a specious thought experiment which can only be applied as a thought experiment when the assertion is true.
My mother was teaching junior high school during the Cyprus crisis back in the 60s, and she reported that there was some teasing between a few Turkish and Greek kids. (She was teaching in Astoria.) Other than that, there wasn’t much. These kids were immigrants, i.e. hyphenated Americans.
I’ve seen all kinds of immigrants in the US, and most of them just got along. The conditions that led to the problems elsewhere did not exist here. Immigration makes for strange bedfellows. It’s like Roman Catholic travelers to the east in the Middle Ages who would go to services in a Nestorian church and be glad to find a proper priest there. At home, they’d go to the execution of a Nestorian priest as a heretic.
You are always going to find bigots, but bigotry means less when you are part of a big soup. If you are moving people by policy, you’d do best to work with local organizations who would recognize potential problems. Either these organizations are doing their job very well or this is less of a problem than one might think.
Beverly,
I keep having to ask – are you familiar with Google?
Here’s what comes up when I search:
http://m.dw.com/en/refugees-dont-leave-their-conflicts-behind/a-18746390
The title says it all.
Next are a couple links to the story abut that 22 year old Khalil Abu-Rayan and how the gubmint meddled in his business, preventing him from shooting up a church in Detroit in support of ISIS. I assume you remember that one. It wasn’t too long ago, even if it wasn’t widely reported. Interestingly, he wasn’t charged with anything terrorism related. Also interesting… when they searched his phone, they found evidence he wasn’t just about killing Christians (and presumably Jews) – he also wanted to behead Shias.
Next is a story about a Dearborn woman who was the victim of an honor killing by her family. I guess that one doesn’t qualify as sectarian.
The next story was in USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/21/detroit-muslims-hajj-attack/3147385/
Admittedly, it doesn’t take place in Michigan. It seems that some Shia Muslims who live in Detroit were attacked by Sunni immigrants to Australia (originally hailing from Lebanon) while on the Hajj. So it does have a fairly international angle… apparently old animosities can survive travel from Lebanon to Australia to Saudi Arabia unabated.
The next story also doesn’t take place in Michigan, but rather Manhattan. Apparently a man wearing a kippa and his wife were attacked by a group of individuals waving Palestinian flags.
It seems there are another 1.1 million stories to go through that cover the search terms you suggested, but hopefully you’ll forgive me if I stop here. I assume we can agree that animosities aren’t always left behind when a person moves to another country.
Longtooth,
Same question as to Beverly – are you familiar with Google? Heck, have you read the news at any point in the last year and a half? If not, consider the link I posted upthread as a starting point. It seems that not all immigrants do leave their enmity behind when they come to the West. As I noted earlier, my post is not entirely hypothetical. Examples of it happening seem to be becoming more common.
Mr Kimel,
the article you cited
http://m.dw.com/en/refugees-dont-leave-their-conflicts-behind/a-18746390
is from August or Sept 2015. Here’s a dated reprint by another German news source: http://www.anonymouseurope.com/2015/09/refugees-dont-leave-their-conflicts.html
The incidents cited were widely broadcast on German news TV at the time and all of them relate solely to close quarters living conditions, just as the picture in the article shows. At that time the German TV news reported widely that this was specifically tied to close quarters living arrangements which are temporary and with relatively fast turn-over rates. The DW (Deutsche Welle) article you linked did not give the same emphasis as the major German news and independent news broadcasts gave nor that the news papers were giving at the time — the difference is “close quarters”.
Perhaps this is due to a particular level of politizizing the issues Germany was facing and expectred to face more of with the high rate of refugee’s being admitted by Merkel though within Germany’s parties there was of course wide disagreement with her policies…. as always the arch conservatives were opposed just as you are along with the Trumpites.
The huge influx of Muslim and Christain immigrants from the ME and North Africa to Germany has indeed created temporary lodging and placement issues, much as might also be expected between conservative southerner from Charleston SC and liberal Californian’s from SF if piled into close quarters living conditions for even a brief period of time.
All of the incidents cited and those broadcast on TV while I was there were more like brawls and fisti-cuffs among the excess testosterone males (having difficulty finding sexual release I presume). There have been far worse and much larger such brawls and injuries between the English & German soccer fans.
