This article from AlertNet (the world’s humanitarian news site) about a refugee camp in Thailand gives readers some idea of how the spigot will never turn off.  People are cared for in camps and become reliant on aid.  With the hope of resettlement in the West, they just keep coming.

From AlertNet:

MAE SOT, Thailand (AlertNet) – The smell of deep fried snacks mingling with sweet tea, the ladies with shopping baskets laden with fresh greens, the men puffing on cigars in teashops with blaring TVs, teenagers milling about stalls with the latest mobile phones and gadgets – it’s a typical market scene in any small town in Southeast Asia.

But this is no town. This is Mae La, a sprawling refugee camp an hour’s drive from the border town of Mae Sot in northwest Thailand.

It is home to over 45,000 people from Myanmar who fled their homeland as a result of the world’s longest running civil war between the national army and indigenous ethnic groups.

The official Thai term for these places – there are nine along the border housing some 142,000 people – is ‘transitional camp’. But Mae La was set up 27 years ago.

Children who were born and grew up here know little beyond the thatch-roofed, wire-fenced existence.

They just keep coming:

With a host of support programmes, food aid and the prospect of possible resettlement, these camps offer a life far better than what most people have in Myanmar, attracting more people to cross the border, observers say.

The market at Mae La may be in full swing three days a week and motorbike taxis are readily available for residents who want to go out, but officially residents are not allowed to leave the camps so employment and livelihood opportunities are limited.

The Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), an NGO which has been working with refugees from Myanmar for 25 years, says people were initially self-reliant, but have become totally aid-dependent over the years because of the restrictions on their movement.

And we just keep taking them. Burmese refugees consistently top the list of refugees admitted to the US each year.

Here is what I wrote in January in a post about the US Census not accurately counting the Burmese in the US:

According to the most recent annual Report to Congress from the Office of Refugee Resettlement we resettled 16,074 Burmese from 1983-2007 (just the refugee program).  And, let me say AGAIN, the ORR is now nearly 3 years behind in releasing these LEGALLY REQUIRED documents to Congress.  However, we have another source of numbers here.*

1983-2007:      16,074  Burmese arrived in US as refugees

2008:                   18,139

2009:                   18,202

2010:         +        16,693

____________________

69,108

* Readers, in previous years this site kept up with the numbers monthly and yet has failed to post any new numbers since last September.  I can only assume someone doesn’t want the public to see the number of refugees we are admitting this year.

This is a story from the Mail (UK) last week about how segregation is declining between blacks and whites in America (true).  But, the article is written like this one about Rednecks the Mail published a few days ago that clearly ‘looks down its nose’ at Americans.

It begins:

Racial integration between black and white people in the U.S. is at its highest level for a century, new figures reveal.

Segregation among blacks and whites fell in roughly three-quarters of the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas as the two racial groups spread more evenly between inner cities and suburbs.

Still, ethnic segregation in many parts of the U.S. persisted, particularly for Hispanics.

The research found that a new generation of upwardly mobile black families is moving to America’s fastest-growing cities, with a decline over the past decade in black-white segregation.

[….]

The data is among the Census Bureau’s most detailed yet for neighbourhoods and comes ahead of results from the official 2010 census which is released next spring.

The American Community Survey is sent to about one in 10 households each year. It includes questions on ancestry, national origin and many other traits that are no longer asked about in the census done every 10 years.

Only 85,700 Somalis in America is completely wrong

The Mail has published a sidebar about Somalis in America which demonstrates how profoundly wrong the methodology of the American Community Survey is.  Either they are deliberately not releasing the true numbers, they didn’t get their surveys distributed in Somali communities or people lied on the surveys.  Here is a portion of the sidebar:

Nearly one in three people with Somali ancestry in the U.S. now live in Minnesota, which has the largest concentration in the country, the study revealed.

[….]

The data released this week found about 25,000 of the 85,700 Somalis in the U.S. live in Minnesota. Ohio, Washington and California also had large populations of Somalis, but the survey data found no more than 10,500 of them in any state except Minnesota where the Somali population is growing.

