View Full Version : Islam gets a foothold in Vermont
Jack Moroney (RIP)
04-12-2005, 05:35
Snipped from today's Times Argus, Montpelier, Vermont:
It's still too soon to know when, or even if, the Meskhetian Turks will resettle, Blake said, but her organization is readying for the possible arrival of several families.
"This is a group that was selected by the State Department for resettlement," Blake said. "What we expect are probably less than 10 families."
The influx of non-English-speaking children and adults would bring a host of logistical challenges. Robert McNamara, superintendent of the Washington West Supervisory Union, said school districts that serve Waterbury students are preparing for the refugees' arrival.
"Because we don't have a large population of (English-as-a-second-language students), the main thing for us is trying to be aware of that we will have to get staffing to provide ESL services for these kids," McNamara said. "It's just a lot of questions right now. It all depends on the number of students and their age levels. They're going to need pretty intensive services from what we've heard, because they speak little if any English."
Only would the idiots in this state create a non-english speaking, muslim enclave, with no visible means of support and with a burning desire to regain their identity as a people and nation in the center of this state. What an opportunity to create cells all over this country. Vermonters as a group as suspicious of anyone not born in the state, I can just imagine just how well these folks will be assimilated into society up here. Now when the next bunch of muslim extremists want to come down from Canada they will have a MSS.
Jack Moroney-bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses and I will organize, train, and lead them against you
The Reaper
04-12-2005, 07:35
Whew, glad to see that you have not converted, Jefe.
With a plan like this, you just had to know Ole' Bob McNamara would be involved.
TR
COL M, just have your city officials take a trip up to Lewiston, ME and ask them how well the mass Somali immigration there went. I'm sure they'll be very happy to tell you what a glowing success it was. :rolleyes:
Have the Sudanese in Winooski gotten restless since their resettlement? If the Turks get froggy, you could pit them against the Sudanese.
Jack Moroney (RIP)
04-12-2005, 08:47
COL M, just have your city officials take a trip up to Lewiston, ME and ask them how well the mass Somali immigration there went. I'm sure they'll be very happy to tell you what a glowing success it was. :rolleyes:
We also have our contingent of "lost boys". Vermont claims that it is striving for "diversity". Evidently some are embarrassed that VT is the second "whitest" state in the union. Doesn't matter that folks can't afford to come here regardless of ethnicity. Sort of like school busing and we all know how that turned out.
BUT IT GETS EVEN BETTER: I am now more convinced more than ever that VT is truly linked to Oregon. Tonight, in a meeting at the statehouse that has been not publized, a bunch of doctor assisted suicide activists from Oregon are helping the VT legislature draft a similar bill for this state.
Jack Moroney-convinced that the northwest passage really exists as a revolving conveyor belt between Oregon and Vermont: the migration route of idiots.
The Reaper
04-12-2005, 11:42
I don't know, Sir.
Seems like an excellent opportunity for an enterprising SF soldier with time on his hands to either start a holy war between factions, or become a warlord and make the libs sorry they ever had this idea. :D
TR
Roguish Lawyer
04-12-2005, 11:46
I don't know, Sir.
Seems like an excellent opportunity for an enterprising SF soldier with time on his hands to either start a holy war between factions, or become a warlord and make the libs sorry they ever had this idea. :D
TR
LOL
Jack Moroney (RIP)
04-12-2005, 14:10
My wife heard me laughing at TR's comments and then yelled at the computer, "Damn don't give him any encouragement he's already stirring up crap with the local talk shows" :)
You know being a warlord would have some perks...such as:
Cut down on trespassers on your property
No problem gettin a parking spot in any town your band is terrorizing
many more...
Just something to think about.
Airbornelawyer
04-15-2005, 20:26
Do any of you actually know anything about Meshketian Turks, or do you just hear "they are Muslim" and insert "they must be extremist terrorists or their supporters"? :mad:
Of course, the rapid left-wingers probably like the symmetry of this. After all, the Meshketian population was originally deported to Central Asia by Stalin because, like many other Caucasians, a number of them had joined the Wehrmacht as Hiwis. They helped Hitler, and Bush=Hitler, so its only natural the US would resettle them.
The Reaper
04-15-2005, 21:27
What I hear is that we are bringing another group of people with needs, wants, and problems to this country.
It occurs to me that we have plenty of those commodities from people who found their own way here.
At the risk of sounding callous, is there such a shortage that we need to import the oppressed here at our own expense now? Other than "diversity", what do these people bring to America? Are we filling an Ark here?
Please elaborate on the benefits this group of disenfranchised people bring.
