“People here have been very engaged in the election results. There has been a lot of conversations about Biden and people are very optimistic now. I don’t think he will be racist like Trump.”
(Abdi, a Somali living safely in Kenya)
From Kakuma to a town near you!
Yup, they are chomping at the bit to get to Anytown, USA as soon as they can!
Muslim Somalis and Rohingya voice their enthusiasm and expectations here at Reuters:
From Asia to Africa, refugees hope Biden win could help rebuild lives
Joe Biden’s U.S. presidential election win [not so fast!—ed] has raised hopes of resettlement for refugees from Asia to Africa, many in countries where they are denied work and education and have no formal status.
[….]
President-elect Biden is expected to try to reverse much of Trump’s immigration legacy including travel bans on 13 countries that are either majority-Muslim or African nations.
He has also said he would raise the annual ceiling for refugee admissions to 125,000, but has not indicated how quickly that would happen.
Danielle Grigsby, Refugee Council USA’s Director of Policy and Practice, said there were many reasons to be optimistic about more progressive refugee and immigration policies under the Biden-Harris government.
“There has been a lot of early signals on from the Biden-Harris team to get rid of some of the totally unnecessary hurdles that have been put in place to intentionally slow refugees from coming to the U.S.,” said Grigsby.
[….]
In Sub-Saharan Africa, home to more than one in four of the world’s 80 million refugees and displaced people, tens of thousands of people have had their applications for resettlement suspended since Trump took office in 2017.
[….]
U.N. data shows 2,636 Somali refugees have so far been resettled in the United States under the present administration against the 32,068 Somali refugees accepted under the second term of former President Barack Obama.
[….]
“People here have been very engaged in the election results. There has been a lot of conversations about Biden and people are very optimistic now. I don’t think he will be racist like Trump,” he said by phone.
Not just Somalis itching to get here, but expectations have been raised among Rohingya in Bangladesh ….
Rohingya Muslims waiting in Bangladesh for a Biden ticket to America.
Sharifah Shakirah, a Rohingya former refugee who moved to Texas after 21 years in Malaysia, said resettlement was the best solution for the nearly a million members of her ethnic group living in Bangladesh after fleeing persecution in Myanmar. [Bangladesh is a safe Muslim country.—ed]
“One million Rohingya in Bangladesh have no livelihood, no security, no education,” she said. “They cannot live there for another 10 years. They need a solution and resettlement is one of the solutions.”
Once again, Bangladesh is a safe Muslim country. Just being poor isn’t sufficient to be declared a legitimate refugee under international law.
I have been following the Rohingya migration for more than a decade so if you are interested in learning more about the issue see my Rohingya Reportsarchive with 243 previous posts.
When the Chinese virus began spreading around the world the international press, the UN, and international NGOs used the Rohingya as an example of poor refugees that, due to their living conditions, would be ravaged by the virus. It never happened. No virus “wildfire” in the Rohingya camps or the African camps either. Hmmmm?
