Somalis heading to Green Bay, Wisconsin, seems one draw is the new mosque

This is a story mostly about how the schools in Green Bay are coping with an increasing influx of Somali refugees.  It sounds like the increase in numbers is due mostly to secondary migrations and some family reunifications.  I wonder if there is a meatpacking plant nearby.

From the Green Bay Press Gazette:

The number of Somali students enrolled in the Green Bay School District has more than quadrupled since the end of last school year.

The district now enrolls 90 Somalis, compared with 49 in September and just 18 in June. The district’s overall student population tops 21,000.

The growing number of Somali students — many of whom need help to improve their English skills — prompted the Green Bay district to hire someone full time to support and instruct students, to work as a parent contact for schools and to interpret. Abdul Nur’s first day is Monday.

New Mosque is a draw

Green Bay doesn’t have neighborhoods like Chicago,” she said. “They’re coming here because they feel safe, and now they have a community.”

They also are attracted to the newly located Green Bay mosque of the Islamic Society of Wisconsin, she said.

“We have had an influx of Somalis in the past year and a half or so,” said Mohamed Ibrahim, a mosque leader. “They come to worship and be part of a community.”

Family reunifications are also responsible

Catholic Charities this year assisted two Somali families who had refugee status to move to the U.S. to reunite with family members, according to the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay.

The main reason the Green Bay area has seen an increase in the Somali population is reunification* of extended families, said Judy Roemer, family strengthening manager for Catholic Charities.

* I wonder if they had their DNA test?

USCCB: No hope for Christians in Iraq, bring more to the US

Well, that is basically the gist of what the US Conference of Catholic Bishops told President Obama lately.  Check out the whole story Clerical Whispers:

The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops urged the U.S. government to “redouble its efforts to assist Iraqis” in providing safety for its citizens, especially religious minorities.

“To meet its moral obligations to the Iraqi people, it is critically important that the United States take additional steps now to help Iraq protect its citizens, especially Christians and others who are victims of organized attacks,” said Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago in a Nov. 9 letter to U.S. President Barack Obama.

Read it all, but, I warn you, it is one of those dark websites that are hard to read.

Regular readers know that the USCCB is largely funded by you, the taxpayer, because we have written about that a zillion times on these pages (one of many recent posts is here).   The USCCB and Catholic Charities around the US are busy resettling Muslims to cities near you and could very well say to Obama, point blank, we want to resettle more Christians because they are being persecuted in Iraq and elsewhere in Muslim countries, but they are too squishy to say it.  Maybe this is about as close as they are going to get.  My fear is that the USCCB is really saying let’s bring an even larger total number of refugees (because we are paid by the head) instead of substituting the desperate Christians for some others.

Australian asylum seekers sew lips shut

They did it as a form of protest for their detention on Christmas Island!   Australia has big problem with ‘boat people’ attempting to get into Australia and this detention facility has been in the news for years.   There is probably a much larger story on this somewhere but this is what the Arizona Daily Star is reporting:

Ten asylum seekers at an Australian detention center sewed their lips together to protest delays in processing their refugee applications, as the government warned that protests will not change the outcome of the visa process.

The male asylum seekers have refused medical assistance since sewing their lips together Friday morning at the Christmas Island detention center. They are taking water and sugar.

The incident was part of a larger protest by 160 detainees at the remote center on Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean where asylum seekers who illegally enter Australian waters by boat are detained.

For more on Australia’s refugee and asylee issues, visit our category on Australia, here.