Here is news on one more of George Soros Open Society reports on how Somalis are doing in Europe. They are doing pretty well in Sweden it seems with 80% unemployed in Malmo and 40% in Stockholm which means they are surviving quite nicely with Sweden’s famed social safety net.
Benny Carlsson Lund University: Somalis value Malmo’s low cost of living! I bet they do! http://www.lusem.lu.se/research/faculty/ekh-bca
The Open Society Foundation published the report as part of a broader look at the Somali diaspora in Europe. It found that 80 percent of Somalis in Sweden’s third largest city are out of work.
“Somalis are falling into a black hole in Malmö because they can’t get jobs,” report author Benny Carlsson of the Lund School of Economics and Management at Lund University told The Local. “(They don’t get) opportunities to practice Swedish and meet Swedes, and are forced to live in crowded flats.”
The situation fostered, Carlsson said, a “diminished overall sense of self-worth”.
The report said Malmö authorities were not reaching out enough with the Somali community, with new arrivals not getting enough information to help them find work.
One suggestion from the study is to get elderly Swedes to take Somalis under their wing, invite them for dinner.
Our previous reports from Soros are here(Helsinki) and here(Oslo).
I thought I had written about the professor before and sure enough, here, he was in Minnesota bragging about Sweden’s generous welfare programs!
Carlsson also cited Sweden’s social safety net which “lets people live at a decent level even if they don’t work, while the same can’t be said of the United States”.
Every day our news alerts are jam-packed with the latest stories on the SYRIAN REFUGEE CRISIS. Here is a little round-up of the latest news.
MP Yvette Cooper, leader of the revolt: Bring in the Syrians!
Great Britain: ‘MP’s revolt over failure to admit Syrian refugees’:
The Coalition is under mounting pressure from Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs to perform a U-turn to allow some Syrian refugees to come to Britain.
Mark Harper, the immigration minister, angered some MPs yesterday by saying the United Nations plan for Western countries to accept 30,000 of the 2.3 million Syrian refugees would have only a “token impact”. [Then the you-know-what hit the fan—ed]
Lebanon: ‘U.N.: Syrian refugee’s murder of son highlights desperation’:
BEIRUT: The case of a Syrian man who was arrested Tuesday for strangling his 8-month-old son because he was crying reflects the desperate plight of refugees, UNICEF’s spokesperson said.
According to security sources refugee Hasan Ayesh strangled his son late Monday in his home in Minyara, in the northern province of Akkar, reportedly because the boy wouldn’t stop crying.
Mind you, it’s all about his status as a refugee, not the possibility that he might be a brute or mentally unstable to begin with. Sheesh!
David Miliband head honcho of the International Rescue Committee told Morning Joe that the international community must “massively scale up” its response. But, surprisingly he never mentioned his organization’s testimony in the Senate recently to resettle 12,000 Syrians here this year. I’m wondering if they have done polling that tells them not to mention bringing them here!
In light of upcoming international peace talks between the opposing sides in Syria’s civil war, former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the numbers of refugees resulting from the war has created a “regional crisis” that demands attention.
“This is a regional crisis that demands a big international engagement,” Miliband, who is president and CEO of aid agency International Rescue Committee, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Tuesday.
The conflict in Syria has resulted in a “scale of brutality … that hasn’t been seen for a very long time,” Miliband said.
As a result, millions of people are taking refuge in neighboring countries. He called for the international response to be “massively scaled up.”
You can watch Morning Joe’s interview, here. Joe doesn’t look too worked up.
Russia: ‘Russia grants asylum to almost 500 Syrian refugees – FMS’:
This is a surprise, I wonder if they are taking mostly Christians since they don’t have a burning desire for more Muslims.
The number of Syrian refugees seeking asylum in Russia is on the rise, head of the Federal Migration Service Moscow department Olga Kirillova said.
“Due to the exacerbation of the sociopolitical situation in Syria, the number of citizens seeking asylum on the territory of Russia has grown significantly,” she said.
More than 1,000 Syrian citizens filed refuge requests with the Federal Migration Service Moscow department in 2013 and 478 were granted temporary asylum, she added.
Bulgaria: ‘Bulgaria Begins Construction of Border Fence with Turkey’:
The construction of the wire fence at the Bulgarian – Turkish border will begin on January 20, Minister of Defense Angel Naydenov announced.
