By JULIA PRESTON
April 26, 2011
Olga Zanella, a Mexican-born college student in Texas, should have started months ago trying to figure out how she could make a life in Mexico, since American immigration authorities were working resolutely to deport her there.
But Ms. Zanella, 20, could not bring herself to make plans. She was paralyzed by fear of a violent country she could not remember, where she had no close family.
Ms. Zanella, who has been living illegally in the United States since her parents brought her here when she was 5, had been trying to fight her deportation for more than two years. She was pulled over by the local police in February 2009 as she was driving in her hometown, Irving, Tex., and did not have a driver’s license. The police handed her over to immigration agents.
Her case looked bleak, but in recent days everything changed. Last Thursday, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official in Dallas summoned Ms. Zanella and told her she could remain in this country, under the agency’s supervision, if she stayed in school and out of trouble.
Encouraged by the surprising turnaround, Ms. Zanella’s parents and two siblings, who also had been living in the United States illegally, presented papers late Monday to ICE, as the agency is known, turning themselves in and requesting some form of legal immigration status.
“It’s an opportunity we are going to take,” Ms. Zanella said in a telephone interview from Dallas. “It’s better than being in the shadows.”
The about-face by ICE in Ms. Zanella’s case is an example of the kind of action Democratic lawmakers and Latino and immigrant groups have been demanding from the Obama administration to slow deportations of illegal immigrants who have not been convicted of crimes. In particular, pressure is increasing on President Obama to offer protection from deportation to illegal immigrant college students who might have been eligible for legal status under a bill in Congress known as the Dream Act.
In an April 13 letter, the top two Democrats in the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada and Richard Durbin of Illinois, asked the president to suspend deportations for those students. But short of that, the senators asked Mr. Obama to set guidelines by which those students could come forward individually to ask to be spared deportation and to obtain some authorization to remain in the United States. The letter was signed by 20 other Senate Democrats. The Dream Act passed the House but failed in the Senate in December.
Homeland Security officials have said their focus is increasingly on removing immigrants who are convicted criminals. That, in fact, is what an ICE official told Ms. Zanella in explaining the new decision in her case.
The agent said ICE “was supposed to be concentrating on criminals, not on Dream students,” said Ralph Isenberg, a Dallas businessman who advocates for immigrants and made it his cause to prevent Ms. Zanella from being deported. Mr. Isenberg’s challenges to ICE had kept Ms. Zanella in the country even after the final date for her deportation in February.
“As long as I do well in school and stay out of trouble, I will be out of trouble with ICE,” Ms. Zanella said she was told. She has to report to ICE every month.
ICE officials declined to comment on the case, citing privacy policies.
ICE officials in central Florida recently invited immigration lawyers to bring forward illegal immigrants facing deportation who did not have criminal records, offering provisional authorization for them to remain here and work legally.
On Tuesday, immigration authorities suspended the deportation of Mariano Cardoso, 23, a Mexican student at Capital Community College in Connecticut, according to Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, who had pressed Mr. Cardoso’s cause. ICE’s decision ended a two-year battle against deportation for Mr. Cardoso.
But nationwide the administration’s deportations policy remains confused and erratically implemented, immigration lawyers said, with many students and immigrants without criminal records being deported.
“The administration needs to make it clear to the public and to the rank and file within ICE that it has a firm and clear policy of enforcing the law within its priorities and discouraging going after cases that are not within its priorities,” said Gregory Chen, director of advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “But that is just not happening consistently.”
Ms. Zanella is studying at North Lake College in Irving to become a dentist. The police in Irving never explained why they stopped her and never issued any traffic ticket, Mr. Isenberg said.
ICE agents made no promises to Ms. Zanella’s family. Her father, José Victor Zanella, said: “We are ready to trust in the system.”
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
French and Italian Leaders Seek Tighter Controls on Migration
By RACHEL DONADIO and ALAN COWELL
April 26, 2011
ROME — Facing a surge in undocumented migrants from North Africa, the leaders of France and Italy on Tuesday called for changes in the Schengen Agreement, which grants free passage across national frontiers in most of Western Europe.
The appeal, in a joint letter to the president of the European Commission, represented a remarkable request to change a pact that has become one of the European Union’s hallmark agreements. Under the treaty, which dates from 1985, 25 European Union member nations dismantled border controls for their own citizens and citizens of other countries.
