Keep in mind, Ohio already has a sizable Arab and Middle Eastern community; I’ve been to parts of Toledo that have some damn fine Middle Eastern restaurants and these folks are well adjusted members of the population at large. So it’s not like it would be shocking for paler Ohioans to see some Iraqi neighbors moving in and fleeing the chaos we brought to their land:

Strickland Doesn´t Want Overflow Iraqi Refugees

“Ohio Governor Ted Strickland has a message for President Bush: any plan to relocate to the US thousands of refugees uprooted by the Iraq war shouldn’t include Ohio.

The administration plans to allow about 7,000 Iraqi refugees to settle in the United States over the next year, a huge expansion at a time of mounting international pressure to help millions who have fled their homes in the nearly four-year-old war.

Strickland — a Democrat who opposed the war as a US House member — says Ohioans can’t be expected to have open arms for Iraqis displaced by the war. More than 100 Ohioans have been killed since the war began. The governor says he has sympathy for the refugees’ plight, but he won’t ask Ohioans to accept a greater burden.”

Mike has more.

It will be interesting to see where the (obscenely small number of allowed in) refugees do end up. In this Age of Cronyism, I would not at all be surprised if they were mostly relocated in Blue areas and states, said states already sending out more taxdollars than they get back in Federal support, unlike their Red brethren, for whom the opposite redistribution is true.

I wonder if Ted is getting this advice on “Democratic Big Tent” values from a high priced consultant type. Gotta keep those racist voters happy, don’t you know, no matter how it may fly in the face of what your party is supposed to stand for.