“The site preparatory work and the construction of the facility will start Monday,” Naydenov said, cited by Focus News Agency.
The construction period will stretch over 45-60 days depending on the weather conditions.
Border fences can be built pretty quickly if a country is motivated.
Sweden: ‘Syria crisis: Influx of refugees into Swedish town’:
Some Swedish towns are struggling to cope with an influx of Syrian refugees, after the government there guaranteed asylum to fugitives from the civil war.
The right-wing Swedish Democrat party claims ethnic Swedes are angry at the cost of social benefits and rising pressures on schools, housing and health care.
In the past eight years, the town of Sodertalje has accepted three times more refugees than Sweden’s biggest cities.
When I wrote the post yesterday about Syrian refugees carrying polioto surrounding countries, I went off on a google search of other medical problems relating to refugees (something we have written a lot about in previous posts in our health issues category).
I was especially interested in intestinal parasites as just the day before a friend told me how the presence of parasites can cause all sorts of other health problems not considered initially connected to the parasites. I see that the Centers for Disease Control has an entire section of its website devoted to health issues involving refugees, here (Immigrant and Refugee Health).
The tapeworm diet—stay slim with intestinal parasites!
As for those parasites, the CDC has guidelines for treatment before the refugees even enter the US, but that they are not always followed:
These guidelines are recommendations for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) physicians and other panel physicians who administer overseas predeparture presumptive treatment for intestinal parasites. While most recommendations have been implemented, not all refugee populations listed in this document are receiving all recommended pre-departure medications,due to funding restrictions and logistical challenges.
I’m presuming that the federal refugee contractors(and their approximately 300 subcontractors) are training all of their volunteers about health safety precautions when dealing with newly arrived refugees who may have TB, HIV/AIDS, polio, or parasites to name just a few highly communicable health risks.
Obesity in Somali women noted in Swedish study
Unrelated to the CDC, but not worth a whole post on it’s own, is this medical news from Sweden. Somali women get fat on western diet, have low self-esteem, feel alienated from society and have a higher risk of heart attacks.
The last-decade incidence of myocardial infarction (MI) has diminished dramatically in most age groups but not in middle-aged women in Sweden. There has been a large influx of immigrants and it has been shown that immigrant women have a higher BMI and are less physically active than Swedish women.
[….]
The study revealed that Somali migrated women in Sweden had changed their diet and experienced weight increase. They reported low self-esteem and little motivation for physical activity. They understood that they had a higher risk for heart disease as compared to Swedish women and they had, in general, a preference for big body size. The women of this study are, in combination with other risk factors, at a high risk of myocardial infarction. They all revealed a general knowledge about the relationship between obesity and inactivity and enhanced risks for heart disease. They had a preference for a larger female body image. They expressed low self-esteem, loneliness, and alienation from society.
Since the study was so small, the recommendation is for a larger study. I think we can assume, however, that parasites are not the primary cause of the women’s health problems in this case.
The cartoon is from this article about the dangers of tapeworm dieting!
A few months back, benevolent Sweden (we are the world’s good people!) opened its doors to any Syrian refugees who could make it to their borders, but it now seems that they may have an extreme case of refugee overload and there is consequently a lot of whining going on.
Soedertaelje Mayor Boel Godner said system was breaking a year ago. Imagine what it is today!
Here is the news at the Global Post (Sweden struggles with the surge). Emphasis is mine:
Sweden, as the only country to give Syrian refugees automatic residence, has struggled to house them and faces warnings of a coming surge in arrivals.
Josef Ariss and his mother Reina fled Aleppo in northern Syria three months ago when their family’s clothing factory was flattened by shelling.
Although relieved to escape the violence, he is far from happy with the situation in Sweden — living in cramped conditions with relatives, like many of his countrymen.
“We’re staying at my aunt’s house — eight people in 90 square metres (900 square feet),” the soft-spoken 20-year-old told AFP.
Speaking at a crowded Syrian cultural centre in the outskirts of Stockholm as new arrivals streamed out of a Swedish language class, he added: “If you need help from the Migration Board to find a place they throw you in the north where it’s far below freezing. We can’t live there.”
14,000 Syrians have arrived in Sweden this year!
“We came here with big hopes of starting over — of having our own place to stay,” she said.