Analysts said it was highly unlikely that the European Union would revise the agreement, and many said the joint request appeared to be aimed more at reducing political tensions between and within the two countries.
The looser borders have begun to pose problems of illegal immigration, as immigrants who arrive in one European Union member state can travel freely to others. The joint request reflected the severity of the migration crisis — in practical terms as well as for Italy and France’s domestic politics, in which anti-immigrant parties have substantial influence.
“Neither of us wants to deny Schengen, but in exceptional circumstances, we think there should be variations to the Schengen treaty,” Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, said at a joint news conference here with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, after weeks of tensions.
“We want Schengen to work, and to make sure that it works, it has to be reformed,” Mr. Sarkozy added.
In a joint letter to José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, the two leaders called on the European Union to “examine the possibility of temporarily establishing internal border controls in the case of exceptional difficulties in handling common external borders, on the basis of conditions to be defined in the future.”
France and Italy also called on the European Union to broaden the role of its border agency, Frontex, to allow it to repatriate illegal immigrants, and to “redefine” Europe’s regulations for immigrants from third countries. Under current regulations, the European country where immigrants first arrive is responsible for determining their status.
Faced with the likelihood of a wave of immigrants arriving in Europe from Libya, they also called for a common European Union policy on those seeking political asylum. Each country currently has its own standards.
In recent weeks, Italy has been reluctant to become involved in the intervention championed by France to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi from Libya, a former Italian colony. France has been reluctant to admit third-country immigrants from Italy — most of them from Tunisia, which historically has had close ties to France.
Italy infuriated France by issuing some Tunisians travel papers allowing them to leave Italy for France, which has tried to block them at its borders with Italy.
Rachel Donadio reported from Rome, and Alan Cowell from London.
April 26, 2011
ROME — Facing a surge in undocumented migrants from North Africa, the leaders of France and Italy on Tuesday called for changes in the Schengen Agreement, which grants free passage across national frontiers in most of Western Europe.
The appeal, in a joint letter to the president of the European Commission, represented a remarkable request to change a pact that has become one of the European Union’s hallmark agreements. Under the treaty, which dates from 1985, 25 European Union member nations dismantled border controls for their own citizens and citizens of other countries.
Analysts said it was highly unlikely that the European Union would revise the agreement, and many said the joint request appeared to be aimed more at reducing political tensions between and within the two countries.
The looser borders have begun to pose problems of illegal immigration, as immigrants who arrive in one European Union member state can travel freely to others. The joint request reflected the severity of the migration crisis — in practical terms as well as for Italy and France’s domestic politics, in which anti-immigrant parties have substantial influence.
“Neither of us wants to deny Schengen, but in exceptional circumstances, we think there should be variations to the Schengen treaty,” Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, said at a joint news conference here with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, after weeks of tensions.
“We want Schengen to work, and to make sure that it works, it has to be reformed,” Mr. Sarkozy added.
In a joint letter to José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, the two leaders called on the European Union to “examine the possibility of temporarily establishing internal border controls in the case of exceptional difficulties in handling common external borders, on the basis of conditions to be defined in the future.”
France and Italy also called on the European Union to broaden the role of its border agency, Frontex, to allow it to repatriate illegal immigrants, and to “redefine” Europe’s regulations for immigrants from third countries. Under current regulations, the European country where immigrants first arrive is responsible for determining their status.
Faced with the likelihood of a wave of immigrants arriving in Europe from Libya, they also called for a common European Union policy on those seeking political asylum. Each country currently has its own standards.
In recent weeks, Italy has been reluctant to become involved in the intervention championed by France to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi from Libya, a former Italian colony. France has been reluctant to admit third-country immigrants from Italy — most of them from Tunisia, which historically has had close ties to France.
Italy infuriated France by issuing some Tunisians travel papers allowing them to leave Italy for France, which has tried to block them at its borders with Italy.
Rachel Donadio reported from Rome, and Alan Cowell from London.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
India’s African diaspora risks being left out in the new scheme of things
By LEE MWITI
Friday, February 11 2011 at 18:52
Set deep in south Delhi is a park named for the red-flowered Gulmohar tree and which provides the location for Gumolhar Park Journalists Colony, a tranquil neighbourhood associated with the capital’s more affluent residents.
