I Can't Blame Him

The Texas governor has said that the state will stop taking refugees. He wants the rest of the states to pitch in. Link. Excerpt:

Texas has been taking in refugees since Wednesday. By Saturday, Perry warned the state was nearing its limit. About 100,000 Louisiana residents are staying in hotels and motels across the state and another 139,000 are being temporarily housed in 137 shelters throughout the state from the Houston Astrodome to El Paso.

How many of those nearly 250,000 refugees are in Houston alone? According to the 2000 census, Houston has a population of nearly 2,000,000. If Houston has 100,000 of the refugees, that means it has increased its population by 5%, and it sounds like many of the refugees aren't going back to New Orleans.

I don't want to be the one to say what everyone is thinking, but I will: Do other American cities want these refugees? Many are welfare recipients, and the criminal element is much larger in the underclass than other classes, especially in New Orleans, pre-Katrina.

Go ahead and call me a racist, a bigot, or whatever else you want, but I know this concern is in everyone's mind. (And, indeed, it's beginning to get aired: Link.) In my town of 10,000, if City Hall proposed bringing 500 of the refugees here, thus increasing our population by 5%, our entire complexion would change dramatically, from safe streets to our fragile social-assistance programs.

I don't have an answer, but I salute Houston for undertaking noble and kindly actions in the face of a real, permanent, risk.