I don’t know what should be done with refugees from Syria but this proposal from Stanford professor David Laitin seems like cruel and unusual punishment.
CBS News of Detroit:
Stanford Professor: Let Refugees From War-Torn Syria Settle In DetroitWhat to do with refugees from war-torn Syria? Send them to Detroit!That’s the message Thursday from a Stanford University political science professor in the New York Times.David Laitin writes in an opinion piece titled “Let Syrians Settle Detroit” that refugees traumatized by war usually turn out to be good citizens.“Suppose these two social and humanitarian disasters were conjoined to produce something positive,” Laitin says.Laitin notes that Syrians have set up thousands of shops at a refugee camp in Jordan and writes that Detroit’s large American Arab population would help them assimilate.
You can read Professor Laitin’s piece in the New York Times here:
Let Syrians Settle DetroitDetroit, a once great city, has become an urban vacuum. Its population has fallen to around 700,000 from nearly 1.9 million in 1950. The city is estimated to have more than 70,000 abandoned buildings and 90,000 vacant lots. Meanwhile, desperate Syrians, victims of an unfathomable civil war, are fleeing to neighboring countries, with some 1.8 million in Turkey and 600,000 in Jordan.Suppose these two social and humanitarian disasters were conjoined to produce something positive.Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan, a Republican, has already laid the groundwork. In January 2014 he called for an infusion of 50,000 immigrants as part of a program to revitalize Detroit, and signed an executive order creating the Michigan Office for New Americans.Syrian refugees would be an ideal community to realize this goal, as Arab-Americans are already a vibrant and successful presence in the Detroit metropolitan area.
Why not let American citizens revitalize Detroit?
Oh wait.
On a final note, maybe Stanford professors should be more worried about Stanford.
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons.
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