TR
Jack Moroney (RIP)
04-16-2005, 05:13
Do any of you actually know anything about Meshketian Turks, or do you just hear "they are Muslim" and insert "they must be extremist terrorists or their supporters"? :mad:
Of course, the rapid left-wingers probably like the symmetry of this. After all, the Meshketian population was originally deported to Central Asia by Stalin because, like many other Caucasians, a number of them had joined the Wehrmacht as Hiwis. They helped Hitler, and Bush=Hitler, so its only natural the US would resettle them.
Yes I do know quite a bit about the Meshketian Turks and my point was tongue in cheek about the formation of an active muslim cell in Vermont based on the fact that these particular families are muslim. My point was that Vermont in particular does not assimilate any group into this state. Folks that were not born here are always outsiders and I am not talking about aliens but US citizens without a Vermont birth certificate. If you are going to bring a group of families into this country and hope to enable them to be assimilated into this country as solid citizens you have to provide the environment to do it. You just do not plop them down in the middle of the Green Mountains without any infrastructure to support their needs and make them part of the community/culture. That is not going to happen here. While I do not expect that these folks to come in here with a terrorist game plan I do expect those cells that are in the proximity to see this as an opportunity to exploist this target audience as at least unwitting accomplices to their cause. They have something in common with the Meshketians while no one else in this state does. Vermonters are naive to most things that occur outside the borders of this state unless it has to do with things like deer wasting disease. So to answer your question, NO I did not "hear they are Muslim" and that they "must be terrorists or their supporters". I might have been born at night counsellor but I was not born last night. So if that makes you :mad: get over it, because that was not my intention. But then, perhaps, I need to pick my words a little more carefully. :rolleyes:
Jack Moroney
Do any of you actually know anything about Meshketian Turks, or do you just hear "they are Muslim" and insert "they must be extremist terrorists or their supporters"? :mad:
Nope, we're all dumbasses, racists and homophobes. :rolleyes:
I spent a large portion of my adult life helping the oppressed around the world as did many here. You can't do that type of work day in and day out for years without having a genuine affection for the people you're working with regardless of their race, religion or skin color.
If you can't see the problems generated by the above solution in Vermont then I would suggest you sponsor a family and experience first hand the situation and the problems it entails. Too many people write checks they can't cash in an effort to feel good about themselves and leave the details for others to work out.
I thought TR's and Jack's comments were funny as hell. :D
Please elaborate on how we should handle this situation.
:munchin
Doc
"Common sense ain't all that COMMON"...
"Education and research is only GOOD until a fucker shoots at you"...
"I ain't never seen or heard of a religion, that advocates flying a plane into a building...MUSLIMS are the only ones that have ever did it"!
Stay safe!
Airbornelawyer
04-19-2005, 12:43
"Common sense ain't all that COMMON"...
"Education and research is only GOOD until a fucker shoots at you"...
"I ain't never seen or heard of a religion, that advocates flying a plane into a building...MUSLIMS are the only ones that have ever did it"!
Stay safe!Based on comments in other threads as well as this, I'm trying to figure out if this was directed at me. Are you assuming that I'm just some pussy intellectual who has all my knowledge from books? Fuckers have shot at me, and I have a scar a few millimeters from my eye socket to remind me that if I had turned a fraction of a second later, I'd be blind in one eye or worse. I've seen more people die and I've filled more body bags than I than I care to remember, including, by the way, those resulting from fuckers flying a plane into a building (actually two buildings).
And Doc, TR, Colonel: with all due respect, this thread was posted in the "Insurgencies & Guerrilla Warfare" forum and titled "Islam gets a foothold in Vermont". It is somewhat disingenuous to say that it was merely about the problems of assimilating an immigrant/refugee population. And American history is full of refugees coming here to escape persecution in their homelands, from Huguenots to Hmongs, and including many of my own ancestors. I personally helped Afghan refugees resettled here in the 1980s.
But by the way, I actually agree it is not necessarily a good idea to settle the Meshketians here (especially in a place like Vermont without the culture or infrastructure for assimilating, as Col M notes). Unlike, for example, the Hmongs, Afghans from the 1980s or Iraqis forced to flee northern Iraq in the late 1990s, the United States has no direct connection with or obligation to the Meshketians. As a country built by immigrants and refugees, we should afford them or any others the opportunity to legally immigrate, assimilate and become part of the American way, but I don't think taxpayer money should be expended to subsidize them (although it should be noted that unlike "regular" immigrants, refugees admitted under the Refugee Resettlement Program get off the dole relatively rapidly - their overall employment levels reach the national average within a few years of arriving).
The problem with immigration in this country is not the immigrants, whatever religion they happen to profess or whatever race or color they are different from their neighbors. It is the the PC left's hostility to assimilating immigrants (on even something as basic as learning English) and the left's desire to keep immigrants on the welfare dole to keep their welfare bureaucracy's power. And Colonel, I'm sure you know better than all of us how entrenched that PC leftist clique is Vermont.
