Tag: Somali refugees

Three-fourths of Norway’s Somali refugee children live in poverty; why we should stop importing poverty

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I don’t think this news surprises anyone, but what does it mean as this generation grows up—not just for Norway, but throughout Europe and the world for people without jobs and ultimately nothing to do all day?

Yesterday I happened to catch a bit of a Glenn Beck interview I want to share with you.  Beck can be pretty doom and gloom, but what his guest was saying we can already see happening in parts of Europe.  So why do we think we will be spared the societal chaos?

Somali women protesting in Oslo a few years ago. http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/category/current-events/

First Norway, from The Local:

Three quarters of children of Somali origin in Norway now live in poverty, according to new figures from Statistics Norway, and numbers are on the rise.

Children from Somalia have been over-represented in the poverty statistics for years, but the proportion of children living in families with persistently low income has risen during the last year, Norwegian state broadcaster NRK has reported.

Other immigrant groups are also struggling, with more than half of poor children in Norway now living in immigrant households. Afghani and Iraqi groups also have high levels of poverty, yet none rival the Somalis.

Beck interview with Jason Calacanis on the not too distant future (a few decades!) as jobs become more scarce for a whole host of reasons.

We better be planning for this as we admit more and more low-skilled migrants to America.  This is Beck’s transcript that I cleaned up a little (What does the future hold? Glenn talks to entrepreneur and angel investor Jason Calacanis):

CALACANIS: You can see what it looks like. If you go to the Middle East, if you go to some of the under-performing European countries, referred to as the PIGS, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, and you see what happens when 20-something-year-old males hit 20, 30, 40% unemployment, it means riots in the street. And it could mean people hanging out, drinking coffee all day, getting a stipend from the government, looking for somebody to hate for their lot in life. And having a lack of purpose in life is dangerous. Those are the people who can get picked up presently easily by people who are using religion to do bad things in the world and drugs and just whatever?

Beck then asked, well what do we do? You won’t like some of Calacanis’s answers! But, at least he has some ideas! However, he suggests that few in leadership positions are even thinking about it.

How about we save ourselves and start with not overloading America with new poverty!

See our Norway archive here.

By the way, we are on target to resettle 10,000 more Somalis to the US this fiscal year which brings our grand total now way over 100,000.

State Department downplays Somali refugee concerns about new banking restrictions

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been meaning to at least report on the latest round of angst over restrictions on sending American money from the Somali ‘community’ here to Somalia.  Of course the banks are worried that the dollars (that probably came through various US welfare programs) will end up in the hands of terrorists.

State Department Spokeswoman Psaki (of the beaded necklaces): no big deal that they can’t send cash to Somalia.

So, here is a report from Foreign Policy summing up where things stand now.  As expected, Rep. Keith Ellison is going to bat for his Minnesota Somali constituents.

Remember readers that the remittance practice is a big deal and is an important driver for migrants of all sorts to get here—those Central American governments, happy to see their ‘children’ go to America, are driven by the desire for the cold hard cash that the migrants send home.  The cash thus leaves the US economy.

Foreign Policy:

Many companies that send money from immigrants in the United States to friends and family in Somalia shut down this week, but the State Department doesn’t see any need for an emergency response.

State spokeswoman Jen Psaki downplayed the impact that a cutoff of remittances could have on millions of Somalis who the U.N. says depend on the money for basic survival. It would be a “stretch,” Psaki said Wednesday, to connect remittances to economic opportunity in Somalia.

Psaki said the U.S. government had “engaged in ongoing communication with the Somali community in the United States and financial institutions serving that community” in an effort to effectively regulate remittances and keep them from financing terrorism.

At issue is the fallout from a decision by the main bank facilitating international wire transfers to Somalia to close the accounts used to hold and then send the money. Merchants Bank of California, which handled 60 to 80 percent of those funds, closed all Somali accounts on Friday, as Foreign Policy was the first to report. The closure was a result of regulatory pressure on banks to verify where the money is going to make sure it isn’t funding terrorism, which is hard to do in Somalia because the country doesn’t have a central bank or formal banking system.

[….]

Oxfam, the humanitarian organization, responded to Psaki’s comment by pointing out that Somalia receives $1.3 billion in remittances every year, which is more than the country gets in aid or foreign investment.

“It is critical that the Department of State recognize the catastrophic consequences that the current disruption in remittances will have in Somalia,” Scott Paul, a senior advisor for Oxfam America, said in an emailed statement.

There is more, see what Rep. Keith Ellison has to say, here.

