Trump’s effect on Muslim migrant debate reverberates in heartland

The Washington Post reports:

Here in Grand Forks, population 60,000, friendliness is advertised with a giant smiley face on a water tower. Residents, descended mostly from Norwegian Lutherans, were accustomed to coexisting with the Muslim refugees who have settled in town over the past decade. But a compounding of events far beyond the city limits — recent terrorist attacks carried out by Islamist extremists, the global refu­gee crisis and a presidential campaign debate over whether “political correctness” has led the United States to be too welcoming to Muslims — has made both sides increasingly fearful of their neighbors.

After fleeing a decade-long war and remaking their lives in a peaceful, quiet community, Somalis feel they are being looked at with unfair suspicion.

Many locals, meanwhile, have questioned whether the government is spending too much money on a group they think shows little interest in assimilation. And they find themselves wondering whether the people wearing unusual garb and speaking a foreign language will produce a jihadist killer.

Imagine that.