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Steve Hadik's avatar

Your reporting is, as always, clear and lacking hyperbole . Thank you for that.

Where we are in Maine, the influx of refugees and integration into local communities has been well met by community outreach to assist with ESL, housing business startups. Etc.

A meaningful percentage of the effort has been to offset xenophobic resistance. But it’s working regardless the naysayers

State and local governments will become the eventual first line of support . This is where coalitions can be built , not by federal edict

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Doug DeLaMatter's avatar

Doug DeLaMatterjust now

Thank you for a very clear analysis of this aspect of the humanitarian crisis. Climate change will present many conundrums for us to deal with and this is perhaps the most heart-wrenching so far. I fear there will be many others. I certainly agree that the richer countries should bear responsibility for the refugees they create whether by conflict or environmental degradation, but immigration may not be the magic bullet we seek just yet.

Resettlement into America or other developed country effectively takes a low-carbon citizen and turns them into a high-carbon citizen. We must recognize and deal with the misery each individual family is immersed in. We must also convert the "developed" societies into carbon neutral entities. It is within our abilities to do both.

Perhaps a change in attitude will help. These people with low-carbon life skills should be brought to America and like countries as contributors to a new social order rather than as "objects of charity". They have much to teach us if we are willing to learn.

I think of people who have lived in refugee camps for years. What skills can they share with North Americans who are suffering mental and emotional distress during Covid-related lock-downs?

I think of farmers who grow all their own food in small plots with the help of perhaps one animal, feeding their families using only solar power. Their knowledge and techniques are far superior to our industrial farmers who grow one crop over vast acreages and replace depleted nutrients with artificial fertilizers.

Would our entitled citizens object to welcoming "skilled low-carbon educators" as much as they do to admitting hundreds of thousands of "charity cases"? Seeing ourselves as recipients of education from refugees might be a pill that our self-entitled society finds to swallow, but that medicine offers a solution to what is otherwise a very bleak outlook for both groups.

Is it worth a try?

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