For the many new readers who joined us yesterday, we have resettled over 100,000 Somali refugees to the US in the last couple of decades, here.  Minneapolis is ground zero because of the refugee contractors operating there which include:  Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Service, and the evangelicals, World Relief (new name is Arrive Ministries), here.  The original attraction of Minnesota was its generous welfare system.

The US State Department and its contractors brought in 9,000 new Somalis to America in 2014 and are on target for 10,000 this year.  They will be distributed around the country.

Scary photo of the day! Somali woman at driving simulator

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I was just working on a larger piece about Bowling Green, KY when this photo jumped out at me!  There was a driver training program for immigrants at the National Corvette Museum.

 

Oopsy! About to crash…. Photo: Miranda Pederson/Daily News

 

 

The full story at the Bowling Green Daily News (Crash Course) is here.  I guess I shouldn’t laugh!

See our extensive archive on Bowling Green, KY refugees, by clicking here.

A half a million girls in immigrant/refugee households in US at risk for genital mutilation

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The number has jumped dramatically as Muslim refugees have entered the US from Somalia, Ethiopia and to a lesser degree Egypt.  The horrific practice has been illegal in the US for nearly 20 years!

This map is incredible since it almost state-for-state matches the highest refugee resettlement states in the US!

 

 

 

From the Los Angeles Times (thanks to Judy).  Emphasis is mine:

Nearly 507,000 women and girls in the United States could be at risk of female genital excision, including 57,000 in California, a new study has found.

That is more than twice the number that were thought to be at risk in 2000, the last year for which estimates are available.

Analysts at the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit research organization in Washington, attributed the preliminary findings released Friday to an increase in immigration [REFUGEES—ed] from countries where the practice is common, including Egypt, Ethiopia and Somalia.

It is unclear how many families continue the practice after moving to the U.S., but community activists say there is anecdotal evidence of girls being sent back to their parents’ home countries for “vacation cutting” and of traditional cutters traveling to the U.S. to circumcise girls in this country.

To estimate the number who may have undergone the procedure or be at risk, the research group used data collected by the Census Bureau for the 2013 American Community Survey to determine the number of women and girls whose families originate in countries where female genital excision is practiced. It then applied the prevalence rates in those countries to the numbers in the U.S.

The methodology is similar to that used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a study that found about 168,000 women and girls were at risk of genital excision in the U.S. in 1990, said Mark Mather, the group’s associate vice president for U.S. programs.

[….]

California is the state with the highest at-risk population, followed by New York (48,000) and Minnesota (44,000), the Population Reference Bureau found.  [We know that Minnesota has the highest Somali population in the US—ed]

Continue reading here…..

Isn’t diversity beautiful!

Somalis colonizing Nacogdoches County, TX; internationally-owned Pilgram’s Pride meat packer drawing them there

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Meat packers (chicken processors in this case) are changing small town America by working closely with the US State Department and its refugee resettlement contractors.***

While internationally-owned companies (75% Brazilian-owned in this case) get the cheap captive laborers in the refugee stream to America, American taxpayers get to take care of those workers every other need—education for the children, subsidized housing, health care and the list goes on.  Great business model—right!

Meanwhile the colonization of small towns continues….

The State Department and its refugee contractors appear to be busy at work demographically changing Rep. Louie Gohmert’s district just as they changed the St. Cloud, MN, heart of former Rep. Michele Bachmann’s district with the resettlement of Somalis.

From WAVE3.News (hat tip: Pungentpeppers):

NACOGDOCHES COUNTY, TX (KTRE) – Nacogdoches, Center, and Lufkin are home to about 150 Somalis refugees.  [May seem like a small number, but it won’t be in another five years—ed]

Some have lived here for over five years, learned English, and even obtained their US citizenships.

Others are struggling to learn American ways.

Somalis are seen in and around Nacogdoches. The women are recognized by their brightly colored native dresses. A distinct accent is heard from the men.

They’re here to learn American ways.  [While working for Pilgram’s Pride!—ed]

Abdirahman Guled wants East Texans to learn his people’s ways.

That last line is the real truth!

Then this!  They are turning red states blue!

According to the Federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, more international refugees were living in Texas in 2012 than in any other state.

Concerned Texans might like to have a look at the large number of resettlement contractors working in your state.  Go to this handy list (p.32-34 lists all the contractors in Texas).

More Somalis on the way to America!

The numbers are in at the Refugee Processing Center for the first 4 months of Fiscal Year 2015 and the Somali numbers are huge—3,536 new Somali refugees have entered the US in the last 4 months!  That means this will be a banner year for Somalis with likely well over 10,000 to be admitted by September 30th, 2015.

***We have a very extensive archive on how meatpackers demographically change America, click here for more.