I grew up two hours from Bismarck, ND – it was one of the “big towns” where we’d go to get specialist medical care or shop for anything fancy. So it pains me to hear that they had to have a fight to accept refugees, though I’m heartened to know that those who fought, won, and refugees will still be accepted:
A meeting last week where the commission was supposed to vote on Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota’s request to continue resettling refugees in the county was rescheduled for Monday after more than 100 residents wanted to speak on the subject. The bigger venue at Horizon Middle School’s cafeteria in Bismarck still wasn’t sufficient. More than 500 people filled the space, with some standing outside the cafeteria’s doors. […]
Tresor Mugawaneza, who came to Bismarck as a 16-year-old refugee from the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, said his story is proof that refugees make positive contributions to the community. He quickly picked up English, became a soccer standout and got a job washing dishes at the Wood House Restaurant in Bismarck. He said he rode his bike to the restaurant — even in the winter. Now a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of Mary, Mugawaneza hopes to run his own business someday.
“We are not in this country just to take your government money,” Mugawaneza said. “In fact, we are here to work and be successful in life just like everybody else.”
The Republican politicians who spoke made a couple of obviously false arguments, one being that the prosperous town of 73 thousand can’t afford the crushing financial burden of 25 families. The other was that Bismarck should deal with the issues of Native Americans first, before they dealt with the refugees. As someone who grew up next to a reservation, all I can say is that problem hasn’t been addressed for the last 100 years, so why pick today?
The reality is that Bismarck, like other towns in the Dakotas, is desperately searching for people to fill jobs. The oil boom, and the migration of children to larger cities where they have more opportunity, have led to consistent 2.5% unemployment, which of course is more than full employment. This woman, who spoke at the meeting, hits it on the head:
Isabel Oliveira, a Brazilian immigrant who owns Bismarck’s James River Cafe with her husband, said the state should be taking in all the industrious people it can find to fill out its workforce.
“My business is shrinking because we don’t have enough workers,” Oliveira said. “We’re here talking about 25 refugees. We need 25,000 refugees.”
Bismarck has a climate where you can have weeks of humid 90-100 degree weather in the Summer, and weeks of 20 below (not wind chill, ambient temp) in the Winter. It doesn’t rain there much, and there’s not a hell of a lot of the culture that urban residents take for granted. The open jobs there are mostly low paying service jobs. Just as immigrants from Europe moved there in the early part of the last century because their desire for some kind of opportunity trumped the climate and other hardships, this new set of immigrants and refugees think Bismarck is a place where they can live and grow, even as the children and grandchildren of the first set of immigrants have left for urban centers that offer them more opportunity.
It’s sad to live somewhere that’s rejected by your children, but that’s the reality of the Dakotas, where it’s common to have a family where none of the children live within a couple hundred miles of the town where they grew up. Parents are right to mourn that – it would be better to live someplace where your kids were around the corner instead of a plane ride away. In a world where these parents weren’t mainlining Fox News, perhaps some of the media would point out that their children’s urban migration, while sad, was healthy, and that new immigrants are coming to Bismarck for the same reason as the olds’ parents rode the train to the prairie back in the beginning of the last century.
Instead, all that they hear is a narrative of fear and hatred, where the evil browns are launching an invasion of the prairie so they can become welfare kings and queens. Never mind that many of the ancestors of the pissed off olds at that meeting were recipients of a free quarter section of land via the Homestead Act, a gift from the government that’s worth more than $300K in today’s dollars.
So here we have a sad, unnecessary, divisive and ugly meeting, spurred on by mourning and frustration that a few so-called leaders are leveraging to keep themselves in office. At least there’s still a vocal minority in Bismarck that can rein in the worst of the Trump era, for now.
rikyrah
You are called Border Patrol ????
Kent
I spent a decade working in Alaska and it is basically the same, especially outside Anchorage. Pretty much all my co-workers with college age kids saw their kids go off to college in the lower 48 and don’t come back. The few who don’t leave are either unambitious types who stay in service and tourism jobs, or the few who choose to go into resource jobs (mining, oil, fishing, timber) or the government agencies that regulate those.
