Yesterday in reponse to questions about the Tyson Foods’ religious accomodation of a minority of Somalis working at a chicken processing plant in Tennessee, Mark Krikorian head of the Center for Immigration Studies said the following:
“Tanzania and Mozambique actually offered to take these people. But they needed the United States and the U.N. to provide funding for resettlement,” he adds. “Instead the State Department said, ‘No we’re just going to bring them into the United States.’ It’s insane!”
This all happened before my time of writing about refugee resettlement, but I have heard this before. I would love to know just how we decided to take 80,000 and counting Somalis. Just now I wanted to go to the Office of Refugee Resettlement databases to see in what year we began bringing Somalis to the US and guess what, they have apparently blocked my access again.
I found this article by Thomas Allen at VDARE that tells us something about the Somali Bantu influx in the earlier days. It chronicles some of the towns that fought back against resettlement in their communities and it shows what a hypocrit Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) is.
I suspect that businesses like Tyson’s Food had a hand in pressuring the government to bring them some cheap workers. And, a lengthy report written by Heidi Boas tells us the Congressional Black Caucus had a hand in promoting refugee resettlement from Africa. (Sorry I can’t give you a link, it’s a report you have to pay for now, but I got a copy awhile back). Here is what I wrote previously.
“The New Face of America’s Refugees: African Refugee Resettlement to the United States:”
….several of the individuals interviewed for this paper identified the Congressional Black Caucus as one of the most influential groups advocating over the past decade for increased African refugee resettlement to the United States.
Gosh, why do you think the Congressional Black Caucus directed our attention to Africa which prior to this time had not been a major refugee resettlement feeder continent? Wouldn’t you love to know the history of all this!
I’m sorry we didn’t make a category for posts on Somalis, but you can just use our search function to find out what we have found out over the last year.