Support for Trump and for resettling immigrants is strong in Lancaster County, Pa.

By Joel Shannon for the York Daily Record, July 7

[....] The call to help refugees is particularly strong in Lancaster County. The city of Lancaster has been called the refugee capital of the nation, resettling 20 times more refugees per capita than the rest of the country, according to the BBC.

The area’s primary resettlement agency credits the support of the county’s strong religious community for its success: More than 85 percent of refugees – people fleeing their homeland because of famine, war, persecution or other causes – are self-sufficient in six months or less.

“Why Lancaster? It’s sorta simple: It just really comes back to the community,” explained Stephanie Gromek, a community resource coordinator with Church World Service, a faith-based organization with local headquarters in Lancaster that holds a government contract to resettle refugees in central Pennsylvania. “This is not new to Lancaster County. This is who the community is. It’s who we are,” Gromek said.

The organization’s goal is to help refugees to assimilate into American culture. “We never proselytize,” said Gromek. Sharing faith should happen in the context of friendship.

Support is particularly strong in Mennonite churches, a diverse community of believers with a faith tradition that has loose similarities to the Amish [.....]

Since 2002, more than 4,000 refugees have had the opportunity to call Lancaster home, with over 75 percent having come since 2010, according to USA Today Network data.

The majority come from south Asia, but Iraq, Somalia, Cuba and the Congo have also sent hundreds. Less than a hundred fled Syria, the subject of political controversy in the Trump administration [....]