Houston may be hot, unfriendly and frustratingly difficult to navigate, but more than two-thirds of the poorest New Orleans evacuees who fled to the city after Hurricane Katrina plan to stay, a Rice University survey released today shows. Almost 69 percent of the 1,081 people queried in the National Science Foundation-funded study conducted in July by political science professors Rick Wilson and Robert Stein said they likely will remain in Houston. That figure is up from about 57 percent in October and 51 percent in September 2005.
Yes, I understand that none of the Katrina refugees asked to be in this situation, and yes, most of the refugees ARE good and decent people. Lucky us, though,,,the thugs and the crackheads and those who wouldn’t find a job if their life depended on it aren’t leaving. The thing about being a good neighbor is that it’s a lot easier when you know that your guests aren’t going to overstay their welcome. Apparently, our hospitality has been mistaken for an invitation to permanent residency. Then again, it’s not as if many of the refugees have anything to go home to.
I’m all for being good neighbors and lending a helping hand when it’s needed. At what point, though, does a hand up become a hand out? I don’t know, but here we are, more than a year after Katrina, and we’re still hosting thousands of refugees. I’m not sure what else we could reasonably have done. After all, almost all of New Orleans had to find somewhere else to live, and Houston was the nearest large metropolitan area.
I’m not sure how you go about absorbing tens of thousands of new residents. I’m not certain that any metropolitan area has ever had to do anything like this before. It would be nice if our new neighbors were uniformly good neighbors. Honestly, though, most of them are. It’s likely a relatively small number of thugs that are responsible for giving the New Orleans refugees a bad name. Still, when you look at the increase in Houston’s crime rate, it’s difficult not to feel as if this is a case of “no good deed goes unpunished”.
I don’t begrudge the refugees their place among us. I can only hope that if I were to find myself in a similar situation, I would find myself welcomed. None of these folks asked for this situation; given the option, I imagine most of the refugees would welcome the option to return home. Unfortunately, what would they be returning to?
It’s too bad we can’t send the thugs back…or at least bill Louisiana for the costs involved in dealing with a crime rate they are largely responsible for increasing. While many here wish that the refugees would just go back home, the reality is that most are here to stay. That’s their right. We can either continue pissing and moaning about it, or try to make the best of things. We could start by being thankful that Katrina didn’t hit us.