Problem with the Dakotas, Wyoming, Nebraska, etc. is that they don’t really have any real cities. So everyone goes to Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago or Seattle depending on which direction you choose to go. The Dakotas would be a lot more like Minnesota if they had a bit city in them.
rikyrah
@Kent:
So, it’s thanks to Minneapolis and Saint Paul that Minnesota is Minnesota?
Hmmmmmmm
Kent
@rikyrah: No. It’s because of Minneapolis that it is still a blue state:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Minnesota
NotMax
It ain’t necessarily so.
Just sayin’.
rikyrah
@Kent:
You don’t have to tell me….
It’s thanks to Chicago and Cook County that Illinois is blue.
oatler.
Good old Wormwood!
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/tom-horn-knows-the-real-reason-behind-the-creation-of-trumps-space-force/
Kent
@NotMax: That’s what Florida and Arizona are for. To escape to when your kids become too annoying. I expect the Gen-X and millennial versions will be places like Costa Rica.
Kent
@rikyrah: Yes, If South Dakota can triple the size of Sioux Falls then South Dakota would have more of a chance of turning blue. It ain’t going to happen by simply trying to convince a bunch of wheat farmers and roughnecks to vote Dem.
Yutsano
@Kent: Honestly, because of that Minnesota really is purple. I’m sure the Twin Cities get a lot of upstate hate like the east side of Washington does for the West side. Same for Oregon. Man those are some bitter wingnut tears.
schrodingers_cat
If the Citizenship Amendment Bill passes the upper house of the parliament, we can write an epitaph to India as a secular democracy. Shah and Modi will fulfill the dream of Sangh founders by laying a foundation for India to become a Hindu rashtra.
This is not going to end well.
Matt McIrvin
My grandfather was the child of Scandinavian immigrants who came to South Dakota, a town that was populated almost exclusively by Danish and Norwegian immigrants. He got the hell out of there.
My mother later went to college in Sioux Falls, met my dad there. Then they got the hell out of there too.
Kent
@Yutsano: Yes, and if the Dems really want to have a long-term (generational) plan to retake the country then the first thing on the agency should be to foster and grow red state cities like Des Moines, Omaha, Sioux Falls, Wichita, etc. Bring in a lot of young professional millennials and younger Gen-y professionals to populate up some of these smaller red-state cities and they will slowly become more purple. Even in states like Texas the big cities are all bright blue and becoming more so.
Oregon and Washington would be more like Idaho if you shrank down Portland and Seattle. That’s for sure.
MomSense
Wow, the situation has been much different here with our recent group of refugees.
Mark
My family left Wildrose ND in about 1940. They were Norwegian immigrants. Still have distant relatives there. Have a few acres of mineral rights in Williams county.
WaterGirl
@MomSense: Hi MomSense, I wanted to ask you something about the In Memoriam part of the Pet Calendar. Wondering if you might be available to talk or email today?
Kent
I’m not really following this. How would that differ from the current Pakistan? Not that I think Pakistan should be the model for anything. But I’m just curious.
OldDave
Bismark! Slowly I turned … Ahem. Early in my job career I flew into Bismark in October. Florida in October is warm. Bismark, not so much. Seeing the snow piled up on either side of the runway was an eyeopener. And then I learned about The Weather Beacon. Let’s say I was motivated to fix the customer’s problem and fly home ASAP.
schrodingers_cat
@Kent: First of all I am speaking of India, not Pakistan. According to the Indian constitution there shall be no religious test for citizenship. And the current government is trying to change that by making it easier for non-Muslims from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan to get refugee status.
ETA: I don’t know what Pakistan does or does not do and it is irrelevant to this debate. This is Sangh talking point that you repeated.
Mathguy
@Kent: Good to know that Omaha is not a real city. The 800,000 people in the metro area are glad to know that.
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin et al.
Absaroka was not simply a passing phase.
