Thispast weekend, Michael Dorgan of Fox News devoted an episode to Minnesota's "Little Mogadishu,"America's largest Somali community. The rapidly expanding Muslim population in Minneapolis has become a focus of intense national debate over immigration and welfare fraud. Dorgan observes how the Somalian population is reshaping the state’s historically Scandinavian, Christian cultural landscape.

President Donald Trump blasted Somali Minnesotans as welfare abusers who have been raiding state coffers for years. Says President Trump, "I hear they ripped off -- Somalians ripped off that state for billions of dollars, billions every year... They contribute nothing," Trump said, amid news that some Somalis were involved in bilking that state out of hundreds of millions of dollars in various fraud schemes. Never timid politically, Trump is blunt in his defiant, politically incorrect truth-telling.

In a must-read speech by Geert Wilders, the newly elected Prime Minister of the Netherlands said, “In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: "Who lost Europe”? Wilders went on, “I come to America with a mission. All is not well in the old world. There is a tremendous danger looming, and it is very difficult to be optimistic. We might be in the final stages of the Islamization of Europe. This not only is a clear and present danger to the future of Europe itself, but it is also a threat to America and the sheer survival of the West. The United States as the last bastion of Western civilization, facing an Islamic Europe.”

Empathy for but Realism About Somali Immigrants in America

There always were trials and tribulations of almost every previous ethnic group that arrived in America with their language and customs. Almost all were often put down and discriminated against by previous ethnic arrivals. Yet all finally assimilated into our culture and society.

We hope and pray this happens to Muslim Somalis as well. Only time will tell if the next generations accept, adopt, and embrace America as previous legal immigrants have. To us, one major difference is the Islamic religion. Will Muslims embrace our mostly Christian-Judaic based society or will they attempt to transform America into an Islamic country with Sharia law?

Another consideration is birth rates. White Americans are only reproducing at a non-sustainable rate of about 1.6 percent. It requires at least a 2.2 percent reproductive rate to sustain an ethnic group. Thus, long term white Americans may slowly disappear. I suspect that in 25-50 years and certainly in 100 years, if we were somehow capable of returning to America, we would not recognize it.

America was built on, mostly, European immigration traditions, values, and culture. Subsequent immigrants from mostly European countries sustained that culture. Ironically, the large influx of illegal immigrants from Central and South America, who have a strong family, Catholic tradition, may be the long- term salvation for America. Their higher birth rates could offset the Muslim proliferation.

The challenge for American leaders is to strongly confront fraud, criminality, and misguided political activity that undercuts our American constitution and laws but does not insult potential Somali leaders who actively promote heathy assimilation to American society and culture.

Image: AMISOM Public Information