AuntieM wrote on Jan 18
th, 2017 at 6:57am:
I'm not sure about what the conditions are in Western Sydney these days, so perhaps someone could enlighten me.
It really bothers me, that when refugees are homed in my own country, they get placed in the most unsatisfactory places. There is one town in Georgia, which has been used as a dumping ground for refugees for quite some time.
Clarkston, Georgia was identified by the federal government as a great place to plonk down refugees -- I suppose our congressmen and administrators didn't want to have these refugees as their neighbors. For whatever the reasons, in the 1990s refugee resettlement programs identified Clarkston as a good fit for displaced persons of many backgrounds. Clarkston was a small community at the last stop on a transit line into the city of Atlanta, Georgia. By the 2000s the local high school had students from more than 50 countries; a local mosque had 800 worshipers; and by some estimates, half the population was from outside the U.S. All the schools are outside the city limits of Clarkston, and like many small US towns, it's not a walking-friendly community. How did they think these people were going to get around, for starters?
Keeping it in perspective, in the last three months of 2016 alone, 997 refugees were placed in Georgia. How many did our nation's capitol take? The District of Columbia accepted TWO Somali individuals. TWO.
http://www.wrapsnet.org/admissions-and-arrivals/Does anyone remember the woman who beat a woman with a flagpole about a year ago? She was a refugee from Clarkston.
http://truthfeed.com/this-woman-clad-in-a-burqa-viciously-attacked-a-georgia-hom...http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3622643/Police-Woman-attacks-homeowner-A...http://www.ajc.com/news/local/concrete-motive-still-mystery-gwinnett-american-fl...These people get plonked down in these little towns, with no cultural preparation and no language skills, and we shouldn't be surprised when they run amok.
Ours get plonked in cities with typically sizeable communities who speak the same language. Africans tend to base themselves around evangelical church groups. Arabs have national networks - Iraqis, Syrians, Egyptians, etc. Not all are religious (unlike Africans), but there are churches and mosques that assist. South East Asians, like the Burmese, seem to have tight family networks. We don't get Vietnamese refugees anymore, but they are now so prosperous that their communities are built around growing businesses, chambers of commerce, and entire suburbs.
This is due to the policy of multiculturalism. Rather than train people to become Anglo-Australians, the Fraser government made use of the emerging ethnic communities to help settle refugees and immigrants. This was for two reasons:
1. It was cheaper than housing and training new arrivals.
2. The ethnic groups could be mobilized for votes. In the late 1970s, those votes were conservative as most refugees were fleeing communist regimes.
Once the ethnic groups reached a critical mass, they were able to lobby governments to assist their communities. It was a two-way street. Parties got votes and members. Ethnic groups got things like grants, development approval for churches and mosques, and government contracts for their leaders' businesses.
Once, ethnic groups like the Irish used the police force as a base for employment (and a fair bit of corruption). European Jews used small business - which became big business, as did the Italians. All these groups had their own organized crime syndicates, which helped fund the transition to legit business.
Australia is built around three East Coast cities, where all refugees start out. It's rare to see refugees "dumped" in rural communities in Australia, despite a number of rural communities crying out for refugees to solve their labour shortage. This would benefit small towns, as the growing population would bring funding for services. Schools and hospitals would re-open. Private investment would return. Businesses would return.
This is the sort of economic activity migration brings. While Australia takes in only a small number of refugees, it is built on immigration. Right now, the only thing keeping Australia out of recession is the growth driven by immigration (and property prices).
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