House Number 47 would pass for any of the tens of old-style Hindu villas in the estate originally established for journalists in the 1970s, only that its upper storey is home to a unique venture that seeks to reconnect the widely disseminated Indian diaspora.
A private online portal, the People of Indian Origin (PIO) TV studios are rather cramped and give off a whiff that is both sipid and musty in nature, perhaps an apt reminder of the chasm that has for decades existed between India and its 30 million-strong diaspora, and which it is now scrambling to redress.
“Every day we get about 3,000 hits or more, but during all these big events like the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas or overseas PBD’s, we get about 70,000—80,000 [hits],” said the manager of the Indian operation of the family-run outlet, Kuldeep Yadav.
The Pravasi Bharatiya Divas—Non-Resident Indian Day—is India’s best known move towards reconnecting with its diaspora. Held annually around January 9—a date the marks Mahatma Ghandi’s return from South Africa—the jamboree has in recent years sought to celebrate the achievements of its diaspora.
New Delhi’s arm-length treatment of its diaspora had been partly informed by a need to avoid being seen as interfering with sovereign ties, but also by the fact that most of its relatives are fiercely proud of their African roots.
Political influence
But the success of the diaspora in North America and western Europe where they now yield immense economic and political influence has awakened the country to the potential benefits of a community whose gross income is worth an estimated $1 trillion, and who send home more money than any other country.
But as India seeks to delicately re-engage with Africa, its three million-strong diaspora on the continent are unwittingly caught in the middle with ironically the same historical links it trumpets playing against it.
Friday, February 11 2011 at 18:52
Set deep in south Delhi is a park named for the red-flowered Gulmohar tree and which provides the location for Gumolhar Park Journalists Colony, a tranquil neighbourhood associated with the capital’s more affluent residents.
House Number 47 would pass for any of the tens of old-style Hindu villas in the estate originally established for journalists in the 1970s, only that its upper storey is home to a unique venture that seeks to reconnect the widely disseminated Indian diaspora.
A private online portal, the People of Indian Origin (PIO) TV studios are rather cramped and give off a whiff that is both sipid and musty in nature, perhaps an apt reminder of the chasm that has for decades existed between India and its 30 million-strong diaspora, and which it is now scrambling to redress.
“Every day we get about 3,000 hits or more, but during all these big events like the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas or overseas PBD’s, we get about 70,000—80,000 [hits],” said the manager of the Indian operation of the family-run outlet, Kuldeep Yadav.
The Pravasi Bharatiya Divas—Non-Resident Indian Day—is India’s best known move towards reconnecting with its diaspora. Held annually around January 9—a date the marks Mahatma Ghandi’s return from South Africa—the jamboree has in recent years sought to celebrate the achievements of its diaspora.
New Delhi’s arm-length treatment of its diaspora had been partly informed by a need to avoid being seen as interfering with sovereign ties, but also by the fact that most of its relatives are fiercely proud of their African roots.
Political influence
But the success of the diaspora in North America and western Europe where they now yield immense economic and political influence has awakened the country to the potential benefits of a community whose gross income is worth an estimated $1 trillion, and who send home more money than any other country.
But as India seeks to delicately re-engage with Africa, its three million-strong diaspora on the continent are unwittingly caught in the middle with ironically the same historical links it trumpets playing against it.
28 homosexual Jamaicans gain political asylum victory in US
By theGrio
1:47 PM on 02/15/2011
In an unprecedented victory, 28 homosexual Jamaicans, who were persecuted due to their sexual orientation, have gained political asylum in the United States. The success of their claims reflects the degree of of persecution suffered by homosexuals in Jamaica.
Since 2007, Great Britain, the former colonial power which introduced the island's sodomy laws, has granted asylum to at least five Jamaicans on the grounds that their lives were in danger due to their sexual orientation.
The individuals were assisted by Immigration Equality, a network of pro-bono attorneys which strives to secure asylum for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders, because they were persecuted in their country as a result of their sexual orientation, gender identity or HIV-status.
The Immigration Equality spokesperson said:
"By offering them a safe haven, the United States is not only saving their lives, but benefiting from the talent, skills and service these asylees bring to our country. We are proud and honored to help them begin life anew here in their adopted homeland."
The organization is reported to have 97 additional cases filed in 2010 and several filed previously that are awaiting review.
