Why should I answer your demand question when you don't respond to:
1. The differences between getting to and staying in the US vs. Europe
2. The differences opportunities for Muslims in the US vs. Europe
3. The differences between living in virtual ghettos in Europe and in better locations in the US (Save MN)
Take those to start...but you haven't answered any of them so far.
1 - Duly noted in terms of the U.S. not having hundreds of thousands trying to flood across borders. Check.
2 and 3 - Your points just ignore current realities, never mind likely future outcomes.
The U.S. has been admitting refugees from a host of war torn regions for several years now. This year we'll admit 85,000 with most coming from places like Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan, etc. The issues and tensions you cite as being unique to Minneapolis are simply not unique to Minneapolis. Just in the Midwest there are a host of rapidly growing refugee communities in a number of cities that present similar profiles to Somalis in Minneapolis. Des Moines (thousands of Sudanese), Omaha (about 10,000 Sudanese), Columbus (about 40,000 Somali), St. Cloud (around 5,000 Somalis). I could go on. The point is obvious. These refugee communities face the same challenges as the Somalis in Minneapolis. The refugees tend to arrive poor, often with limited education and with cultural displacement that is more severe than immigrants from places such as Latin America (not that poor immigrants from these countries don't face their own issues) because the norms and values of these societies are in many ways vastly different from than those of a Westernized culture. These refugee populations in turn face a host of difficult issues - higher incidents of domestic violence, increased crime rates, growing gang issues with youth who struggle to find their way between two vastly different worls and, yes, instances of radicalized behavior.
Your notion of how we settle these refugees in small pockets throughout the country is also flawed. Yes, that is what we try to do in practice. But refugees will do what any other group of immigrants will do. They'll up and move to be within a population of their peers and certain communities will become larger population centers. It is a completely natural and expected outcome. And it is how communities in cities like I've cited above have grown so rapidly.
I've said most of these refugees are law abiding citizens. I've noted that the issues their communities face are very complex. But it is simply naive for your to think the cultural values of these refugee populations (many of such values being grounded in how the cultures in their home country view / adhere to Islam) that stand in contrast to the norms of Western secular society will not create very real tensions. For instance, per Unicef if you are a Somali woman there is a 98% chance your genitals were mutilated as a young girl. The practice of female genital mutilation is a Federal crime in the United States. That is a rather striking example (just one example) of vastly different behaviors and norms towards women. Those viewpoints and norms don't just evaporate in every Somali refugee by setting foot on U.S. soil.
And it is just naive for you to think some of these tensions don't become flashpoints for some awful outcomes. And, among the worst of these outcomes, are people who engage in terrorism. On another thread you cited the truck driver in Berlin as an outcome somehow grounded in Europe's experience with Muslim refugees. Yet within the last few months . . .
1 - Refugees in the Twin Cities are sentenced to prison for trying to aid and join ISIS
2 - A refugee in St. Cloud (around 5,000 Somalis in that community) stabbed 10 people in a mall after he asked them if they were Muslim and they told him no.
3 - A refugee in Columbus posts on facebook about his anger towards the treatment of Muslims around the world before driving a truck into a crowd on the Ohio State campus and then exiting the vehicle and attacking bystanders with a butcher's knife.
This isn't normal and it shouldn't be a "new" normal. How do we come to grips with these issues?
So I've engaged on your questions. Address mine.