In the area I was visiting the former US military family housing apartment buildings were being renovated and upgraded to modern standards for refugee housing. In other area’s in the same region similar housing for refugees have been use in the past and in those neighborhoods there is no fighting or issues between Christian and Muslims or between Muslim sects.
In other words, once the temporary close quarters living arrangements have shifted to permanent housing the issues cited in the DW article no longer apply.
So it appears to me that you’ve been highly selective in the article you linked as if this is the standard issue with immigrants of differing faiths or sects, when it only applies to a specific point in time and under very highly stressed but also very temporary conditions.
There are certainly xenophobes and racists in Germany (& Europe — just look at La Pen’s resurgent popularity in France for example) just as there are racists (white supremacist) and xenophobes in the US which is the primary issue with immigrants from ME and North African nations to Europe — rather than internecine issues among the immigrants as you have tried to use to support you own xenophobia and racism (oh, excuse me you call it “cultural” bias)..
Interestingly I was in Germany for the last 2 weeks of August and 1st week in Sept visiting my German friends there (whom I’ve known since my teen years … we visit each other back and forth every few years, & communicate frequently by telephone, sometimes Skype and very often by e-mail).
I neglected to say the date I was there was in 2015… same months time frame as the DW article.
One other thing… you seem to forget or chose to ignore that in the US with high influx of immigrant rates there were huge clashes, fights, gang turf-wars between the Irish, Italians, and Jews in NYC.. Then there was the more recent influx of Vietnamese to the US when there was also a huge proportion of the US population that were vehemently opposed to their being here at all. There there’s the persistent “crips” and “bloods” neighborhood gangs spread throughout the US that was for a time a huge issue in crime and bloodshed…. and then there are the red and blue Hispanic gangs that still rage with open daylight murders.
So I guess these are somehow different or perhaps you might say they only exist because our former immigration policies were terribly flawed and we shouldn’t have let them in in the first place..
For those who want to see all the articles on how the German ME refugees are problematic (per selective news) google “Central Council for Oriental Christians (ZOCD).”
You’ll see the DW article linked by Mr. Kimel at the top of the list. Oh, pay attention to the dates on the articles, btw.
Correction: The DW article Kimel cited is ~ 2/3’s down the list on the 1st page if you google “Central Council for Oriental Christians (ZOCD)”
One of the article’s (5th from top)headlines is (dated Oct 2016):
” Over 700 Christians Attacked in German Asylum in Recent….”
Of course if you open the link it’s a Breitbart “news” article.
You get the picture ….
Mike, I am surprised they even allowed you to publish.
Since the Twin Tower attach, there have been over 30,ooo
Muslame terror attacks, most inspired (98%) by Arabs.
Leftest thinking either can not comprehend or simply wish
to add the majority of them to the progressive voter roll.
Gosh, Mike, that Detroit Free Press reporter who wrote the article about it published on Feb. 5 last year titled “FBI: Dearborn Hgts. Man Plotted ISIS Attacks on Church” the day after this guy was arrested must be really incompetent for failing to mention that the Christians who were members of that church were Middle Eastern immigrants.
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2016/02/05/fbi-dearborn-hts-man-plotted-isis-attacks-church/79894722/
What the reporter did make clear is that this guy, from a middle-class immigrant family, was mentally ill and that his Muslim immigrant father’s hatred of Middle Eastern Christians didn’t, well, exactly prevent him from doing what he could to stop his son from ….
Read the article.
So, congratulations, Mikey. You’ve discovered that a few Muslim immigrants have committed crimes.
What bothers me most about your gig here, Mike, is the incessant outright lying, about what articles or reports or research studies you link to show, about tangible thinks such as why a Japanese postwar-era economic-policy agency lost influence and then was disbanded, about what you said, about what your point is in these constant, ridiculous, cutesy parables, “thought experiments,” and (non)analogies, spending an awful lot of time thinking of what he thinks are clever ways to dramatize his alt-facts.
It was reported yesterday that Mattis, after he was confirmed, asked Republican senators to try to push Tillerson “over the line”—i.e., get Tillerson confirmed, as quickly—“because Flynn is crazy.”