Renowned largely for its music, culture and reputation as one of the most-favored Caribbean travel destinations, the island is also infamous for its intolerance and unbridled violence against homosexuals. Homosexuality, known throughout the Caribbean as "buggering," remains a criminal offense in Jamaica and is punishable by up to 10 years in jail.
1:47 PM on 02/15/2011
In an unprecedented victory, 28 homosexual Jamaicans, who were persecuted due to their sexual orientation, have gained political asylum in the United States. The success of their claims reflects the degree of of persecution suffered by homosexuals in Jamaica.
Since 2007, Great Britain, the former colonial power which introduced the island's sodomy laws, has granted asylum to at least five Jamaicans on the grounds that their lives were in danger due to their sexual orientation.
The individuals were assisted by Immigration Equality, a network of pro-bono attorneys which strives to secure asylum for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders, because they were persecuted in their country as a result of their sexual orientation, gender identity or HIV-status.
The Immigration Equality spokesperson said:
"By offering them a safe haven, the United States is not only saving their lives, but benefiting from the talent, skills and service these asylees bring to our country. We are proud and honored to help them begin life anew here in their adopted homeland."
The organization is reported to have 97 additional cases filed in 2010 and several filed previously that are awaiting review.
Renowned largely for its music, culture and reputation as one of the most-favored Caribbean travel destinations, the island is also infamous for its intolerance and unbridled violence against homosexuals. Homosexuality, known throughout the Caribbean as "buggering," remains a criminal offense in Jamaica and is punishable by up to 10 years in jail.
Bedouin Smugglers Abuse Africans Held for Ransom, Israel Group Says
February 15, 2011
By DINA KRAFT
TEL AVIV — About 1,000 African migrants trying to cross the Sinai Desert from Egypt into Israel have been systematically beaten, raped and held captive for ransom in the past year by the Bedouin smugglers they hired to help them make the journey, an Israeli advocacy organization said Tuesday.
Testimony collected by the Hotline for Migrant Workers in a new report depicts a network of torture camps in the northern reaches of the desert where the migrants, mostly Eritrean, are sometimes held for months in abusive conditions, while their Bedouin captors press their families abroad to send thousands of dollars in ransom money.
“I was a virgin when I arrived in the desert,” said a 21-year-old Eritrean woman cited in the report, who was held for six months. “During the first few times that I was raped, I cried and resisted, but that didn’t help. They wouldn’t leave me alone. After that I stopped resisting. Only when the $2,800 arrived did the smugglers unchain me.”
In their accounts in the report and in person, the migrants recall a pattern of abuse, including gang rapes and beatings with electric rods and heavy sticks. Often, they said, they were shackled together in groups as their armed captors kept them under guard. At one of the camps, captives were given T-shirts with numbers printed on them and were referred to by those numbers.
Physical torture typically accompanied the captors’ extortion calls, usually by satellite phone.
“The most painful moments were when they called my family as they beat me and I cried out,” said Avraham Asmara, a 25-year-old Eritrean man who was held for a month before escaping and crossing the border three weeks ago. “I was always thinking about what my family was thinking and feeling when they heard me like this.”
At a news conference, Mr. Asmara said he had paid $3,000 to his smugglers to take him across the desert, but was taken captive. His family members in Eritrea sold their home and belongings to send his captors $8,000 of the $10,000 ransom they demanded, he said.
There is concern among Israeli human rights officials that the upheaval in Egypt will make it even more difficult to crack down on the kidnappings, which they say started last year. The Bedouins and Egyptian authorities have had tense relations for years, with the Bedouins complaining of discrimination and harsh treatment. The vast, sparsely populated Sinai Desert has long been something of a lawless no man’s land.
Reut Michaeli, executive director of the Tel Aviv-based Hotline for Migrant Workers, voiced concern that when the migrants, including women pregnant from rape, do make it across the border to Israel, they are not provided state-financed medical treatment.
The group Physicians for Human Rights — Israel, which runs a clinic here for migrants, referred 165 women for abortions in 2010 and suspects that about half were raped while in Sinai, according to its report in December.
According to official estimates, about 33,000 Africans, most of them migrant workers seeking better economic prospects but some of them refugees from war in Sudan, have crossed into Israel from Egypt since 2005, setting off a national debate about how to handle the influx. The number rose to about 13,600 last year from fewer than 4,900 in 2009, according to Israeli Parliament figures.
