Lol. Cooperation across different branches of government? This is a non-starter. If Obama so much as whispers of this in his sleep, Republicans will have a field day. Their line will be that Isis sprouted up in Syria and opening up the floodgates to Syrian immigrants will fast-track terrorists in the mix directly to our city. No question.
Plus there's the whole Republicans hate immigrants that aren't rich thing. Their entire modus operandi regarding immigration for years now has been a constant and steady drumbeat calling for the tightening of our borders. The right has been using a fabricated immigrant status as a smear against our President for as long as he's been in office. Getting more feasible by the minute. This in no way addresses the political infeasibility. The author is truly grasping at straws here. He typed that with a straight face I'm assuming. Decent idea. Not happening.Resettling Syrians in Detroit would require commitment and cooperation across different branches and levels of our government, but it is eminently feasible. President Obama and Congress would have to agree to lift this year’s refugee ceiling by 50,000.
Health and Human Services would need an expansion in the $1.5 billion it budgets for refugee resettlement.
Finally, some will call this plan politically dead on arrival, given skepticism toward immigration, particularly in the Republican Party. But it’s worth noting that the 2003 study of the community found that two-thirds of respondents said they had voted for George W. Bush in 2000;
More important, both parties can agree that resettling destitute, innocent refugees is consistent with America’s moral and ethical commitments;
FWIW, I think this is one of the most terrible ideas I've ever heard. What to do with an economically depressed city? Throw a whole bunch of people with no cultural knowledge, no language skills, a high degree of trauma, and, most importantly, no capital at it! I agree with the general premise that immigrants are a large net benefit to the economy, and I support Snyder's effort to encourage more immigration to Detroit. But, absorbing a humanitarian disaster isn't the same as encouraging immigration. I'm stunned that these otherwise educated (one assumes) professors find this to be a valuable idea. Sure, Det has other immigrants and descendants of immigrants from the middle east, but most of those are Christians and Shi'ites , which ignores the fact that a lot of the Syrian refugees are just the people who persecuted the current Detroiters out of town in the first place. Kinda racist, no? Anyway, in addition to the political problems you mention, I think this is a horrible idea written by people who don't have a clue as to what they're talking about. This piece might as well be sarcasm or satire, but I can't really tell.
I don't know, but I mean they don't have knowledge of American culture. This could be problematic if we're isolating 50,000 culturally and ethnically homogeneous people into an area in that it might create a ghetto of sorts. The last thing Detroit needs is another ghettoized community.