Loomer is correct.

Y'all should've seen Little Haiti in the 80's. The worst neighborhood in Dade County...by far. I know a lot of good Haitians that did assimilate into American society, but I don't think they're the majority. And they all settled outside Little Haiti.

The younger immigrants will assimilate well if they're young kids when they immigrate, but the older teens and adults don't usually assimilate well. Especially the males. Successive generations that are born here in the U.S. usually assimilate the best, as they grow up from start to finish as Americans.

The crime rate in Dade County and greater Miami rose significantly when the Haitians started coming over around 1980-81, after the bulk of the Mariel boat lifts. Once they formed the dreaded Posses, and went to war with the Cuban and Colombian gangs, that's when Miami became the most murderous city in the world. That's when cops (and civilians) started finding 50 gal trash bags filled with body parts all over Dade, Broward, and Monroe Counties. They'd be found in the canals, on the expressways, neighborhood streets, etc. Most of those bags would have dozens of body parts in them, and usually, those body parts wouldn't have matches in the same bags. Imagine finding a giant trash bag filled with 50 or so hands, arms, or feet, all from different people, and finding those bags almost daily. I'm pretty sure the murder rates attributed to Miami in the 80s and early 90s aren't accurate. There were years where thousands of people were murdered or disappeared and are still missing today. And once their offspring started going to school, the school system didn't know what to do with them, they were that violent. I learned how to engage multiple assailants before I finished the 7th grade. It was either that, or end up hospitalized...or worse.

Little Haiti is one of the areas of Miami where the crime rate really hasn't changed much during my lifetime, and I'm 48. I think it may be less murderous than it was back then, but I'm not sure. It looks the same now as it did when I was a kid. It's also the only area of Miami where local gangs from some of the other hoods like Overtown, Freedom City, Carol City, and Little Havana won't go into without large numbers. And if you're white, try your best not to be caught there after dark. That's been a general rule of thumb since the '82 riots that still hasn't changed.

Anyway, just my perspective. I bet it must be a real shock for these upper Midwest neighborhoods to see what the Haitians are doing there. But, I know from experience, that they haven't seen the full capabilities of that population yet. And the longer they stick around, the more likely it is that they will begin to see (quite soon, I might add), just how bad a group of bored, jobless, and desperate male Haitians can really be.