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: Yup. Otherwise we’d probably be as red as Indiana. (And Governor Hedgefund would’ve been re-elected.)
raven
Speaking of mourning, we learned that our neighbor died Sunday night. We were outside when the ambulance came and we couldn’t really tell what was happening beyond them doing CPR on him as they loaded him. Dude was very troubled with several serious incidents, one that cost him his teaching job about 10 years ago. He was a good guy deep down but had mental issues that drugs and alcohol did not help. His wife was spoken to us maybe once a year for 20 years and that’s when she is drunk as well. Their house is completely ramshackled and she doesn’t drive so there are some challenges coming. Poor folks.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
I saw some of the recent news stories on this issue. It is so sad. Where is the organized opposition to this?
VOR
Yes it does. There is an ongoing struggle between the Rural areas and the Urban areas, much like the rest of the country. This is how Minnesota is home to both Ilhan Omar and Michele Bachmann.
laura
@rikyrah: Wow! Featherbedding with the employer’s blessing.
Also, I’m feeling pretty stabby about the AG, preznit Ham Head and every scuzzy republican along with every single person who’s invited rightwing radio and tv to take a steaming dump of hate, fear, reverse mortgages and boner pills that makes them reject any measure of objectivity or support for our constitution. Double for the Cillizza’s and fellow stenographers reporting in from the high school girl’s bathroom in DC.
Never going to give up, but I sure feel dispirited as all hell.
MomSense
@WaterGirl:
Sure. I will be waiting for my mom at the train station in about 15 minutes!
Eric
This is all about keep red cities counties and states red. GOP Politicians are counting on racism and fear to keep the dems from growing a strong opposition.
Kent
@Mathguy: OK, “bigger city” then. Omaha is currently the 59th largest metro area in the country, smaller than Bridgeport CT and Worchester MA which are 58th and 57th. If it doubled in size then NE would be a lot more purple..
?BillinGlendaleCA
@raven: Sorry to hear about your neighbor, your description the other night didn’t sound promising.
Raven
@?BillinGlendaleCA: No, we were hoping but it wasn’t to be.
WaterGirl
@raven: Well, that’s not good news at all. Sad all around.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: BJP had the brute strength in the Loksabha to pass it.It still has to pass the Rajyasabha. There will be legal challenges too.
The northeastern states are protesting (Assam, Tripura has seen wide spread protests). 25000 students at the Aligarh Muslim University are threatening to go on a hunger strike.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
My heart went sad when I read the tweet yesterday. How can anyone believe that it will end any other way than poorly?
As in civil war poorly :(
Kent
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, OK point taken. I’m not any kind of India expert.
There does seem to be some sort of double standard though, between the muslim and non-muslim countries in the middle east and Central Asia. No one seems to expect anything remotely resembling democracy from any Muslim country from Libya to Somalia to Saudi Arabia to Syria to Iran to Pakistan.
It’s kind of like how we expect civility and compromise actual decision-making based on evidence from Democrats but have zero standards or expectations when it comes to Republicans.
That doesn’t argue against what you are saying. I agree. Religious sectarianism is pretty much a scourge and the enemy of democracy wherever it appears, whether it is India, Iran, or Alabama.
Jager
I slipped out of ND at 18. Went to school in Boston, lived there for decades, we moved to SoCal in 03. I have family back there who are convinced I’ve spent my life living in a Mad Max world.
randy khan
Bismarck isn’t a bad town, actually. I used to go there for business fairly often, and there were good restaurants (not a huge number, but not just one, either), good hotels, a very good hospital system, etc.
Also, the state capitol building is cool.
schrodingers_cat
@Kent: Again that is not for me to change I am not a Pakistani, Iranian etc. But I was born in India, Sangh purports to speak for me.
Stop with the whataboutery, Iran, Pakistan etc are irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Just stop it.
WereBear
My high school was full of complaining about “this crappy little town.” And yet, there was a big city only an hour away. (I tried it for over a year, but it wasn’t far enough away.)
The ones with ambition, or just guts, have to leave. The ones who stay are usually too afraid. They never, ever, wanted their parents’ lives, but that’s what they wind up with.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Blood bath at the scale of the partition throughout India. Replay of Advani’s rath yatra but at a larger scale.