Sweden has seen a sharp increase in Syrian refugees — about 8,000 have arrived since it threw the doors open in September, bringing the total number this year to more than 14,000 — of a total of 50,000 refugees. [The US takes an average of 70,000 refugees* a year, so you can see that Sweden cannot survive this number—ed]
The Migration Board offers everyone temporary accommodation in a growing network of refugee centres scattered around the country.
Refugees in Sweden at 20-year peak with few places to live.
About 8,000 refugees with residence permits live in reception centres, currently having to wait an average of six months for permanent accommodation, according to migration authorities.
The queue is expected to double next year with up to 69,000 more refugees, the highest level since the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
Mayor would like to say NO! Unemployment rate at 14%!!!
In Soedertaelje, the situation has already passed crisis proportions, according to Social Democratic mayor Boel Godner.
[…..]
“If we had the power to check we would say ‘no, it’s too crowded here’,” she said. “Children have it tough at school… learning Swedish when everyone around them speaks the same (foreign) language.”
“And it’s hard to get jobs, which creates a lot of poverty and frustration. Many refugees would be better off if the whole country helped out — there are districts that have not accepted a single refugee.”
Let the whining begin! The rest of the article focuses on finger-pointing. Not all communities in Sweden are doing their fair share, not all countries in Europe are doing their fair share, and it’s all the fault of the “anti-immigrants” in the Sweden Democrats Party who want no more immigration to Sweden (say what?).
Bottomline, it appears, is that the Swedish humanitarians (with a death wish) would have the country crash economically and socially as they pat themselves on the back for being known as the world’s good people.
Photo is from this Radio Sweden story from last December.
* When you add in Cubans/Haitians and Asylees, the US number is actually over 100,000 but officially they say 70,000 “refugees.”
Before I post this latest wishful-thinking story, be sure to see Daniel Greenfield on the news about the Somali rapistand you might find one clue about why the Swedes are so clueless. Judge: we can’t deport the rapist because he might harm a Somali woman if sent back to Somalia! (Clue #1: Swedes are soft on crime!)
Report author Benny Carlsson visited Minneapolis in 2010
Now to today’s story (originally published in The Local a year ago). These crazy Swedes think if they had more Ethnic-oriented NGO’s (like our resettlement contractors and ACORN-like ethnic based groups) they could get the Somalis jobs and voila! the Somalis would be integrated into Swedish society. They seem to not consider the possibility that in the world’s best Socialist cradle, maybe the Somalis don’t want to work (or to be integrated)!
Twelve paragraphs into the story published today at Voice of GOBIslam the truth comes out. But, first here is the gist of the story:
Somali immigrants in Sweden have had a harder time finding employment compared to Somalis in the United States and Canada, a new report has found.
Roughly every other Somali immigrant in North America has a job, while only 20 percent of the Somali immigrants in Sweden have jobs, according to a report released on Monday by the government’s Commission on the Future (Framtidskommissionen).
The report, entitled “Somalis in the labour market – does Sweden have something to learn?” (Somalier på arbetsmarknaden – har Sverige något att lära?) and presented on Monday to Integration Minister Erik Ullenhag, was ordered by the government in order to provide proposals for improving the employment situation for Sweden’s rapidly-expanding Somali population.
The report finds that Somalis in the United States and Canada have had an easier time finding work in part because non-government groups with strong ties to the Somali community play a larger role in helping newly arrived immigrants look for work, find housing, and start companies. [These supposed “non-government groups” are really quasi-government agencies as they are almost completely funded by the taxpayer, they just get to function outside of the normal checks and balances government agencies have to face—ed]
Clue #2: Somalis are largely uneducated, so they are likely not to succeed at finding jobs! And, the article mentions the language barrier as well. For what job would one hire a Somali if communication was not possible?
According to the report, one of the reasons there are so many unemployed Somalis in Sweden is that roughly half have arrived in the last five years and 70 percent have low or unspecified levels of education.
But, here is the real answer (Clue #3, at paragraph 12):
Why work if you don’t have to!
Carlsson also cited Sweden’s social safety net which “lets people live at a decent level even if they don’t work, while the same can’t be said of the United States”.
The second part of that sentence won’t be true for long as the Obama Administration works all the angles to emulate Sweden and expand the social safety net in America with the help of those very same “non-government” groups the Swedes look to as a possible salvation for themselves!
Photo is from this story at the Twin Cities Daily Planet.
For our growing archive on the ‘canary in a coal mine’ Sweden, click here.
