In Montana, neighbor vs neighbor over welcoming refugees
By SHARON COHEN
Jun. 9, 2016 12:15 AM EDT
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/0e0f16c155ed4f23aff94f1b44201396/1-states-battle-over-refugees-reflects-divided-americaAnd what started as a disagreement over whether to welcome dozens of refugees to this peaceful corner of western Montana soon erupted into something much larger, encompassing wildly divergent views of Islam, big government and whether Americans should "take care of our own" before worrying about newcomers.
Neighboring counties — and in some cases, neighbors — locked horns.
Demonstrators took to the streets: "No Jobs, No Housing, No Free Anything," proclaimed some opponents' signs. Some warned that Islamic State terrorists could infiltrate their communities; others suggested that the federal government, long accused of tyranny in its dealings with the West, was at it again.
The refugees' supporters did not back off. "Rise Above Fear, Refugees Welcome" they declared.
Missoula's mayor, John Engen, was among them. "I think that the war on terror has produced an internal war on compassion," he says. "We have been programmed to be very afraid since 9/11 and to think of people who aren't white Anglo-Saxon Americans as 'other' and we should be afraid of people who are 'other.'"
This did not occur in a vacuum. What's happened here reflects what's happening across the nation in an election year dominated by inflammatory rhetoric over immigration, including calls for building a border wall, the mass deportation of immigrants living in the country illegally, and temporarily banning Muslims from entering the U.S.
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