Ladyraxterinok
Was it No or So Dakota that’s the setting for Giants in the Earyh?
IIRC it’s about an immigrant family–esp the wife–that farms there and becomes extremely depressed at the loneliness, the cold, and the flatness and all-consuming presence of the gigantic sky.
I read this in HS in the 50s. One of the most depressing books I ever read. Left me with totally negative view of life in the Dakotas
Raven
zhena gogolia
OT, but what happened to Twitter? It’s unreadable.
Jay
@WereBear:
there is also “opportunity”. Sometimes it’s a door, sometimes a window, sometimes it never arrives. Sometimes the leap is rewarded, sometimes not. Sometimes, what begins as comfortable, becomes a trap.
And more and more these days, the simple activity of surviving becomes a trap.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@zhena gogolia: Didn’t you have weirdness on YouTube as well?
Yutsano
@zhena gogolia: It looks okay on my phone. Maybe when I get home and crank up my laptop it will look weird.
@?BillinGlendaleCA: YouTube was acting all kinds of weird for me over the last couple of days. Some kind of gremlin in the tubes.
WereBear
@Jay: Very true.
The most pernicious part is how the parents can also fear the children leaving, and undercut any such opportunities.
Kent
@Ladyraxterinok: That was set in the Dakota territory pre-statehood. The actual reason why we have two Dakotas is due to Republican gerrymandering. Cleveland passed the law admitting both as states in 1889 in order to generate two new Republican states and 4 new Republican senate votes. The problem was that South Dakota as it existed in 1889 was largely Indian country and didn’t have enough white population to be a viable stand-alone state so they accelerated white settlement and stealing of Indian lands under the Dawes Act in part to make South Dakota a more viable state. By all rights, there should have just been a single state of Dakota.
Chip Daniels
I am semi-serious about the notion of a new Homestead Act, where the federal government takes by eminent domain vast tracts of dead or dying towns and acreage throughout the West, and gives the parcels away free to immigrants.
The head explosions among Trumpists is, I swear to you, not my primary motivation.
ThresherK
Since we’re dealing with immigrants and the upper midwest, I wanted to remind people that some jackwad public school bus driver in Minnesota bitched about a tax increase proposed to build a new school. The immigrant population, largely Somali (I think), has grown and the school buildings in their once-dying little burg is bursting at the seams.
It would set him back ~$250 a year.
Just think about that. Public school bus driver.
Jay
@WereBear:
Parental fear is not something I have encountered here. It may be more common on parts of the East Coast in Canada.
Most of us “here”, arn’t from here. “Here” for example for me, is my 9th “here”, for my wife, her 12th, 6th for my brother, 7th for my sister in law, 14th for my sister and her husband.
Even for our parents, “here” wasn’t here, although there were a lot more people who could set down deep roots and do okay in their generation.
Now of course, for our kids, “here” is global.
for some who had the privilege of retiring, a comfortable income and selling urban housing allowed them to move back “here”.
Kent
@Chip Daniels: The problem isn’t the lack of free or cheap land. There is plenty of cheap land all across rural America. The problem is economic viability. Why would immigrants want to move some place like rural Kansas where there is no future as opposed to say Houston where there are jobs everywhere as well as good universities and limitless options for their children?
Immigrants are going to revitalize parts of America but it is more likely to be places like Buffalo NY where there is actually a viable infrastructure and economic core than anyplace like the empty rural great plains. https://www.citylab.com/environment/2019/12/climate-change-displacement-refuge-city-buffalo-new-york/602758/
WereBear
Watching the news (especially the Twitter feed, Florida Man) reminds me I had no clue that my choice of state in adulthood would be so momentous.
The difference between a blue state and a red one, for a woman, can be life and death.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent: I’m confused, why would Cleveland want more Republicans? Cleveland was a Democrat.
Jay
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/electric-seaplane-float-plane-test-flight-harbour-air-1.5390816
debbie
NPR had a report about this this morning. At the end, one of the commissioners who voted against it said it was because “we should make sure we’re taking care of our own first.” Right. These are the assholes who insist on cuts to food stamps, Medicaid, etc. just because. I was sorry the reporter did not follow up on that comment
ETA: At last, edit shows up!