[….]

In many communities the population has grown and prospered, with Somali-owned shops and mosques proliferating. Somali translators work in the schools, the children of refugees go on to college and community leaders become public figures.

But there have been worrying signs about the second generation, with reports out of Minnesota of Somali gangs running interstate prostitution rings and investigations of young men going to fight with al-Shabab, which seeks to establish an Islamic state in Somalia.

Ahmed Sahid, president of Somali Family Services of San Diego, said the local population there was swelling with a ‘second migration’ driven by Somalis leaving cold parts of the U.S.

The government estimates there are 5,000 Somalis in the San Diego area, but Sahid said estimates are often wrong, and he thought there were 15,000 to 20,000.

Sahid is correct and the American Community Survey is wrong.

In 2008, I laboriously poured over records at the Office of Refugee Resettlement and recorded these numbers of Somalis admitted to the US since 1983 (I subsequently updated this post for 2009 and 2010).  We admitted, through the refugee program alone, 93,687 in those 27 years—that is only through the refugee program not other legal immigration programs such as the diversity visa lottery, or non-refugee family reunification.  It doesn’t include those who got here illegally and are seeking asylum and it doesn’t include those coming across both our southern and northern borders and disappearing into Somali communities which, by the way, are seeking to segregate themselves.

Does the American Community Survey expect us to believe that since over 93,000 Somalis were admitted in nearly three decades that many left and that none had families, leaving us with 85,700 today?

This is an informative report at the Contra Costa Times on how refugees—they are called Bhutanese, but are really of Nepali origin—are arriving by the tens of thousands in the US and how they are being prepared for life in America in camps in Nepal.

I had a laugh over this paragraph:

In the past two years, more than 30,000 Bhutanese refugees have migrated to the United States, Canada, Australia and five other countries. The refugees, members of a Nepali-speaking ethnic minority, left Bhutan 18 years ago under pressure from the government.  [The Bhutan government wanted Bhutan for Bhutanese not for Nepali people.]

I laughed because although they say 30,000 have gone to the US, Canada and Australia, we have officially taken 29,371 of those according to statistics available at the Cultural Resources Orientation Center here.    The numbers breakdown as follows: FY 2008—5,320, FY 2009 —13,452, and FY 2010 as of July 31st (the fiscal year ends Sept. 3oth)—10,599. 

This exodus to the US was launched in 2007 by former (Bush Administration) Asst. Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration Ellen Sauerbrey’s promise that the US would take 60,000 Bhutanese over 5 years.  So they have about 30,000 to go over the next two years to reach her promised goal.

The article goes on to discuss how the elderly (who will btw be eligible for SSI in the US)  have a more challenging time with the training to enter the US.  And, there is a very interesting discussion about how the refugee camps are experiencing a decline in the educational system as teachers are being resettled.

The elderly need to learn some English and how to flush a toilet!

Refugees say better preparation for life abroad is more important now than ever. Elder refugees, most of them former farmers in Bhutan, are enrolling in English classes for the first time, hoping it will ease their transition, and the migration agency is teaching life skills to adults on topics ranging from child-rearing to the workings of American-style flush toilets.

However, it appears their biggest worry is about crime and the poor economy.

The teachers have also been tasked to talk a lot more about the refugees’ big concerns: the tough economy and crime.

Two Bhutanese refugees who had recently arrived in America were killed after robbery attempts in Florida and Texas. Many more have been mugged, including several young Bhutanese men in Oakland. The refugees are placed in cities where they can find affordable apartments and easy access to public transit. Many of these places also suffer from poverty and crime.

Mugging stories spread like wildfire back in the camps, where they are often tinged with racial stereotypes, fears and jokes.

Agency workers said they have tried to tailor their cultural orientation sessions to respond to fears and misconceptions about life in the United States.

We have written many many posts on the Bhutanese resettlement to the US, including reports of those murders mentioned in this article.  I encourage readers wishing to learn more to please use our search function and search for ‘Bhutanese.’