Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"You know, here's something to consider. St. Louis and Minneapolis both absorbed huge numbers of refugees over the last couple of decades, first from the Vietnam War, then from the Soviet pogroms of the late 70s, then from Reagan's various "dirty wars" in Central America, and then from the Yugoslav Civil War. Those refugees arrived with nothing; some of them, like the Hmong in Minneapolis, were literally air-lifted out of a stone age culture and dropped in a downtown area. And with every wave of refugees, we've gotten better and better at resettling them. For both cities, the refugees have been a god-send.

"I know that here in St. Louis, the Russian Jews, Hondurans, El Salvadorans, and Bosnians have all, in ridiculously few years each time, turned the slums they were dropped into into prosperous middle class neighborhoods with rising property values and thriving local businesses. Frankly, if we could get the State Department to send us another couple of thousand refugees, we could conceivably save this city. (I nominate the folks in Darfur.)

"Nobody (to speak of) complains about the refugees the way they complain about the illegals, and I don't think it's just because they came here legally. (Counter example, in fact: the El Salvadoran refugees here in St. Louis did NOT come here legally, they were smuggled in by the Catholic Church, because at the time the Reagan administration was insisting there were no legitimate political refugees from our allies in El Salvador.) Nor is it because of their culture, as the refugees didn't come here from any more WASP areas than the Mexicans do.

No, the biggest difference, the reason why refugees build neighborhoods and illegals destroy them (and living only a couple of miles from this town's single biggest slum full of illegals, Breckenridge Hills, I can tell you of my own experience that they do, in fact, destroy neighborhoods) is that refugees make homes for themselves here, as opposed to the illegals, who intentionally make the worst, cheapest slums they can for themselves because that way they can send more money back home to Mexico.

"If we could actually persuade all eleven million illegal Mexican immigrants to move their families up here and become permanent citizens and invest in the neighborhoods they settle in, I'd break a leg rushing to vote for that."

-- bradhicks, 2010-05-27