Tag: Somali refugees

Milwaukee attracting more Somali refugees, Catholic Charities helps!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has publish a feel-good story about how successfully Somali Bantus are settling in to Wisconsin.  You can read the opening yourself about one boy who becomes the first Somali in Wisconsin to go to college.  We are told that he changed his last name from Mursal to Mohamad.

The article follows with some nuggets of information on the program with a reference to Catholic Charities role in the resettlement.

According to the state’s Department of Children and Families, the first wave of Somali refugees began arriving in 1995. Since then the federal government has resettled approximately 700 Somali in Wisconsin, primarily in Brown, Barron, Dane and Milwaukee counties.

The largest population — about 400 people —lives in Milwaukee, said Joe Scialfa, communications director for DCF.

But Ussuf Mursal, Mohamad’s brother, who works at Catholic Social Services refugee program, thinks the actual number is considerably larger. He estimates as many as 1,300 Somalis are now living here.

There are about 250 families, he said, and most families have five or more children. For example, he said, he now has six children and his ex-wife has 11 children, including two of his. [I’m wondering if the ex-wife is an ex so that she can receive welfare benefits as a single mother?—ed]

With such large families, providing the necessary support is a strain, he said. And because so many Somali Bantu did not go to school, passing the U.S. citizenship test presents a problem. Still, many are getting established, buying homes and starting businesses.

Another Somali is quoted:

“We came here for security, education and a better life,” he said. He has 13 children, some grown, some who attend Riverside High School or Milwaukee Area Technical College.

And, he supports them all at his newly acquired halal grocery store.

Go here for more on Catholic Charities and refugees in Milwaukee.  Lutheran Social Services is their main competitor for contracts with the US State Department to bring refugees to this part of Wisconsin.

Graphic is from the Journal-Sentinel story.

Maine: Rule change could reduce welfare for some immigrants

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update December 29th:  Be sure to see Daniel Greenfield’s article on Somalis and welfare in Maine at Frontpage magazine.

In 2009 we wrote a post which has become one of our most-visited posts at RRW (Tenth most visited with 9,088 views).  It is entitled, ‘Somali Migration to Maine: it’s the welfare magnet, stupid.’   I’ve wondered since then what Maine was doing with its giveaways that made it so attractive.  This article in ‘The Portland Daily Sun’ gives us some hint.

The Maine Department of Health and Human Services is proposing a rule change to bring Maine’s welfare program in line with federal guidelines that require 5 years of residency before a legal immigrant (non-citizen) can access the program and of course a legal outfit is challenging the proposed rule. (Refugees get welfare right away, see our ‘fact sheet’ for more on how that works).

The Portland Daily Sun (emphasis mine):

A legal advocacy group has warned city and state officials that a proposed rule change at the Department of Health and Human Services could cut off benefits to members of Maine’s immigrant population.

Robin Merrill, a senior policy analyst with Maine Equal Justice Partners, met with members of the Portland City Council and the legislative delegation on Monday and talked about a proposed rule change that could cause some members of the immigrant community to lose general assistance.

“This would be devastating for Portland and for Lewiston,” Merrill said.

The rule being proposed by DHHS would block anyone from receiving general assistance if they do not qualify for federal assistance, like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Maine Food Supplement program, because of citizenship status.

The rule change was proposed to align Maine’s public assistance programs with federal ones, according to DHHS, and the federal government does not provide coverage for legal non-citizens until five years after their arrival. The state will no longer fund general assistance for that population, DHHS said, though municipalities may still use their portion to assist them.  [Newly resettled refugees get all the available federal government programs right away—ed]

DHHS will hold a public hearing on the rule change on Jan. 10 at its Augusta office, and written public comment will be accepted until Jan. 24.

Here is the website for the Maine DHHS.  I did a quick search and didn’t find a reference to this meeting, but if you are a Mainer, and wish to comment, call them!

Related story:  Earlier this month Gov. Paul LePage charged that there is extensive welfare fraud going on in Maine, and here a women’s group criticizes the governor for saying such a dreadful thing about poor innocent people in Maine.   Just for fun I typed the words ‘Maine fraud’ into our search function and up popped pages of posts with Maine fraud stories—food stamp, medicaid, housing, etc.

