City halts flow of refugees

[M. Brown]

City halts flow of refugees

By KATHRYN MARCHOCKI

Union Leader Staff

Telephone Credit Union

MANCHESTER

[Cotuit]

Maine has been receiving a lot of immigrants too. It's a delecate balance trying to welcome people to the community, but also having to deal with their special needs. This wave of immigration is very different from what we had last century. People coming from Europe were much more culturally like the US and had a better time adapting. These war refugees come from completely different cultures, and often have extreme physical and mental problems as a result of the war and their refugee experience.

[Garris]

Maine has been receiving a lot of immigrants too. It's a delecate balance trying to welcome people to the community, but also having to deal with their special needs. This wave of immigration is very different from what we had last century. People coming from Europe were much more culturally like the US and had a better time adapting. These war refugees come from completely different cultures, and often have extreme physical and mental problems as a result of the war and their refugee experience.

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There were a lot of Somali refugees in Rochester, MN, where I was previously, and they do have huge cultural differences and bring unique, and sometimes painful, challenges to a community.

One issue that is very un-PC but needs to be addressed with a small (but significant) percentage of new Muslim immigrants (especially from the Middle East and North Africa) is their unfavorable (and often, intolerant) view towards non-Muslims and towards Western culture in general. As a co-worker of mine, who is moderate and from the Middle East, put it, "If you were to hold a Democratic election in many of these new immigrant communities in the U.S., a significant percentage, and perhaps even a majority, would probably vote to eliminate democracy and impose Islamic law." Or, as he even better put it, "They have a worldview which is entirely alien to 99% of Americans. They have a complete and total vision of the world and of humanity which, as a non-Muslim, doesn't inside you."

Forget Maine or Minnesota... Ground Zero for this cultural clash is Europe. Look at Denmark, the most progressive and liberal of European nations that, by 2040 at current immigration and birth rates, could have a Muslim majority (and a majority which originated from some of the most radical Islamic states at that).

- Garris

[Ron Newman]

Is this much different than when American Protestant nativists feared the wave of Catholic immigrants? I don't think so.

Jewish immigrants from Russian and other eastern European shtetls came from a profoundly different culture than that of the U.S.