Day: September 20, 2009

Al-Shabaab looking for new foreign recruits

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Daily Nation, a news outlet based in Nairobi, Kenya is reporting that the Jihadist group affiliated with Al-Qaeda is eager to welcome to the cause more Somali ‘youths’ (former refugees*) from the far-flung Diaspora.  As far as we know, Al-Shabaab has gone through five American recruits so far of the 20 or so thought to have gone to Africa for Allah.

The extremist group whose leader was killed by American Special Forces is now defiantly asking more foreign fighters to join it.

The killing of Saleh Nabhan and the subsequent appeal by Al Shabaab for more foreign fighters comes amidst reports that the group is increasing its population of foreigners.

From neighbouring Kenya to distant Australia, Somalis in Diaspora are implicated in the running conflict in Mogadishu.

Mohamud Hassan, 23, a Somali from the State of Minnesota in the United States, died on Thursday, September 3, in Mogadishu. [Hassan is death number five, here]

He had been fighting alongside fellow jihadists (holy warriors) in the war against the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and the presence of peace-keepers sent by the African Union (Amisom) to help the government in Somalia.

Most of the article is just a rehash of what we already know and have reported since we began following this issue, here, last November.

* For new readers:

The US State Department has admitted over 80,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last 25 years and then last year had to suspend family reunification because widespread immigration fraud was revealed through DNA testing.

Where do I find refugee statistics?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It occurred to me just now, as I helped a reader find some numbers, that it might be a good idea to repeat where you can get statistics on what refugees came to the US and to what states they were first resettled.  We have written 2,311 posts since we began RRW in July of 2007 and have a category entitled ‘where to find information’ here.   However, it would take some research on your part to find some important data bases.

Here are the statistics on refugees arriving in the US from 1983-2005.

Here are the statistics on individual years from 2000-2008.

This site has the numbers and country of origin (but not destination) for this fiscal year to August 31st.

For those of you looking to find out what religion refugees are, this site, Worldwide Refugee Admissions Processing System (WRAPS), does keep those statistics but you can’t access the site or get the numbers unless perhaps you know some Member of Congress who will get the information for you.  They may initially tell your Congressman that they don’t keep such numbers, but they do.

Here is a report from Homeland Security about refugees and asylees admitted in 2008.

This is a post I wrote on just Somali refugee numbers.  This post is one of the most active we have with many visitors arriving daily even though it is a year old.

For information on all legal immigrants go to this post and follow the links back to the 2007 Yearbook of Immigrant Statistics (it takes a few minutes to load).

If you enjoy numbers these links should give you hours and hours of fun!