Immigrants moving out of cities to suburbs; Minnesota Somali example

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Census Bureau has a new tracking program (Census Explorer) which allows users to follow the demographic changes in cities and towns across America.  Here is what the Star Tribune reported on Tuesday (emphasis mine):

Yussuf Shafie admits it wasn’t easy being among the first Somali immigrants to arrive in Burnsville’s schools.

Yussuf Shafie opened his Burnsville African restaurant in 2012. Photo by John Gessner

“It wasn’t as diverse as it is today, I’ll tell you that. It was hard to communicate with peers and stuff.”

But now that there’s a “huge Somali population” in the area, he says, things are going swimmingly at his year-old Tawakal Restaurant in the suburb’s downtown. Nor is the place just for immigrants; it functions as an easy point of contact for all kinds of cultures.

“It’s open to everyone who has a wallet,” he cheerfully declares. “If you have a wallet, we can get along!”

He is part of what one analyst on Tuesday called a “dramatic shift” of immigrants out of the central cities after the U.S. Census Bureau released its latest batch of data tracing demographic change.

Burnsville and Eagan emerge among the state’s top 10 destinations for East Africans, while nearby Shakopee is among the leaders for Southeast Asians. Eden Prairie is the state’s leading home for immigrants from India.

“We recently did an analysis showing that every big minority group is now majority suburban,” said University of Minnesota demographer Will Craig.

[…..]

Those moves are visible in a new online mapping program the Census Bureau unveiled on Tuesday, called Census Explorer. The program allows people to easily trace key changes in their own neighborhoods from 1990 to 2000 to today.

Of course, as we learned years ago, the federal refugee resettlement contractors are actively seeking out smaller cities and towns for resettlement of third world refugees.  So, it isn’t necessarily some great spontaneous happening.  And, then there is the meatpacker-induced demographic change!

And, come to think of it, we have been told over and over again that immigrants are re-building the inner cities in places like Buffalo or Erie, PA, this news would indicate that is just a bunch of spin and that the immigrants want to get out of the cities as fast as they can.  This news also means that ‘Welcoming America’ (Tom Negri and David Lubell) are selling Cleveland a bill of goods when they want Cleveland to seek more immigrants to re-build that city.   Sure looks like the immigrants will be out of there soon too!

The photo is from Sun This Week, here.   Just FYI Burnsville has a new mosque too!

Minnesota study: autism hits Somali kids harder, IQs lower

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Heretofore it was assumed that Somali kids in the Minneapolis area had a higher rate of autism then white kids, but this new study says the difference is slight.   Our earlier postings all focused on Somali community activists blaming America for autism that they claim they never had in Africa—like the whole vaccination controversy that has been pretty much debunked in scientific circles. Some families reportedly went back to Africa in disgust.

Minnesota Somali woman with autistic son

My unscientific earlier guess centered on the lack of Vitamin D Somali mothers (covered from head to toe in a northern climate) likely received during pregnancy, but these statistics don’t fit that theory well as American blacks do not have the same levels of autism as the Somalis or the white people in the study.

My other theory, also just a guess! is based on the possible genetic affects of in-breeding in polygamous families.  Here are all of our previous posts on Somalis and autism.

So why, according to the new study, is it hitting Somali kids harder (not that there are significantly more cases!)—-the Somali kids’ IQs are lower and so the condition manifests itself more starkly than those with higher IQs.   This of course raises the question, not answered here: what is the average IQ of the Somali population as a whole compared to the white population?   Uh oh!

From the Star Tribune (emphasis mine):

Autism might not be any more prevalent among Somali-heritage children in Minneapolis than it is among white children in the city, but the severity of the developmental disorder appears harsher in this minority group.

In a much-anticipated report released Monday, University of Minnesota researchers found statistically similar rates of autism symptoms among 7- to 9-year-olds in Minneapolis, regardless of whether they were Somali or white. But all of the Somali-heritage children with autism also had related intellectual disorders — defined as scoring 70 or less on IQ tests — compared with a third of autistic children in the study overall.

“Somali children are much more likely to also have an intellectual disability, which means their symptoms, their characteristics, the ways in which autism presents itself in these children are very different,” said Amy Hewitt, the lead author of the study and a senior research associate in the university’s Institute on Community Integration.