If this thread had gone into Lounge Discussions and been about that immigration/assimilation issue, we could have had a good discussion without Islamist terrorism being relevant. It would not have been much of a debate, I suppose, though, since most of us seem to agree on the immigration/assimilation issue.
But regarding the potential for terrorist recruiting, consider this: if the Meshketians, or any Muslim refugees, were resettled in a place more hospitable to immigrants than Vermont, like, say, Northern Virginia or New York City, would they assimilate more or less rapidly? I live now in New York City, and I see an infrastructure that keeps refugees from assimilating. My Russian Jewish immigrant ex-girlfriend had a great deal of difficulty with English and with working in a Manhattan law firm because she spent almost all of her free time with a Russian-speaking clique in Little Odessa in Brooklyn. And would these unassimilated Muslims be a better target for Islamist terrorist recruitment in these "immigrant-friendly" climates? The terrorist cell infrastructure (like the organized crime infrastructure) thrives better in these larger, yet insular, communities. It is probably much easier for Islamists to recruit here where you have people who from mosque to work to school can cocoon themselves in their little world.
AL:
Did I piss you off about my predictions about the Kurds?
Stay safe!
My Russian Jewish immigrant ex-girlfriend had a great deal of difficulty with English and with working in a Manhattan law firm because she spent almost all of her free time with a Russian-speaking clique in Little Odessa in Brooklyn.
I would offer that perhaps this is part of the assimilation problem overall. Not to say that yesteryear's immigrants didn't form into enclaves of like race/culture/country of origin, but how many of today's immigrants go so far as to change their surname (i.e. LeBlanc to White, Ouelette to Willette) to appear more 'American'? How many immigrant families forbid the use of the mother tongue in their homes, and insist on using only English in hopes to learn their new country's language sooner? How many of today's immigrants absolute insist on their children attaining as much education as possible in an effort to place them into mainstream American society? In my opinion (supported by facts or not), today's immigrant overall appears to be less interested in assimilation, and more interested in being a more successful <insert country of origin moniker here> with a far better standard of living than they could have back home.
And yes, I'm sure you'll find hard numbers to answer my questions, AL, despite their rhetorical intentions. :p
Airbornelawyer
04-19-2005, 15:05
I would offer that perhaps this is part of the assimilation problem overall. Not to say that yesteryear's immigrants didn't form into enclaves of like race/culture/country of origin, but how many of today's immigrants go so far as to change their surname (i.e. LeBlanc to White, Ouelette to Willette) to appear more 'American'? How many immigrant families forbid the use of the mother tongue in their homes, and insist on using only English in hopes to learn their new country's language sooner? How many of today's immigrants absolute insist on their children attaining as much education as possible in an effort to place them into mainstream American society? In my opinion (supported by facts or not), today's immigrant overall appears to be less interested in assimilation, and more interested in being a more successful <insert country of origin moniker here> with a far better standard of living than they could have back home.
And yes, I'm sure you'll find hard numbers to answer my questions, AL, despite their rhetorical intentions. :pI'm sure there are studies somewhere, but I suspect this might turn out to be one of those bits of conventional wisdom that isn't necessarily true.
I know my grandfather grew up speaking German as a first language, while my father did not, and I was probably the last one in my family to learn any German as a second language. Germans tended to assimilate faster than other immigrants, although Germans also managed to change the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture more than any other immigrant group, so in assimilating they also remade the society. Outside of Louisiana and some places on the Quebec border, French-Americans thoroughly assimilated and there is almost nothing in America that could be defined as an example of Franco-American impact. Eastern and Southern European immigrants, especially Catholics and Orthodox, were somewhat less assimilated.
For non-European immigrants, the pattern seems different. While a Lithuanian or a Greek might face some discrimination and lost opportunities because of his accent, language skills or level of comfort in American culture, others such as Japanese and Chinese and Jews (European and non) faced serious discrimination. So they tended for the most part to become more American than most Americans, to prove their American-ness. Most Africans faced a different challenge - they did not come here as immigrants and had much of their "<insert country of origin moniker here>" identity stripped away - but also tended to follow the "more American than Americans" pattern, and also influenced Anglo-Saxon culture, especially Southern culture, like the Germans.
At the same time, while outwardly assimilating, groups tended to form parallel cultures that did maintain that "<insert country of origin moniker here>" identity. You had neighborhood banks that catered to particular ethnic groups and pandered to fears that the mainstream banks were stealing their money. You had church and synagogue-based educational and social networks, private clubs, secret societies and ethnically-based organized crime syndicates (Russian Jews of the Brooklyn mafiya are following in the footsteps of Mayer Lansky and Buggsy Siegel).