Male migrants who were held captive told of being beaten when they tried to protect the women, and there are also reports that men were raped.
Musa Naiem, 35, from Sudan said the camp where he was held, in sight of a Bedouin village, was a fenced-in pen with three rooms covered by a cloth roof. He and others slept outside in the sand and had no toilets or showers.
Mr. Asmara said he liberated himself and his fellow captives with a handcuff key secretly recovered from the captors by a woman who had been raped. On a day the smugglers were in another room, he unlocked himself and the others. Together they overwhelmed and disarmed their captors and fled into the desert.
It turned out they were only a half-hour’s walk from the Israeli border.
Pulling the small silver key from his wallet, Mr. Asmara turned it in his hand and said: “This is for me to remember. This is the key that helped 50 people find freedom from hell.”
By DINA KRAFT
TEL AVIV — About 1,000 African migrants trying to cross the Sinai Desert from Egypt into Israel have been systematically beaten, raped and held captive for ransom in the past year by the Bedouin smugglers they hired to help them make the journey, an Israeli advocacy organization said Tuesday.
Testimony collected by the Hotline for Migrant Workers in a new report depicts a network of torture camps in the northern reaches of the desert where the migrants, mostly Eritrean, are sometimes held for months in abusive conditions, while their Bedouin captors press their families abroad to send thousands of dollars in ransom money.
“I was a virgin when I arrived in the desert,” said a 21-year-old Eritrean woman cited in the report, who was held for six months. “During the first few times that I was raped, I cried and resisted, but that didn’t help. They wouldn’t leave me alone. After that I stopped resisting. Only when the $2,800 arrived did the smugglers unchain me.”
In their accounts in the report and in person, the migrants recall a pattern of abuse, including gang rapes and beatings with electric rods and heavy sticks. Often, they said, they were shackled together in groups as their armed captors kept them under guard. At one of the camps, captives were given T-shirts with numbers printed on them and were referred to by those numbers.
Physical torture typically accompanied the captors’ extortion calls, usually by satellite phone.
“The most painful moments were when they called my family as they beat me and I cried out,” said Avraham Asmara, a 25-year-old Eritrean man who was held for a month before escaping and crossing the border three weeks ago. “I was always thinking about what my family was thinking and feeling when they heard me like this.”
At a news conference, Mr. Asmara said he had paid $3,000 to his smugglers to take him across the desert, but was taken captive. His family members in Eritrea sold their home and belongings to send his captors $8,000 of the $10,000 ransom they demanded, he said.
There is concern among Israeli human rights officials that the upheaval in Egypt will make it even more difficult to crack down on the kidnappings, which they say started last year. The Bedouins and Egyptian authorities have had tense relations for years, with the Bedouins complaining of discrimination and harsh treatment. The vast, sparsely populated Sinai Desert has long been something of a lawless no man’s land.
Reut Michaeli, executive director of the Tel Aviv-based Hotline for Migrant Workers, voiced concern that when the migrants, including women pregnant from rape, do make it across the border to Israel, they are not provided state-financed medical treatment.
The group Physicians for Human Rights — Israel, which runs a clinic here for migrants, referred 165 women for abortions in 2010 and suspects that about half were raped while in Sinai, according to its report in December.
According to official estimates, about 33,000 Africans, most of them migrant workers seeking better economic prospects but some of them refugees from war in Sudan, have crossed into Israel from Egypt since 2005, setting off a national debate about how to handle the influx. The number rose to about 13,600 last year from fewer than 4,900 in 2009, according to Israeli Parliament figures.
Male migrants who were held captive told of being beaten when they tried to protect the women, and there are also reports that men were raped.
Musa Naiem, 35, from Sudan said the camp where he was held, in sight of a Bedouin village, was a fenced-in pen with three rooms covered by a cloth roof. He and others slept outside in the sand and had no toilets or showers.
Mr. Asmara said he liberated himself and his fellow captives with a handcuff key secretly recovered from the captors by a woman who had been raped. On a day the smugglers were in another room, he unlocked himself and the others. Together they overwhelmed and disarmed their captors and fled into the desert.
It turned out they were only a half-hour’s walk from the Israeli border.
Pulling the small silver key from his wallet, Mr. Asmara turned it in his hand and said: “This is for me to remember. This is the key that helped 50 people find freedom from hell.”
