A day at the beach in Mogadishu! Finally showing some gumption, Somalis have returned to take their country back from the Islamic terrorists—al-Shabaab. UN Photo
UN: A moment of hope for Somalia!
In light of our recent stories from Malta, why should Malta have to put up with Somalis arriving by the boatload from Libya?
They need to go home to Somalia and fight to keep their own country and re-build it! Not go on welfare in Europe and America!
And, why is the US still resettling thousands of Somalis to America this year alone? (4,921 as of May 31st) It is insanity straight up!
Nairobi – Tens of thousands of Somali refugees have returned home as security in their homeland has improved, the United Nations said on Wednesday, saying it would support a further 60 000 refugees who are ready to go back.
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At least 20 000 Somalis have returned from neighbouring countries this year, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said, although it warned that some returns may be temporary. The UNHCR has also helped more than 16 000 internally displaced Somalis get home this year.
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“This is a moment of hope for Somalia,” UNHCR head Antonio Guterres said.
So how about my suggestion, here, to Malta and the EU, buy them plane tickets and give them some seed money and fly them to Mogadishu! Or, would that make too much sense? LOL! Can you just see the NGOs squawking over that idea!
US readers, you must tell your elected officials to tell the US State Department to turn off the Somali spigot!
It’s only 54 leaving, so far, but its a step in the right direction. Here is the story from NPR News:
Work ahead in the homeland! Mogadishu was destroyed by Al-Shabaab Islamists. 2012 photo from Wodu Media
Thousands of Somalis came to Columbus during the past 20 years to escape civil war. Columbus soon had the second largest Somali community in the United States. The immigrants set up businesses, enrolled in schools and made new lives for themselves.
But now some are returning home. A small group of Somalis are going back with hopes of rebuilding the devastated African nation.
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Before the war, Mogadishu was a city of two and half million people with glistening beaches on the east Coast of Africa. Twenty two years of civil war has destroyed many of the city’s buildings and left others pock-marked by bullets. The beaches are polluted and have been used as launch points for Somali pirates.
Despite the trouble, 34-year-old Ahmed Adan moved back to Mogadishu from Columbus in January. He works with the new government. During a telephone conversation from Mogadishu he says while sporadic fighting still occurs, the time of civil war is over. On most days, he says, “life goes normal.”
“There is a lot of people coming back and I have been actually actively talking to people in Columbus, in Minnesota and other parts of the United States to people that I know,” Adan says.
Adan says he returned to Somalia because he wants to help his homeland out of a crisis. He says Mogadishu is changing from something that was almost a “ghost town” to someplace that is actually livable.
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The head of the Somali Community Association on Cleveland Avenue says 54 people from Columbus have returned to Mogadishu. At the Franklin County Council on Aging, caseworker Loodar Dafur, sees a slight drop in demand recently for elderly services among Somalis.
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Basra Mohamed is a Somali language radio host for a community station in Columbus. Her weekly programs are heard not only here but in other U.S. cities with large Somali populations. She says the pull toward Somalia is felt wherever refugees have fled.
“Not just Columbus, but people are going from Minneapolis, going from Portland, Maine, going from all the other, not just one place, even in Europe, people are going back to Somalia.” We lost a lot, we lost so much and going back means gaining some normality and getting sense of normality and finding yourself, I think,” Says Mohamed.
What’s wrong with this picture?
So tell me why the US State Department has admitted 4,921 Somalis to the US in the first 8 months of this fiscal year! American tax payers are paying a “church” contractor to resettle those “refugees” in your town and we will pay for food, housing, medical care and education for the kids while earlier “refugees” return to their homeland!
It would be cheaper and less disruptive (remember the housing riot in Columbus in December?) to give the supposed new batch of “refugees” a stipend and send them to Mogadishu!
Already 80,000 have left camps in Kenya and are returning to Somalia. So would someone tell the US State Department that they can stop the pipeline to America now!
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 6 – Kenya and Somalia have signed an agreement for the voluntary repatriation of about half a million Somali refugees living in Kenya.
The First Secretary at the Embassy of Somalia in Nairobi, Ali Mohammed Sheikh, said that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees would facilitate the homecoming of thousands who had fled war and hunger in their country.
He however asked for international solidarity saying it was an enormous task. “This is a procedure and you know before taking people back to their place there are other humanitarian factors to consider,” he expressed. “The enormous task requires international solidarity and burden sharing.”
Sheikh revealed that the latest count at the Dadaab refugee camp – the world’s largest – showed a reduction of 80,000 refugees who had gone back to Somalia.
For new readers: We have resettled more than 100,000 Somali refugees to cities large and small in the US over the last 25 years. See one of the most widely read posts here at RRW. Large numbers went to Minneapolis, and now they are spreading out throughout the state. In three years since 9/11 ( Bush years 2004, 2005, 2006) the number of Somalis arriving topped 10,000 per year. Those refugees then began bringing in the family (chain migration!) until 2008 when shock of shocks! the State Department discovered that as many as 30,000 Somalis had lied about their kinship and weren’t related at all. The State Department then closed the “family reunification” program for Somalis. It has recently been re-opened for new and legit family members, but they have no intention of finding and deporting the liars.