Here’s the specific comment:
I think the “people that are already here first” would be Luke Lengenfelder himself. But perhaps I’ve become too calloused.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
There was an era when small to mid sized cities offered a reasonable degree of prosperity and economic opportunity. Back then kids didn’t have to move away. Then something changed and now those places are hard to make a go in. I’m not exactly sure what it is that changed but I’m 99 percent sure Republicans were behind it.
Jay
Kent
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I’m working from memory and too lazy to look it up. Must have been Harrison then. Or the GOP controlled House and Senate forced the issue. and Cleveland went along, afraid that they would not admit other Dem states at the same time.
Bill Arnold
@oatler.:
He’s wrong. (IMO :-) Apophis is an OK pattern matching effort, though.
Good for the discoverers to name it that:
Asteroid Apophis set for a makeover
Matt McIrvin
@Kent: India was never supposed to be a Hindu Pakistan. It was officially a secular, pluralist state, like the US. And like the US, there are people hellbent on changing that.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent: I was thinking Harrison, he was between Cleveland’s two terms
ETA: Took a peek at the wiki for South Dakota, Nov. 1889 so it was during Harrison’s term. Didn’t help him get re-elected, Cleveland won in 1892.
Jay
@Kent:
often, refugees and immigrants take jobs others don’t want, like working in a slaughterhouse.
given time and stability, a “new” economy is created catering to what those workers want and need.
and sometimes, the new arrivals see economic opportunity that the locals miss.
here for example, we have a salsa and chips factory making small batch salsa and tortilla chips that employs 200+. The owners saw a general absence of good salsa, tortillas and tortilla chips in the region, and a centralized transportation hub with which to get wide distribution to a huge number of small and medium markets, daily.
zhena gogolia
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Still do, but now the thumbnails are only jumbo, as opposed to humongous. I’ve gotten used to that. But now Twitter has the bios at the top instead of on the side, and after you read three tweets you get a list of suggested other people to follow, etc. It’s cluttered and clunky.
Brachiator
@Kent:
What the hell are you talking about? Let’s limit the discussion to India and Pakistan, since Pakistan was created from the partition of India. Pakistan (Land of the Pure) deliberately restricted the head of government to Muslims. India’s original constitution was secular and deliberately inclusive of the multiple economic and religious groups within the nation. This is not a matter of “expectation.” This was the deliberate exercise of the will of those who created the country. Not that they were perfect, of course.
And there is, of course, no religious test on who can be the head of the government in India.
But hell, some of the largest and sadly, continuing Tibetan refugee camps are in India. And as a regional superpower, when East Pakistan sought independence, it was India who came to their aid. The US supported Pakistan.
This noxious Hindu nationalism is a betrayal of every principle that was part of the founding of the nation.
debbie
@Jay:
Good god, can we please just have one Christmas where there isn’t some form of Starbucks Rage?
Dan B
@schrodingers_cat: Facebook is not deleting anti-Muslim posts in India. It did the same in Myanmar. There is blood on Zuck’s hands and more will be flowing soon.
There must be laws and serious regulation or the workd will be in flames.
Jay
@debbie:
it’s worse than that. It was a long running joke between a cop and a barista who are friends. It was turned into a “Blue Lives Matter” hoax by the cops, including their Chief. When Starbucks MGMt got involved, the finger was pointed at an innocent trans employee by their coworkers, who wound up being fired.
Basically almost every “this timeline sucks” meme all rolled into one except for The War on Christmas.
Jay
@Brachiator
?????
Jay
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/hamedaleaziz/immigrants-asylum-turned-away-us-border?__twitter_impression=true
L85NJGT
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Productivity gains in transportation & utilities, and resource depletion.
The Pale Scot
@schrodingers_cat:
It would be much worse due to the improved weapons available. And Pakistan’s intelligence agencies will be happy to stick their fingers in.