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
African Refugees in Egypt Sit Out the Protests
By Ashley Bates
Mon Jan. 31, 2011
olitical and socio-economic backgrounds take to the Egyptian streets, African migrants from Sudan and elsewhere are holing up inside their homes. I called a few of them to find out why.
"I don't know any Sudanese who are participating," said Abdel Raheem, a 28-year-old Sudanese Cairo resident. "I saw on the news that people are being arrested. For someone who's not Egyptian, this would be really bad."
S.H., a Somali refugee in Cairo who asked that only his initials be used, agreed. "I'm not in a position to speak for the whole Somali community, but I have called some of my close friends, and everyone is staying home and watching the situation closely," he told me. "They wouldn't be safe."
An estimated 2-3 million migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers now live in Egypt—and they have good reason to fear the Egyptian authorities. The last time they banded together to gain greater freedoms, they were rewarded with lethal suppression.
In late September 2005, approximately 3,000 mostly Sudanese migrants and their supporters set up a makeshift tent camp outside the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees building in Cairo. For three months, they called on the UNHCR to resettle them in other countries. They also protested their frequent harassment and imprisonment by the Egyptian police, and demanded access to public schools and health care, as well as the right to work legally in Egypt.
On December 30, 2005, the Mubarak government crushed this peaceful sit-in demonstration. About 4,000 Egyptian police encircled the camp, fired water cannons into the crowd, dragged women by their hair, and beat people indiscriminately, according to media reports. More than 2,000 protesters were arrested and at least 27 migrants, including one toddler, were killed in what the Egyptian Interior Ministry alleged was a "stampede." Only after the aggressive intervention of the UNHCR and human rights organizations did the Mubarak government rescind its plans to deport 645 of the detained people as "illegal immigrants."
The Mubarak government's repression of African migrants has escalated ever since. According to a 2008 Human Rights Watch report, Egyptian border authorities implemented a policy of "shoot-to-stop" in the remote border zones. In a two-year period, thirty-three Israel-bound migrants—including young children—were shot and killed by Egyptian security forces.
In addition to their well-founded fears of being killed, arrested, or deported, migrants are also avoiding participation in this week's pro-democracy demonstrations because they feel no sense of "Egyptian" identity. Egyptian civilians have ostracized them with racist names like "samara" meaning black, "funga monga" meaning monkey, or "abit" meaning slave.
"The protests are a sacrifice for the Egyptian people—it's not for us. It's not our nation." Abdel Raheem said.
While refugees hope that the protests will bring a new government that is more sympathetic to their plight, they harbor grave concerns that, in the short term, Egypt will descend into chaos.
"I think the refugees are not excited about the protests," said S.H., a Somali refugee who cautiously ventured outside on Sunday to watch the demonstrations from a safe distance. "Refugees are running from turmoil and unrest. They came here for protection."
He added sadly, "[Refugees] know what can happen when things get out of control."
Mon Jan. 31, 2011
olitical and socio-economic backgrounds take to the Egyptian streets, African migrants from Sudan and elsewhere are holing up inside their homes. I called a few of them to find out why.
"I don't know any Sudanese who are participating," said Abdel Raheem, a 28-year-old Sudanese Cairo resident. "I saw on the news that people are being arrested. For someone who's not Egyptian, this would be really bad."
S.H., a Somali refugee in Cairo who asked that only his initials be used, agreed. "I'm not in a position to speak for the whole Somali community, but I have called some of my close friends, and everyone is staying home and watching the situation closely," he told me. "They wouldn't be safe."
An estimated 2-3 million migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers now live in Egypt—and they have good reason to fear the Egyptian authorities. The last time they banded together to gain greater freedoms, they were rewarded with lethal suppression.
In late September 2005, approximately 3,000 mostly Sudanese migrants and their supporters set up a makeshift tent camp outside the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees building in Cairo. For three months, they called on the UNHCR to resettle them in other countries. They also protested their frequent harassment and imprisonment by the Egyptian police, and demanded access to public schools and health care, as well as the right to work legally in Egypt.
