West Michigan County Supports Flooding its Citizens with Foreign Refugees Despite Citizen Protest
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Mlive reported that Ottawa County will continue to resettle refugees.
After three hours of people raising concern about the merits of refugee resettlement, the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to support further refugee resettlement programs in the county on Tuesday, January 28, 2020.
This resolution came in response to an executive order that President Donald Trump issued last year that makes local and state governments give official consent before allowing refugee resettlement within their communities.
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Bethany Christian Services, the only resettlement agency in the county, resettled 76 people in total within Ottawa County between 2015 and 2019, according to a report from Ottawa County Administrator Al Vanderberg.
More than 150 people were present at the meeting, and the conference space was standing room only.
The discussions were civil, despite differing viewpoints presented.
The majority of people speaking in opposition wanted the board to put the measure on hold until the economic impact of resettlement could be studied further.
Some of the opponents of resettlement argued that this migration coming into the country could place a burden on the government’s social programs and also create cultural assimilation problems.
“It’s not the immigration of yesterday,” Karl Nitz declared. “It is actually an invasion. These people want your space.”
The Trump administration capped refugee resettlement at 18,000 for this year.
Alene Miller said that when her ancestors immigrated they had “no social services at the time and had to struggle to stay alive and learn a new language, and they did.”
Those in opposition called attention to the growing federal deficit and the intent to re-allocate federal refugee funding to veterans and other citizens who are economically struggling.