Is your city bringing in refugees? You’re probably being told it’s going to be a great thing for the economy. Michigan is one such state. Michigan’s Governor Snyder has declared that he’ll be flooding Detroit with refugees even though the FBI has repeatedly said they cannot properly vet these refugees. Besides the fact that this is unsafe, the economic implications are devastating. As people in Michigan are being told a big lie, other cities are actually living with the consequences already. The Atlantic has a very good article on the city of Syracuse, New York and the big lie that it’s a boom for cities that bring refugees into their community:

SYRACUSE—Drive around this economically depressed city and the signs of the more than 10,000 refugees who have settled here are everywhere, from the ethnic grocery stores on the Northside to clusters of Somali Bantu women sitting in brightly colored veils and dresses in Central Village, one of the city’s housing projects in the Southside.

The number of refugees arriving in America is nearing a recent high, and will continue to track upward following an announcement by President Obama last month that the country would welcome at least 10,000 displaced Syrians.

Syracuse, like other cities in the North and Midwest that have experienced population losses, has put out the welcome mat for refugees, with Mayor Stephanie Miner joining 17 mayors in a letter to President Obama encouraging the country to accept even more Syrian refugees.

But Syracuse, like many other cities with large populations of refugees, is grappling with the challenges of bringing strangers from abroad to a down-and-out area. More than 70 different languages are spoken in Syracuse City schools, which a court has declared underfunded. Nearby Utica banned 17-to-20-year-olds from city schools, instead choosing to bus them to a school where they can’t earn a diploma. Syracuse is still trying to figure out how to find housing for refugees who can’t afford much and how to ensure, in a region where jobs are hard to come by, that refugees don’t fall into perpetual poverty.

So far, the city has struggled to deliver on those goals. According to analysis by Paul Jargowsky, a fellow at the Century Foundation, the number of high-poverty census tracts doubled in Syracuse from 2000 to 2013. Many of the areas that saw the highest jumps in concentrated poverty were Northside neighborhoods where large populations of refugees have resettled. Even there, refugees have a hard time finding affordable housing.

Here’s an interactive map of New York State where you can learn more about what you state is giving refugees:  New York Government Programs

Please go to the best refugee resettlement resource around and read up on what’s going on where you live: REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT WATCH