On December 30, 2005, the Mubarak government crushed this peaceful sit-in demonstration. About 4,000 Egyptian police encircled the camp, fired water cannons into the crowd, dragged women by their hair, and beat people indiscriminately, according to media reports. More than 2,000 protesters were arrested and at least 27 migrants, including one toddler, were killed in what the Egyptian Interior Ministry alleged was a "stampede." Only after the aggressive intervention of the UNHCR and human rights organizations did the Mubarak government rescind its plans to deport 645 of the detained people as "illegal immigrants."
The Mubarak government's repression of African migrants has escalated ever since. According to a 2008 Human Rights Watch report, Egyptian border authorities implemented a policy of "shoot-to-stop" in the remote border zones. In a two-year period, thirty-three Israel-bound migrants—including young children—were shot and killed by Egyptian security forces.
In addition to their well-founded fears of being killed, arrested, or deported, migrants are also avoiding participation in this week's pro-democracy demonstrations because they feel no sense of "Egyptian" identity. Egyptian civilians have ostracized them with racist names like "samara" meaning black, "funga monga" meaning monkey, or "abit" meaning slave.
"The protests are a sacrifice for the Egyptian people—it's not for us. It's not our nation." Abdel Raheem said.
While refugees hope that the protests will bring a new government that is more sympathetic to their plight, they harbor grave concerns that, in the short term, Egypt will descend into chaos.
"I think the refugees are not excited about the protests," said S.H., a Somali refugee who cautiously ventured outside on Sunday to watch the demonstrations from a safe distance. "Refugees are running from turmoil and unrest. They came here for protection."
He added sadly, "[Refugees] know what can happen when things get out of control."
Tighten US-Africa Link
FRANCIS KORNEGAY
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
Jan 31 2011 18:08
American President Barack Obama is expected to focus more on Africa in 2011. This comes none too soon. Africa has become a competitive terrain as emerging powers accelerate their economic diplomacies on a continent considered the "last frontier" for trade and investment opportunities in the West-to-East shift in global economic momentum.
The unfinished business of Iraq and Afghanistan and Obama's reaching out to the Muslim world and re-engaging with neglected vital interests in East Asia inevitably pushed Africa on to the back burner. The "Great Recession" reinforced his domestic focus and interrelated with his administration's initial Asia-Pacific emphasis. Yet, simultaneously, Obama's opening move saw Asia as Sinocentric and meant acknowledging the rise of emerging powers and regions. The orchestrated emergence of the G20 (including South Africa), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's opening foray into the continent and Obama's symbolic visit to Ghana, including his "tough love" remarks for Africa's leaders, seemed a harbinger of things to come.
Meanwhile, having assembled an expert Africa team under Ambassador Johnnie Carson, the administration's main concerns were crisis-managing Darfur and the north-south Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan, reviewing prospects for reassembling the Humpty Dumpty of Somalia and keeping a nervous eye on unsettling developments in Kenya and Nigeria. As Obama surveys the horizon leading up to 2012, many of the early initiatives in Asia, the Middle East and the Hindu Kush have settled into a pattern of engagement, even if not satisfactory resolution. The same goes for closely interrelated areas of strategic interest: the Russian "reset" agenda and navigating ambivalent transatlantic ties including the troubled eurozone. This leaves two areas devoid of Washington's strategic attention: Latin America (and the Caribbean, save for Haiti) and last, but not least, Africa.
In the Americas much depends on Obama's relations with the Dilma Roussef administration in Brazil and how the cautious relaxation of restrictions on a post-Castro Cuba is navigated. Closer to home, there is the urgency of cross-border management of relations with a Mexico battling a drug cartel insurgency, plus an immigration challenge that has made Arizona a flashpoint of violent reaction. But the penultimate test for Obama, is going to be the extent to which he charts a new course in Africa.
Opening a new chapter in US-African relations will not be simple. Overall, relations between the US and Africa are already on a good footing -- complacently and boringly so. The end of white rule in Southern Africa mainly accounts for this. As such, US-Africa policy is a non-controversial terrain of bipartisan consensus. But it is also by and large in a holding pattern, devoid of strategic vision.
As Africa becomes the focus of competitive economic strategies from traditional and emerging powers alike, the Obama administration's challenge will be to break out of this holding pattern into something more dynamic. This is a challenge for African leaders too. How will they exploit the fact that the world's lone superpower (in relative decline though it is) is led by "one of their own", with roots in the continent? The fact that Obama is of Kenyan descent ought to suggest a broader strategic vision converging with a pan-African strategic impetus. The unfolding East African Community (EAC) integration project could result in the five-nation bloc becoming Africa's first regionally integrated political federation, but this seems as yet unregistered on Washington's radar.