Since 5,000 Somalis have arrived in this fiscal year already, that means (number wise) we are well on our way to rival the Bush years mentioned above.
If it’s a new day and Somalia is on the mend, then WHY ARE WE STILL IMPORTING SOMALI REFUGEES?
If Somalis from the ‘diaspora’ are traveling back and forth to Somalia to buy real estate and do business, why is the flow of “refugees” still moving Westward? Should we even be calling them “refugees” anymore?
Rep. Keith Ellison scans the horizon for Somali pirates (just kidding!). Photo: Minneapolis Star Tribune
Editors note:As of the end of February (5 months into fiscal year 2013) see, here, the US State Department and its contractors have brought 2,814 new Somali “refugees” to the US (read: new Democrat voters and cheap labor)!
In his opinion piece at Insight News, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, the go-to guy for the federal refugee contractors, tells readers how great Somalia is doing and how the US needs to send more money to the country.
Let’s make a deal—send Somalia more money and let them keep their so-called “refugees.”
Ellison (emphasis mine):
It’s a new day in Somalia. That’s the message I took away from a trip to the capital city of Mogadishu earlier this year. We have our best opportunity in more than two decades to help stabilize Somalia and advance U.S. national security interests — but only if we act quickly.
The improved security situation has filled Mogadishu with new life. Somalis can once again play music and dance, activities banned by terrorist group Al-Shabab, which until recently controlled much of the country. Crowds of people fill the streets, socializing and shopping.
Somali-Americans from my district in Minnesota are starting businesses and buying real estate. And a new generation of Somalis from the global diaspora is returning. One of them started Somalia’s first think tank, the Heritage Institute for Policy Studies. Another woman left her high-paying job on Wall Street to help build up Somalia’s financial sector from scratch.
These positive developments are largely a result of Somalia’s successful political transition last year. After many failed attempts, Somali leaders completed a process that produced the first representative, permanent government since the fall of Siad Barre’s regime in 1991.
Somalia now has a new constitution, parliament and president. In a strong vote of confidence, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton formally recognized the new government when President Hassan Sheik Mohamud visited Washington in January. Mohamud also met with President Obama and more than 20 members of Congress.
Nonetheless, Somalia’s new leaders face challenges that would be difficult even for an experienced, well-resourced government. Ministries are nonexistent or understaffed; there is no public education or established banking system; more than a million people are displaced, and security threats remain serious. However, even the pessimists can no longer say that Somalia is hopeless.
The new government is populated with public servants who want Somalia to succeed. President Mohamud made clear at his meeting on Capitol Hill that security is his top priority. His government must quickly move into areas liberated from Al-Shabab and prove that government can be a force for good, not just a source of corruption and oppression. It can do that by providing basic public services, including trash pickup, transportation, education and a functioning judicial system.
The United States has an opportunity to make an investment in Somalia that could pay huge dividends over time.
Wow! And, it was only last September that Denmark sent a delegation to Minneapolis to see just how we are so “welcoming” here and how they might emulate us. Things must be going south fast in Copenhagen!
Immigration officials are contending that the security situation in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, has improved to such an extent that Somali asylum seekers can be sent back.
Immigration Service (Udlændingestyrelsen) made its decision on the basis of a joint Danish-Norwegian delegation that visited Mogadishu in October 2012, and reported that the Somali capital was safe to the point that rejected asylum seekers would not face persecution if sent back.
”The joint fact-finding mission to Somalia gave us new information that indicated that the security has been vastly improved,” Jakob Dam Glynstrup, the head of asylum at Udlændingestyrelsen, said in a press release. ”There is also a new government in place and a rising number of Somalis are returning home.”
Udlændingestyrelsen pointed to Norway, which has already changed its protocol in regards to asylum seekers from Somalia.
But the Danish aid organisation Dansk Flygtningehjælp argued that the delegation’s assessment is incorrect and pointed to an evaluation by the UN asylum organisation, UNHCR, which said that security threats in Mogadishu and the rest of Somalia are still very high.
No wonder the Danes are having second thoughts about that “welcoming” business:
According to Udlændingestyrelsen, the number of Somalis who were granted asylum in Denmark last year shot up to around 900. That is compared to only 18 in 2011 and 35 in 2010.
Readers, we’ve been talking a lot about asylum lately. These are asylum seekers meaning they got to Denmark on their own steam. We have one up on the Danes (they must be haters)—we are actually still putting Somalis on planes around the world and bringing them to us!
Holy-moly! If this map is correct we have already admitted over 2000 Somalis in the first three months of this fiscal year! If that trend continues, Obama will be on target to approach Bush’s best Somali-welcoming years of 2004, 2005 and 2006, here.
