AP- A Massachusetts mayor is calling for an end  to refugee resettlement in his city, saying Somali families are putting pressure  on already strained services in Springfield, a onetime industrial center where  nearly a third of the population lives below the poverty line.

Mayor Domenic Sarno is the latest mayor to  decry refugee resettlement, joining counterparts in New Hampshire and Maine in  largely rare tensions with the State Department, which helps resettle refugees  in communities across America.

The mayor is drawing criticism from those who  say this country has a moral obligation to help the outcast and refugees who say  they’re being scapegoated for problems the city faced long before their  arrival.

‘Why not talk about the problems in the city,  why not talk about the houses that are unstable and in bad conditions, why only  talk about the Somalis and Somali Bantus?’ Mohammed Abdi, 72, said through an  interpreter.

Sarno, leader of the state’s third-largest  city, first demanded last summer that the U.S. government stop sending refugees.  But after recent inspections found Somali families living in overcrowded,  pest-infested apartments without electricity and sometimes heat, he stepped up  complaints, saying resettlement agencies are bringing in ‘warm-weather’ refugees  and dumping them into cold climates only to leave them dependent on the  city.

‘I have enough urban issues to deal with.  Enough is enough,’ Sarno said in an interview. ‘You can’t keep concentrating  poverty on top of poverty.’

Hard examples and evidence for the mayor’s  stance are scant. The problems in the Somali housing have largely been  attributed to neglectful landlords. The government does not track the number of  refugees who rely on social services.

The refugee population in Springfield of  about 1,500 – around 380 of them Somali – represents about 1 percent of the  city’s total of 153,000. And a 2014 report by the U.S. government found that  Massachusetts ranked third in the nation for refugee employment, with 73 percent  of refugees enrolled in state programs finding work.

Madino Idoor, a 35-year-old Somali with seven  children, spent 12 years in a refugee camp before coming to the U.S. in 2004.  She works two jobs — one at Goodwill at Springfield and another as a dishwasher  at the Barnes Air National Guard Base in nearby Westfield.

Read more: Stop sending Somali refugees

Source: Mail online