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I was out doorknocking to help Tarryl Clark to defeat Michele Bachmann. A man driving by pulled over and asked who I was campaigning for. I mentioned Tarryl and a local candidate. It was clear he was not supporting the local candidate so I asked about Tarryl. He asked about what she thought about 'the Somalis'. (This area has one of the highest population of refugees from the Somali Civil war in the county. All legal immigrants)
I asked him why he was concerned about that issue. He told me that "All the Somali's come over here and none of them work, it's not like when our people came over" I told him I didn't think that was true, that a man worked in my office who had been here leess than a year, and as soon as he came, all he wanted to ddo was work. He told me that man was the exception. I told him I didn't think that was true as there were many Somali applicants for the job and that I had met other somali's who talked about how hard it was to find work. He told me, "Well then he took a job from a regular American." I replied, "And that's probably what happened when my great grandfather came over, he took a job that someone else could have had." Well, that kind of stumped him. And I had to move on to more productive campaigning so I said, "You should talk to the man I work with. He might change your mind." And the man responded, "I wouldn't talk with any of them."
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