I feel badly that I didn’t post yesterday—probably the first time in months that I’ve missed a day. But, I will try to catch up today (I have a huge queue of potential posts). I’m working on a bigger project so there will be some lighter days going forward.
However, I noticed that my absence wasn’t missed as a large number of readers were back anyway reading some of our 6,000+ previous posts. We are on target to make November 2014 our best month ever!
Top posts this week were the following (daily top posts are in the right hand sidebar).
I was surprised to see that our fact sheet did not make it into the top three this time. And, I was equally surprised to see that the ‘Somalis go to Wyoming for subsidized housing vouchers‘ story was, for the third week in a row, our top post! (I sure hope it isn’t because refugees and their handlers across the country are sending it around and are headed to Wyoming for their vouchers!)
1. So why are those Somalis moving to Cheyenne, WY? Prepare to be shocked
2. Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains largely funded by government contracts
3. In Liberal, Kansas meat packing plant a black guy named Smith murders a Somali refugee
That last one, about Liberal, Kansas was a month-old yesterday, so I don’t know why it hit big this week. One of my Kansas correspondents found nothing new happening on the case, but did find a juicy story I hope to get posted today.
Our top ten countries for the week were as follows (in descending order and excluding the US). Usually Canada, Australia and the UK are somewhere in the top 3, but last week Malta came in at number one, and now Germany has pushed the UK to number four.
Canada
Germany
Australia
UK
Thailand
Sweden
France
Netherlands
Norway
New Zealand
A trip down memory lane!
I’ve been doing some digging about our first year (2007) at RRW and came across this very thorough piece (‘In Maryland, resistance closes refugee office’) published at the Emporia Gazette (Kansas) written by Bobbi Mylnar that chronicles how Washington County Maryland residents (including this writer) questioned the US State Department and its contractor Virginia Council of Churches about resettlement of third-worlders in Hagerstown, the county seat.
The detailed report, which I had completely forgotten about, chronicles that episode and the consequent birth of this blog—Refugee Resettlement Watch. It also (significantly) reports the demise of the resettlement effort in Washington County, MD.
Why was Emporia, Kansas interested in faraway western Maryland? They were in the midst of a huge public controversy about the arrival of large numbers of Somali refugees to work for Tyson Foods (what else!). Ultimately the controversy became so heated, Tyson closed the plant and move the Somalis to other towns. We have a whole category here at RRW on that battle.
For new readers!
Since we get new readers every day, here is my usual spiel.
This is where you can find information if you are arriving here at RRW for the first time (in addition to the fact sheet linked above). We have over 6,000 posts.
* See our categories (left hand sidebar)
* See the tag clouds (right hand sidebar)
* Also, we have a great search function and since neither the categories nor the tags go all the way back to our first posts seven years ago, use the search window with a few key words. You might want to first try your city, state, or country to see what we have reported from there over the years.
By the way, our category entitled ‘where to find information’ is filled with reports and documents, but with 307 posts archived there, it is pretty unwieldy now.
Past weekly roundups can be found in our category entitled ‘blogging.’
If you wish to be notified when we post, consider subscribing or follow us on twitter (@refugeewatcher) or facebook (RefugeeInfoResource). ‘Like us’ on facebook!
And apologies to all who e-mail and comment, sorry if I don’t respond much, there are just not enough hours in my day!
It occurs to me that I do see everyone’s comments to posts because we do screen them (no foul language, no threats), so if you have something you want me to see, I don’t at all mind if you send the link as a comment to a post, even if it’s off-topic.
To regular readers, thank you for your continued concern for this very important issue.