I thought I was done today. I was just going to tackle my bulging e-mail in box when I came across an e-mail from reader Judith alerting me to this news from the Bangkok Post yesterday.
24 Rohingya (Burmese) Muslims are on the way to the US, but the article tells us that since right after 911 we have admitted 13,000 Burmese Muslims (how many are Rohingya?).
Ahhhh!
While we focus on the fact that Syrians can’t be screened, frankly neither can Muslims who get on boats in Southeast Asia (claiming to have been kidnapped) be properly screened!
New readers of RRW don’t know that we have an entire category on the very ‘observant’ followers of Islam that are known as the Rohingya.
We have 180 posts in our ‘Rohingya Reports’ category extending all the way back to 2007. Back in 2007 and early 2008 there was no way the US State Dept. was going to admit Rohingya Muslims, but clearly all that has changed
Here is the story at the Bangkok Post (which won’t let me snip much, so please go read it yourself):
At 46 years old, Basamai, an ethnic Rohingya Muslim man, will for the first time obtain identity documents that will allow him to resettle in the United States next week, along with 23 other trafficking victims.
The 24 to be resettled follow four who left Thailand earlier this month, in a humanitarian programme that has resettled 13,000 Muslims from Myanmar since 2002, according to the US Department of State Refugee Processing Center.
They are not saying if they are coming to your town!
Following their arrival in the US — the exact location remains unknown — the Rohingya group will undergo Cultural Orientation Training before they can be resettled, said a source from the Ministry of…
Cultural Orientation Training, here? in the US? That is a new one on me.
They were screened by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and the star of this story hopes to bring his wife and 8 daughters to America real soon!