You’d think that 30yrs of ineffectual wars by the USA would have proved the fact that in age of AK-47s, IEDs and cellphones there is no functioning government without the consent of the governed
Amir Khalid
@Kent:
I’m kind of glad you didn’t come all the way east to Malaysia and Indonesia, which are Muslim-majority nations with a somewhat more robust democratic tradition. But there’s still something wrong with your facile generalisation about democracy and Muslim countries. I can assure you that a great many people in each these countries want to see more democracy, even if the ruling elites don’t.
Sab
@MomSense: The situation has also been much different in my small city also. Currently we are luring refugees to come here from your state, because with Trump’s immigration policies there aren’t enough actual immigrant refugees available.
We had this whole infrastructure of agencies and networks to help settle new immigrants, who have done wonders in revitalizing the city. Storefronts empty for 50 years now bustling. Schools filling up with kids again.
And all that has collapsed because no new immigrants in the pipeline. People willing to come here, people we wanted.
Eric NNY
Mistermix, you said this well. As a fellow hollowing out Northerner, people need to be reminded we all are immigrants and just remember. Remember each wave of immigration and what they brought to our communities.
Jay Noble
@Kent: Umm . . . Omaha is bigger than Minneapolis . . . Cleveland, St. Louis and Pittsburgh. If not for gerrymandering Omaha would be a Blue Congressional district.
sdhays
@Amir Khalid:
Indeed. In fact, the US was involved in destroying the democracy in Iran back in the 1950’s. And every single day we get more evidence that the elites in so-called “mature” democracies don’t really care for it either.
sdhays
@Jay Noble: The Twin Cities metro area has 5.5 million people. All of Nebraska only has 1.94 million.
sdhays
I don’t know how this maps to the Dakotas, but a significant part of the problem that I’ve seen in my small midwestern hometown is that a large number of people really don’t want things to get better. Or, they might want things to be “better”, but they will only accept a very narrow range of things which could be considered improvements – essentially crappy manufacturing jobs to replace what’s been lost. They don’t want tech jobs, they don’t want anything that would be considered “outside the box”. It’s kind of a small-scale, rather pitiful version of IGMFY – they’re getting by, so who cares if the town is falling apart around them? Or maybe they’re not getting by, but don’t you dare waste tax payer money on infrastructure other than roads.
Obviously, not everyone thinks like that, but there’s enough people who do to hold entire towns back.
justawriter
When I was coming of age in North Dakota, it was a bluish purple state. Red for president, but the legislature was split, we had Democratic governors for 28 out of 32 years, the Congressional delegation was completely blue much of that time, and almost all of the statewide elected offices (and North Dakota has the most in the nation, 13 iirc) were Democrats. I stayed because I wanted to try and help continue that tradition. Terrible decision.
The farm crisis and Sagebrush (more like Astroturf, but that’s a topic for another day) Rebellion of the 80s 1) pushed a lot of progressives to seek greener pastures and 2) trained and paid for a whole bunch of conservative activists. Toss in tax protesters and LaRouchers to spread paranoid conspiracy theories in that pre-internet era along with a general Democratic retreat from supporting local party infrastructure and you have a perfect storm for making the place I loved so much the number one MAGA hatted cesspit that it has become. I feel fortunate to be “the white guy on the Rez” because I don’t have to put up with the other white folk if I don’t want to.
burnt
@justawriter: Yep, good, succinct description of the political history. Fargo and Bismarck could use some refugees. Low unemployment and thanks to higher-ed, and regional health care both have economies that are not completely dependent on agriculture or energy. It’s been depressing and heartening on my Facebook feed to see how people respond to the possibility of having a few refugees move to the state capital. In the mid/late ’70s Lutheran charities sponsored a number of Iranian Kurds in Fargo and nobody said anything about it. Sad commentary on our times.
JoeyJoeJoe
@justawriter: I think Texas has the most offices, 31 maybe?
justawriter
@JoeyJoeJoe: That’s not counting judges, just what wikipedia calls executive positions. Texas has 10 of those.
I'll be Frank
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?:
Welcome to Wal-Mart (and the destruction of Unions in America through strong dollar outsourcing)