Somalis in Minnesota

War (News) Center in San Diego

18    people of minnesota but evacuated in January 1991 to the southern tip of Somalia, Kismayo. Once again, in March 1992, we had to flee Kismayo from where we then sojourned a year. I was so disturbed and befuddled with our circumstance that I did not know where we were running to. But I recall now that we ended up crossing the border to Kenya, to a small camp there. After a while, I left the camp, and through Nairobi got to yet another camp in Mombasa. In that place, though it was safer than others that we have heard about, death was a daily companion. Children, in particular , were falling down dead like flies from countless diseases. When they were not dying, they were suffering from lack of care or food. It simply seemed that they were even dying from drinking water. TheSomalisofMinnesotaaremostlyremnantsofthatruin, driven from their country by indescribable violence.18 War (News) Center in San Diego “Immigrants are a very mobile population . . . They freely move [to] wherever the economy allows them to get a job or social service agencies exist to help them adjust to life in the U.S. or where a large group of others from their country live.” Barbara J. Ronningen, Minnesota State Demographics Center In 1988, with Siad Barre aerially bombarding northern Somalia and killing off his own people, the first exodus of northern Somalis began. They sought refuge in neighboring countries, most in Ethiopia, others in Djibouti and Yemen. Some of the survivors eventually made their way west, settling in Europe and Canada. One destination not the Somalis    19 in the running was the United States, which fully supported Barre’s repressive regime with both financial and military means right up to the end of the Cold War in 1989. Only after the collapse of the communist bloc did the United States finally take action against Barre’s massive human rights violations by cutting off all aid to his regime. Even as the airwaves brought heartbreaking news of the erupting humanitarian crisis, it took almost three more years for Somali refugees to be recognized as such, thus designating them for resettlement. Earlier, in the mid-1980s, Somali-Ethiopians who had fled to Somalia right after the Somali-Ethiopian war of 1977 were the only ethnic Somalis with recognized refugee status. The majority of these ­Somalis who came to America made their way to San Diego, California. When the United States recognized the unfolding humanitarian crises in Somalia, voluntary agencies, or VOLAGs, such as the International Rescue Committee, Lutheran Social Services, and Catholic Charities, began assessingSomalisinrefugeecampsforresettlementtoseveral countries but mainly to the United States. The ­ VOLAGs, with years of experience in resettlement following the Vietnam War, usually preferred to place new arrivals in areas where their compatriots were already concentrated. But in the early days of resettlement, only San Diego had a community of Somali refugees, and not all the new­ comers could be placed there. Deeply distraught about the loss of their nation, burdened by the still-raging civil war back home, the first Somali refugees arrived in Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin at the beginning of 1990s. They did not begin to resettle in Minnesota until 1993. The Office of Homeland Security shows that twentyfive Somalis arrived in America for resettlement in 1990; 20    people of minnesota the next year, their numbers increased to 192. In 1993, however, the total jumped to 1,570. The largest number arrived in San Diego because “a handful of Somali families from the Ogaden region of Ethiopia were already there,” the weather was similar to that of their homeland, and agencies in that city had the experience to deliver services. Those who were not able to reach San Diego took the next best option: establishing a line of communication with the Somali community there. The city became the capital of the Somali news center, where war about livability, job opportunities, political asylum, resettlement, and the best service providers was traded.19 Both the established Somali American community and the new arrivals in San Diego faced a scarcity of jobs in the early 1990s. One discouraged Somali case manager, Abdi Husen, who was working for a resettlement agency and later became a successful businessman in Minneapolis, remembered , “as I picked many of [the newly arrived refugees] up from the airport, I would...