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What is going on in Springfield, Ohio? 20,000 Haitian arrivals into a town of 60,000 seems insane, but the New York Times seems to back it up. I definitely don’t trust the NYT to give an honest portrayal of what the situation is like on the ground, but I don’t really trust a lot of the rumors going around Twitter either. I am seeing reports of Haitians killing the ducks at the park and eating them. There are even secondhand reports of Haitians eating pet cats.
What I am not seeing however is geolocated footage or images. How hard can it be to send a guy to the park to see if there are any ducks left? I am legitimately confused. None of this seems to make sense.
The numbers seem beyond belief so I wouldn't be surprised if the true number is much lower.
But I think that small towns with weak connections to centers of power will be the perfect dumping ground for the worst type of migrants. Think of what the last 50 years have done to the Rust Belt. It's clear that the powers-that-be are completely fine to throw this entire region into the trash bin for larger ends.
On the other hand, nicer areas seem to have the human capital to keep undesirables out. In Seattle, it's been said that when a tent appears in your local park, you need to go full Karen and get the first tent removed immediately. Because if you don't, a second tent will appear, then a third, and pretty soon it will be a real encampment with drugs, and rats, and murders. There are very few drug zombies in Magnolia, but the International District (ID) is crawling with them because the residents of the ID don't know how to organize and resist.
The same seems to be true with migrants. At some point, a non-profit or government agency must have started sending Haitians to Springfield. And they didn't have the human capital to resist. If the 20,000 number is accurate, I think it's fair to say the town is absolutely fucked and will be nearly 100% Haitian within 20 years.
I live nearby and can say, in support of your first point: Springfield, Ohio was already totally fucked, and therefore it's a great place to put migrants. It is a quintessential Rust Belt city that was hollowed out by deindustrialization; it is a satellite of Dayton, which is even worse off.
This is happening much more widely even than what is reported on. Down the street from me, the village of Lockland was gutted by the closure of the original Stearns & Foster mattress factory in the early 2000s (along with many industrial closures for decades prior, and even the closure of the original Miami & Erie Canal in the 1910s... Lockland is a hard-luck place); it is now being resettled by Mauritanians, with the enthusiastic support of local NGOs.
https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/finding-solutions/you-only-have-hope-hundreds-of-mauritanians-seeking-asylum-find-refuge-within-lockland-bike-shop
I guess for the record, Mauritanians that I have met have been nice to me personally, and I am not aware of them making particular problems for everyone; but it is also true that they have concentrated in one neighborhood and turned it into Little Mauritania. I suppose it's better than the building sitting empty as they had done previously; but I wish that my own culture had simply stayed there and built new things after the factories closed, instead of decamping to distant commuter towns like Mason. Easy for me to say, I suppose.
Who are these nameless faceless NGOs carving up the ethnic map of middle America like post-war European diplomats? What is their motivation? Who is funding them? Why does nobody care? Is right-wing media too incompetent to weave a narrative more complicated than "Democrats open-borders bad"?
Catholic Charities is the largest one. They contract with the fed gov and states to resettle people everywhere, if the local spot can handle it, great, if not, they don't give a shit. They plant people and move on, they get paid good money for it too.
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