I recently read that we’re increasing the number of Iraqi immigrants allowed into the U.S. to 7,000 per year. We may be looking at an influx coming up not unlike what we saw from Vietnam during the Sino-Vietnamese wars.
My neighborhood in Chicago picked up a significant Vietnamese population during this period, as well as a good number of displaced southern whites. My understanding of this phenomenon is that new immigrant or otherwise displaced populations tend to find homes in areas that are economically depressed at the time, which Uptown Chicago was in the late sixties through the seventies.
So, I’m wondering, if we start accepting a lot of refugees from Iraq, where in the U.S. are they likely to settle, assuming they’ll probably gravitate toward some place where rent is cheap?
Compared to the current total of about 2.6 million Iraqi refugees, and who made them that way, 7000 doesn’t seem like jack. Yet that’s an increase? But they’re mostly the educated ones, the people a growing country most needs to develop , so we could use our share of them.
Too bad about Iraq itself, though. Oh, well, what can you do?
Out-of-Country voting sites were chosen (in part) based on concentration. Those cities were Washington, D.C., Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and Nashville.
