I happen to live in Lewiston, Maine, a city with a relatively large population of Somali Muslim refugees that have been here for over a decade now.
What follows are my purely anecdotal and personal observations based on six years of near-daily interaction with Somali women and children. I have had very limited interaction with Somali men, as I do not often encounter them.
The good:
I’ll start with the obvious, which is that Lewiston, Maine has successfully given thousands of Somalian refugees a safe place to live their lives. I always remind myself that I can’t blame any Somalian for wanting to get the hell out of Somalia.
No major outbreaks of violence. Lewiston remains a relatively peaceful place to live.
The children who have spent most of their lives in Maine are, in my experience, very polite and well-behaved. I believe that at least some (but hopefully most or all) of the backwards traditions will be dying off with this generation.
Somali-run businesses are taking hold and seem to be doing well.
I can recall no specific incidents, and certainly no pattern of incidents, where Somalians are trying to impose their customs on Mainers. AKA no signs of Sharia here in the Pine Tree State. There is no shortage of heavily-tattooed fat ladies walking around downtown wearing a sports bra and some sweat pants, just out there waddling about, seemingly unaccosted by Muslim men. I’ve checked out of the grocery store with a pound of bacon and a large pork roast with a Somalian behind me and no comment was made about my food choice.
On a similar note, I’ve never seen a Somali woman check out of a grocery store with a cart full of crap. I always see them buying healthy food in bulk. They may get a lot of government food aid, but at least they do not seem to squander it.
The bad:
10 years after their arrival, it is very safe to say that Somalians still consume a hugely disproportionate amount of public resources. I lift with a night shift paramedic who has told me that his two most common calls are intoxicated Bates College kids and Somali women going into labor without any prenatal care. And go into labor Somali women do…
Many large, and I mean LARGE families remain highly or wholly dependent on government aid.
I’ve never actually observed a Somali man over 40-ish speak English. In fact, you don’t see them much at all except in “Little Mogadishu” aka Lisbon Street. They seem to be very, very insular and, from what I can discern, do not seem to be very interested in assimilation or work. Quite unlike Saudi Arabia, most of the Somali drivers I see are women. I rarely see a Somali man over 40-ish behind the wheel. They seem to limit their interaction with, well, everyone who is not like them.
Their neighborhoods are mostly shitholes. The Maine customs of basic property maintenance and trash pick-up do not seem to have taken hold. It has improved, but not by much. To be fair, their white neighbors in those parts of town also consider moldy boxes and sun-faded laundry detergent bottles to be lawn art, so perhaps it is learned behavior.
The indifferent:
I guess I’d say that I’ve never seen any of the worst of what gets predicted or reported with Muslim refugees, but I don’t see how you can call this kind of resettlement a win for the people who were already living here, or the people who continue to live here.
That said, Maine is one of the very few states that is losing population, and this generation of Somali-Americans who grew up in the Lewiston Public School system could be a very big part of this area’s economic future. I have high hopes for those kids. I believe that they will do much better than their Somali-born parents, just like almost every immigrant group has.