ND County Considering Whether It Has Room for Refugees

I may no longer live in North Dakota, but the state will always be close to my heart. How could it be anything else when I relocated to the state twice, lived there for seven years, gave birth to my second son there (an extremely proud North Dakota native), and still have friends in the state who I miss so much it hurts.

So it’s with a very heavy heart that I read this article from TIME about how officials in Burleigh County, home of the state’s capitol, Bismark, will be voting on the issue of whether their county will stop accepting refugees.

ICYMI, President Trump kicked this issue off with his September 2019 Executive Order on Enhancing State and Local Involvement in Refugee Resettlement. He said that, going forward, refugees would only be resettled in communities that have consented to receive such migrants.

But why is Burleigh County thinking about not-consenting to more refugees? Does it have too many? Well, TIME notes the county currently receive about 25 refugees a year. Yup. Just 25. That’s it.

Refugees make North Dakota great. They really do. I hope the politicians wake up to that fact before they vote.

-KitJ