No candidate or incumbent who turns a blind eye to the following should get your support on Tuesday. Refugee resettlement into the U.S. is a $1.5 billion industry, and that doesn’t count food stamps, cash assistance, medical care and subsidized housing received within months of arrival, plus Social Security income later.

Since 1993 the United Nations, working with the State Department, has shipped 100,000 Somalis to the U.S. Then a network of church-related organizations and other agencies — called the “resettlement contractors” — get a healthy fee per head from the State Department and U.S. Health and Human Services. The U.N. dictates much of our immigration policy — who, from where, where they should go. The largest voting bloc in the U.N. General Assembly is Muslim.

Since the early 1990s, the United Nations’ high commissioner for refugees has selected 200,000 to 250,000 refugees from Islamic countries to be resettled in the U.S., most from Somalia and Iraq. Somali refugees have been described as 99.9 percent Muslim by Somali-American leaders.

In 2013 the biggest receiving counties in Minnesota in terms of resettled Somalis were Hennepin, Ramsey, Stearns, Olmsted and Kandiyohi. Minnesota is also attracting the most “secondary migrants” of any state — mostly Somalis who were initially placed in other states, then moved to Minnesota to live with fellow Somalis.

The cities and towns in Minnesota don’t get the full story until it’s too late. It’s robbing us financially and changing our culture by force. Did we ask for this? Don’t support any candidate or incumbent on Tuesday who is for this.

Paul Westrum

Albert Lea