qwilson5

Well its case by case I suppose. Some might be economic migrants that were using this global turmoil as an opportunity to seek out a better quality of life elsewhere.

BUT there were also many many who fit the UN definition of a refugee 'someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.' - that is from the UN's website.

Mostly Kurdish people from Syria, but there were folks from many african nations and other middle easy countries.

Oh man, everything! They are just like western societies, there were barbers and coaches, and entrepreneurs and chefs and doctors and famers and everything, they'll be fine wherever they end up. Many had great english or other languages.

Wow...that's such an unloving thing to say. I'm sorry you feel to need to say things like this. I wish you luck.

I agree with you there is certainly a cost to settle refugees in the country. WE currently spend about $600 billion dollors (near half of our total federal budget) on our military. Thats the most in the world, roughly double what the #2 slot spends. If we took the smallest fraction of that we could easily resettle people. (for that matter we could give free college for every american or house every homeless personal or have a federally funded healthcare system - but thats for another thread).

We don't HAVE to take them in, we could let them keep getting killed, keep drowning in the seas, keep having their families torn apart but it doesn't feel like the kind thing to do, the loving thing to do, the human thing to do. We can build a global community, I know we can, we've just got to start somewhere.

Hey!

1) For sure, many many people spoke great english or other language, they were on their smart phones as much as we were, joked around etc. etc. Very similar. Of course most are coming from an muslim communities, so there was a bit more difference in traditional gender roles that what I'm seeing in Chicago. Then of course some slightly different food (all amazing) and things like that, but really not a ton different from what I saw.

2) ya! Most I am close with were eager to get to a new place to call home and get their life going. Broadly, people I've spoken in the west seem to have this larger sense of losing their 'culture' - they seem to want people from other countries to watch the same sports, the eat the same food. It seems to me like those feelings are really more a mask for being uncomfortable with someone that seems different, seems 'other'. Change is scary for a lot of people, esp adults and I'd guess that is most people really dug down on the questions of integration they'd see more of a reflection of deeper seeded personal issues than being worried of seeing more hijabs on the street. America has vilified Islam, we've seen terrorist in movies, and pun-dents screaming about 'radical islam' to bring us together over a common enemy. BUt seriously, they are just people like anyone else, go meet a few and hang out. 99% the same.