Columbus Ohio is the city unwise enough to accept many thousands of Somalis. The exact number is of some dispute. (Refugee Resettlement Watch reasonably posits that it's all about the money, as is strongly hinted in the article anyway—If you want federal grants it helps to inflate the numbers.)

Following is from the Columbus Dispatch article...

Past estimates of Franklin County's Somali population have ranged from 30,000 to 80,000. But a new report says that it's more like 15,000.

An accurate number helps government agencies funnel funds for social services — English classes, jobs programs, etc. — to specific groups.

"Is it possible we have a grant proposal that says 40,000 Somalis? Yes," said Angie Plummer, executive director of Community Refugee and Immigration Services.

But she said that grant proposals must include the specific number of people an agency expects to serve with the funds. That means while a grant proposal might refer to a population estimate, it will ask for funds to serve a specific number.

No one could say how much money has flowed in to help Somalis based on population estimates.

Evelyn Bissonnette, Ohio's refugee coordinator, said the federal government provides $850 per individual to put them in homes and pay for administrative costs. Ohio also received $6 million in federal funds for cash and medical assistance in 2008 for all refugees. [15,000 Somalis? Tally seems low to some, May 23, 2009]

Any number from that benighted culture is too many. Consider this recent item from the BBC about hand-choppy sharia law in the Horn of Africa: Somali justice - Islamist-style.

The dusty streets of Kismayo in Somalia echoed to the sound of a vehicle with loudspeakers summoning residents to a new form of public "entertainment" earlier this month.

People were being invited to see a man have his hand chopped off in a public park in the city.

The young man, Mohamed Omar Ismail, had been found guilty of stealing goods from another man's house.

That afternoon, hundreds of local people flocked to Freedom Park in order to see the amputation.