You also had a system where immigrants of one ethnicity would fill the gap created as a prior one assimilated. Organized crime is a model of this. English gangs and syndicates were replaced by Irish and Jewish mobsters, who gave way to the Italian mafia, who are losing their turf to Jamaican, Albanian and Russian mobs. Often, the prior group had initially recruited members of the later group.
You also see an immigration pattern where similar ethnicities associate with each other. Albanian immigrants tended to go into Italian neighborhoods, Armenians into Greek neighborhoods, Lithuanians into Polish neighborhoods, Salvadorans into Mexican neighborhoods, and so on. Muslim immigrants don't tend to follow this pattern - you don't find too many Arabs in Iranian or Turkish neighborhoods, for example - except in certain cases (Arabs from different parts of the Middle East cluster together, as do Muslims from the sub-continent). Also, the biggest Arab communities in the US, such as in Michigan, have large Christian populations. An Iraqi American isn't going to feel at home in a Lebanese Maronite Catholic neighborhood.
The biggest things affecting assimilation today are the two I mentioned earlier: welfare statism and political correctness making it both easier and less desirable to assimilate into American society. That said, I don't see this pattern as strong among refugees as among other immigrants. Many Mexican and Chinese immigrants do seem to fit your "more successful <insert country of origin moniker here>" model. Others do not. Lots of Asian immigrants do, for example, change their names, speak English better than most and send their kids to the best colleges. West Indian blacks also do extremely well (though they generally have less of a language barrier to deal with), as do many recent immigrants from Africa, especially English-speaking Africa. The stereotype of the immigrant 7-Eleven owner or cab driver is a manifestation of many immigrants wanting to realize the American dream of being your own boss.
I should also note that Marianna had some difficulty with English, but many of her other friends did not, so in her case her own insecurities played a role. She retreated back to that cocoon because she was afraid of the big bad city. At the same time, she did manage to get into and graduate from a pretty good law school (Fordham). And Brooklyn's Russian community, being something like 95% Jewish, feels no strong attachment to Russia (Marianna was actually from the Azerbaijan SSR) and only a slight attachment to Israel. They are an enclave within America, but they view themselves as part of America.
Guy: no worries! My brother and I routinely get into the whole "street smarts vs. book smarts" thing. It's like a family reunion here every day.
I would offer that perhaps this is part of the assimilation problem overall. Not to say that yesteryear's immigrants didn't form into enclaves of like race/culture/country of origin, but how many of today's immigrants go so far as to change their surname (i.e. LeBlanc to White, Ouelette to Willette) to appear more 'American'? How many immigrant families forbid the use of the mother tongue in their homes, and insist on using only English in hopes to learn their new country's language sooner? How many of today's immigrants absolute insist on their children attaining as much education as possible in an effort to place them into mainstream American society? In my opinion (supported by facts or not), today's immigrant overall appears to be less interested in assimilation, and more interested in being a more successful <insert country of origin moniker here> with a far better standard of living than they could have back home.
Based on my own experience this depends on timing (I can't think of a better term). When we first arrived in the States in 1975 as refugees, there were few others like us in the area besides family, since we didn't settle where the majority of refugees settled (SoCal and Houston). Assimilation was not an option, it was the only choice. Steve is not the name on my birth certificate (I loved watching the Six Million Dollar Man :lifter :D). As folks became assimilated and established communities, they reached the critical mass for the "infrastructure that keeps refugees from assimilating." Today I see new immigrants from my country who don't have to assimilate because they can live and work in the enclaves. I guess I don't really blame them, it's tougher to assimilate as an adult, I was a kid who went right into first grade here.
Sacamuelas
04-19-2005, 15:28
Are you assuming that I'm just some pussy intellectual who has all my knowledge from books? Fuckers have shot at me, and I have a scar a few millimeters from my eye socket to remind me that if I had turned a fraction of a second later, I'd be blind in one eye or worse. I've seen more people die and I've filled more body bags than I than I care to remember...
:lifter New avatar.... New avatar!!!!
Airbornelawyer
04-19-2005, 15:48
By the way, in case anyone really does want dry facts and numbers or to bask in the glow of my big brain's google skills, here are the statistics, by country of origin and state of initial resettlement, for all refugees from the Office of Refugee Resettlement's Annual Report to Congress for FY 2002:
http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/orr/policy/02arc10appendixA2.htm
This covers refugees, Amerasians from Vietnam and other qualified entrants for the period 1983 to 2002.
At least the Meshketians won't be alone. Vermont has let in one Burmese refugee in 20 years. Could be worse, though. You could be the only Liberian in Montana or the only Somali in West Virginia.
Florida admitted about 18,000 Haitians, about half of whom I think went to my high school.
well, in about 30 minutes Vermonters will have to get a new Senator, so maybe the new one can help State find a better palce to put the Turks.