New Orleans has been evacuated, now the difficult part

Evacuating New Orleans seems to have been a Herculean task for the US authorities, one can only hope they deal better with next issue, the resettlement of refugees.

There are now half a million people scattered all over the Southern US. Some major decisions will need to be made. Where are the refugees going to be housed? where are they going to be schooled? how are they going to find a job? and who will cover the cost of living until that happens? The refugees cannot sit in shelters indefinitely, that can only lead to the kind of social unrest we saw at the superdome.

Maybe the US can learn something from Israel, which took in nearly a million Russian immigrants, over a sixth of it's population in 1990-2. In the space of a couple of years, Israel built huge temporary suburbs with mobile homes, and subsidised the Russians' living costs.

America isn't very good at helping it's poorer citizens help themselves, but its southern states have now adopted an underclass, and will need to act quickly if they are to avoid inheriting the social problems that have afflicted New Orleans.