You are, too, Mike. You’re truly diabolical, alt-right-style, in your purposeful deceptions and flat-out lies; a.k.a., alternative facts.
And , Longtooth, I second everything you’ve said in this thread, but want to emphasize that Kimel isn’t just a racist and xenophobe, but also himself a virulent alt-right Trumpist. His modus operandi is to fabricate claims based on a fact that is unrelated or cannot conceivably show what he says it shows. And never, ever presume that an article or report he links to says what he says it says.
I want to add this, along the lines of your comments, Longtooth: In Chicago, back in the first decades of the 20th century, when the Irish—immigrants and children and grandchildren of immigrants (Richard J. Daley, for example) were gaining substantial control of the political system in the city and county and parleying it into patronage jobs and eventually other economic benefits for their own, the center of this was two neighboring near-Southside neighborhoods, Bridgeport (where Daley grew up) and Canaryville. Bridgeport was slightly more upscale blue-collar than Canaryville. But the denizens of these respective neighborhoods were not all that friendly to each other. Decades later, some of the big names—powerful lawyers, for example, who’d grown up in these neighborhoods and that culture would joke to one another about how they weren’t supposed to be friends!
Kimel is a vile idiot pushing malevolent nonsense as “social science” and “fact.” And Dan Crawford, for mysterious reasons, is his proud enabler. Cute.
Longtooth,
A few points in logic:
1. the fact that one of the many examples of refugees behaving badly was not true does not mean all the examples are not true
2. the fact that some refugees can be pointed out to be behaving badly does not mean that all are behaving badly
3 conversely, the fact that some refugees behave well doesn’t mean all behave well
4. the fact that Breitbart carries the same story as the left leaning German Public Broadcasting system doesn’t mean that German Public Broadcasting is a raving right wing organization
5. The fact that some sectarian violence by immigrants are committed by refugees living in close quarters doesn’t mean that all sectarian violence by immigrants is caused by immigrants in close quarters (Google is your friend here – use it)
6. Blaming close quarters comes awfully close to blaming the German victims for not ramping up their spending quickly enough to accommodate the new arrivals at a level that would prevent the new arrivals from lashing out
7. The fact that Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano agreed to join up and run a criminal enterprise 8 decades ago doesn’t mean it is a good idea to bring in new criminals today
That said, I would like to congratulate you for at least implying that violence is a bad thing. Its far better than previous comments where you were defending child molestation and FGM due to their cultural importance to certain immigrants.
Beverly,
1. I ask what to do in case of X
2. You state X never happens, and specifically mention Group Y and Group Z in Michigan as an example
3. I note that Google points out many examples of Group Y and Group Z doing X in Michigan, not to mention elsewhere
3a. At no point do I say everyone from Group Y or Group Z engages in X
4. You accuse me of racism and a lot more.
I guess at least you get points for consistency.
Mike,
You have been getting a taste of what any conservative, or anyone that doesn’t strictly adhere to liberal orthodoxy, that dares comment on this site gets.
The likes of Beverly, Emichael, and Joel don’t want to debate you on facts, logic, or data, as they own the absolute truth and morality. So they call you names like (insert ad hominem here) and seek to shut you down as if the mere existence your contrary thoughts are an insult to them, the omniscient.
Sammy,
He has been deleted on data.
Missed that, huh?
Hint:
“Mike is at the work”
What the HELL IS X, Kimel? Cuz I sure and Longtooth and two or three others here sure thought X was Middle Eastern Muslim immigrants threatening and harassing Middle Eastern Christians. Cuz this is what they did back home in the Middle East.
Guess we were wrong. Or, actually, we were right, and you’re just doing your usual thing: Denying you claimed something that you clearly claimed, and claiming that it’s we readers who just IMAGINED that you said what you said.
Which is, of course, Trump’s key modus operandi, too.
Congrats. You’re as crazy as your Dear Leader.
EMichael, do tell. You’ve piqued my curiosity.
Sammy, I don’t expect you to know this, but there really IS a difference between opinion and false statements of fact.
