World Refugee Day was started by the United Nations in 2000. It is a PR gimmick to give the media a reason to write about refugees on this day and for the local resettlement contractors to hold special events that would attract media attention.
US State Department employees asked themselves via a photo essay, what this day means to them (besides a pay check). Visit them here. The first photo is of Anne Richard, Asst. Secretary of State for Population Refugees and Migration and she believes it means ‘American History.’ I think she might mean how they are changing American history, but I can’t be sure.
Then my favorite photo is this one (below)—I want the map! It’s a photo of Laurence Bartlett, Director of Admissions who presided over the State Department hearings critics attended, here, in front of a map.
It’s too bad he is blocking some of the states obviously displaying color-coded dots which show refugee resettlement target sites in the US. If you click on the photo in the original link, it will enlarge enough for you to see some hot spots, but who knows what the color-coding means. I’m guessing it has something to do with the nationality of refugees or it could be a code for which contractors are located in a particular city.