Concerns about the prevalence of autism among Somali children surfaced among parents in 2008, and were validated in 2009 when a report from the Minnesota Department of Health found that Somali preschoolers were two to seven times more likely to receive autism services from the Minneapolis public school system.

The U study, released Monday, was an outgrowth of that Health Department report, and is the largest examination ever in the United States of autism prevalence among Somali immigrants’ children.

Rather than counting the number of children signed up for autism services, or even who have received a diagnosis of the developmental disorder, the researchers examined medical records from thousands of participating families and evaluated whether children met the medical criteria for autism — regardless of whether it had been diagnosed.

The net result was that one in 32 Somali children in the study met the diagnostic criteria for autism, compared with one in 36 white children. The rates were notably lower at one in 62 for non-Somali black children in Minneapolis, and one in 80 for Hispanic children. The rates for the Somali and white children were higher than national averages as well.

There is much more, read it all.

It is a good thing we have Obamacare now to pay for all this on-going medical treatment for refugees!

Photo is from this story, one of many, where Somalis were demanding answers about why their kids were afflicted with autism at a higher rate (or so they thought) than white American kids.

Soros strikes again with Open Society report on Somalis in Norway

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Somalis protest in Oslo: Some children taken out of families because of allegations of child abuse.

We told you previously that George Soros’ Open Society Foundation is doing a seven-city tour of Europe to report on how Somalis are doing in their new homes.  Our earlier report on their recommendations for Helsinki is here.

The seven cities are:  Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Malmo, Leicester, London, and Oslo.

And, why they picked Somalis of all the immigrant groups flooding Europe, I don’t know.  My guess is that since the Somalis can be fractious, maybe they are worried that Somalis will hurt their one-world goal more than other ethnic groups might due to their trouble assimilating.

Here is some of what the researchers recommend—it all involves Norway spending more money to train Somalis to do some sort of work and to push for their inclusion into the still discriminatory Norwegian society.  They also say Norway has to get away from this idea of “formal qualifications” for employment, and they recommend boosting the ethnic based community organizing groups (we have Somali ethnic community organizing groups all over the US largely paid for with taxpayer dollars to organize Somalis for engagement in the political process and to sign them up for the social services they are entitled to!  Never heard of it, see our whole category on ECBOs here).

There doesn’t seem to be a word that I see in the summary of the report about Somalis needing to try harder to fit in!

From PRIO Network (emphasis mine):

OSLO— Developing Oslo’s vibrant and dynamic Norwegian-Somali civil society organizations and strengthening their engagement with the city of Oslo is key to Norwegian-Somalis’ full and equal participation as residents of Oslo.

Poverty remains one of the single greatest barriers to Norwegian-Somali inclusion in Oslo. This leads to challenges in education, employment, housing and health and is further exacerbated by negative portrayals of Somalis within the Norwegian media.

The report Somalis in Oslo​, launched today by the Open Society Foundations, finds that the emphasis on formal qualifications within the Norwegian labour market together with discrimination in hiring processes are leading to high rates of Somali exclusion from employment in Oslo. To overcome the gap between the demands of the Norwegian labour market and the limited formal qualifications that many Somalis have upon entering Norway, the report recommends better emphasis be placed by employers and employment agencies on making more out of the actual skills and experiences of individuals.  [What might those be?—ed]

[…..]

Somalis in Oslo recommends that the city of Oslo, which has developed robust policies for managing inclusion, and others concerned with inclusion such as the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration, the Directorate of Integration and Diversity and the Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion, strengthen their engagement with Somali and other minority communities. The research advises that Norwegian-Somali civil society organizations build their skills and improve collaboration to help better cross-community engagement. To tackle unemployment among Norwegian-Somalis, the research recommends government and civil society organizations address language needs, invest in mentor programs and offer help to Norwegian-Somalis on recruitment and employment practices.

See all of our previous posts on Norway by clicking here.

The photo is from this poorly written undated story, but is seems that the authorities have taken some children out of Somali homes where abuse has been alleged (you know, one of those cultural relevance things we westerners can’t appreciate).   While looking around on the subject of how Somalis are doing in Norway, I also found this 2011 post at Tundra Tabloids about welfare fraud among Somalis in Norway where Somali women claim to have no husband in order to receive generous welfare benefits (but continue to produce babies with their “former” hubby).