Beverly,
The fact that you believe that any mention of civil wars and atrocities must involve Muslims threatening Christians is something that is in your head. That seems to be a stereotype you believe but which you are projecting on me. As should be obvious from my post, where I mention Group A, Group B, etc., I was trying to generalize. Once you brought it up, the only non-generic mention I made was saying “You know the sort of thing: Syria today is just the most recent example.”
I assume EMichael is referring to the one time my wife happened to read a post of mine where someone was reading comments to one of my posts. Uncharacteristically, I had not linked to my data, and my wife responded with something like: Mike is at the office but he used the following data set.
She knew because she reads many of my posts before they go up, and my spreadsheet was on the computer on my desk. EMichael seems to think there is something nefarious to that, and has mentioned it a few times. You know, because women belong in the kitchen rather than reading and understanding something with math, or should know better than to presume to touch their husband’s stuff, or shouldn’t participate in discourse, or something along those lines. Or maybe he thinks I posted as my wife instead as me, as a sock puppet.
Regardless, I read his comment as indicating he thinks my wife or I is up to whatever it is again. I could be wrong. I can’t keep track of all your respective imbalances.
Yeah, it has got to do with my thoughts that women should be in the kitchen.
Nice straw man.
I will ask you a question. Since you have started this meme, how many times have you admitted a mistake in the data that was picked up by one of the posters?
I would do the count, but the thought of rereading your posts is nauseating.
“Here’s what comes up when I search:
“http://m.dw.com/en/refugees-dont-leave-their-conflicts-behind/a-18746390
“The title says it all.”
And:
“BillB,
“I hate to be the one to pry your head out if the sand but my question was not hypothetical. There are many examples from Europe. Here is one in which the German authorities have to consider separating Christian and Muskim refugees to reduce violence: http://m.dw.com/en/refugees-dont-leave-their-conflicts-behind/a-18746390
“There are plenty of others. Perhaps the most ironic are the cases where Christian refugees on boats heading to Europe were actually killed by refugees who viewed them as infidels.”
And:
“Consider a country with a vicious ongoing multi-sided Civil War which includes some amount of deliberate large scale civilian extermination. You know the sort of thing: Syria today is just the most recent example, but there are other well-known examples from the last few decades. To keep things generic, let us refer to the various sides in the Civil War as A, B, C, etc.
“Militias from each group have been caught massacring civilians from the other group. Or maybe the evidence points toward only one side being responsible for such atrocities. Truth to tell, nobody in the US really has a firm and unbiased grasp of what is going on. If this sounds like the vast majority of wars since 1945, it should.
“Now, let us say that the US has a pre-existing immigrant population from Group A. For whatever reason, they have mostly settled in Lincoln, NE. (I picked Lincoln completely at random. I understand some Thai and Burmese refugees have settled in Lincoln, but I would say that for the most part, the city doesn’t have a strong connotation with refugees among the general public.). Lincoln now has a neighborhood called “Little X” where “X” is the capital of the country with the ongoing Civil War.
“If the Civil War results in more people from Group A are admitted to the US as refugees, it is natural to relocate them or at least encourage them to live in Lincoln. But what if refugees from Group B are also admitted in not-insignificant numbers? Groups A and B have a long history of distrust, and are vicious enemies in the current Civil War. And if there is one thing Americans have managed to figure out about the ongoing war that is accurate, it is that there are some horrific atrocities going on.”
I got those from this thread and from your post, Mike. Not from my head.
And these are CONSTANTS for you: The denial that you said things you said. AND the claim that we’re making up that you said these things.
You’re Trump-like crazy, Mike.
And it’s not just mistakes in the data, EMichael. It’s the incessant citations of data, real or faux, to prove something that the data, even if correct, couldn’t possibly prove and since other things–such as the end of the postwar boom, and dramatically increased international trade, and extreme changes in corporate culture, and the demise of labor unions—that unequivocally HAVE occurred and have had major effects, are just ignored notwithstanding that commenter after commenter after commenter has pointed it out.
This guy isn’t just a Trump fan; he’s a Trump mimicker. He’s just as nutty and just as dishonest as Trump.
This post is almost two years old now but I couldn’t help thinking about it as more details emerge (well, become confirmed) on why Asia Bibi was denied asylum in Britain: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6425339/amp/Theresa-blocked-asylum-application-Pakistani-Christian.html?__twitter_impression=true