The vision of converging US and African agendas on the continent should be one of regional and continental integration. Unless Obama can, in consultation with Africa's leaders, grasp this, his exhortations about African leadership, responsibility and democratic good governance amounts to little for a continent that must overcome its fragmentation. In practical terms this means revisiting the Southern African Development Community-US Forum or initiating a forum for the US and the Southern African Customs Union. This could lead to new trade agreements. In West Africa, it means establishing an Economic Community of West African States-US forum with a sense of urgency informed by the likely break-up of Côte d'Ivoire, a case of "elite sovereignty" defying "popular sovereignty". Unlike in Southern Africa, there are already structured relations between Ecowas and Africom (as with the African Union as well).
Friends if the SADC
Then there is the break-up looming at the eastern end of the Sudano-Sahelian geocultural fault line. South Sudan has just concluded its self-determination referendum. An EAC-US forum could explore South Sudan's joining EAC. Such a prospect could also offer Somaliland an integrationist option while guiding the Somali region into a greater East African federated community.
The break-up of Sudan and, possibly, Côte d'Ivoire means that Africa may see more fragmentation on the road to integration. But both crises present opportunities for exercising the pan-African imagination. Rather than South Sudan and/or north and south Côte d'Ivoire being recognised as fully sovereign states, their respective regional economic communities could integrate them as self-governing autonomous areas, accelerating regional integration.
Then there is the African diaspora. There is no reason why there should not be a "Friends of Ecowas" among West African immigrants in the US, or equivalent "Friends of the EAC" and "Friends of SADC" in their respective diasporic communities. African Americans could boost their African interests through such constituency-building structures. The US is one of the major African diaspora states.
In short, the creative possibilities emanating from a joint US-African integration project are endless. The US must reposition itself as the strategic partner of a continent that will eventually outstrip both China and India in population. If Obama fails to place US-African relations on a more dynamic footing it is difficult to imagine anyone coming after him who will.
Francis A Kornegay is a research associate at the Institute for Global Dialogue.
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
Jan 31 2011 18:08
American President Barack Obama is expected to focus more on Africa in 2011. This comes none too soon. Africa has become a competitive terrain as emerging powers accelerate their economic diplomacies on a continent considered the "last frontier" for trade and investment opportunities in the West-to-East shift in global economic momentum.
The unfinished business of Iraq and Afghanistan and Obama's reaching out to the Muslim world and re-engaging with neglected vital interests in East Asia inevitably pushed Africa on to the back burner. The "Great Recession" reinforced his domestic focus and interrelated with his administration's initial Asia-Pacific emphasis. Yet, simultaneously, Obama's opening move saw Asia as Sinocentric and meant acknowledging the rise of emerging powers and regions. The orchestrated emergence of the G20 (including South Africa), Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's opening foray into the continent and Obama's symbolic visit to Ghana, including his "tough love" remarks for Africa's leaders, seemed a harbinger of things to come.
Meanwhile, having assembled an expert Africa team under Ambassador Johnnie Carson, the administration's main concerns were crisis-managing Darfur and the north-south Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan, reviewing prospects for reassembling the Humpty Dumpty of Somalia and keeping a nervous eye on unsettling developments in Kenya and Nigeria. As Obama surveys the horizon leading up to 2012, many of the early initiatives in Asia, the Middle East and the Hindu Kush have settled into a pattern of engagement, even if not satisfactory resolution. The same goes for closely interrelated areas of strategic interest: the Russian "reset" agenda and navigating ambivalent transatlantic ties including the troubled eurozone. This leaves two areas devoid of Washington's strategic attention: Latin America (and the Caribbean, save for Haiti) and last, but not least, Africa.
In the Americas much depends on Obama's relations with the Dilma Roussef administration in Brazil and how the cautious relaxation of restrictions on a post-Castro Cuba is navigated. Closer to home, there is the urgency of cross-border management of relations with a Mexico battling a drug cartel insurgency, plus an immigration challenge that has made Arizona a flashpoint of violent reaction. But the penultimate test for Obama, is going to be the extent to which he charts a new course in Africa.
Opening a new chapter in US-African relations will not be simple. Overall, relations between the US and Africa are already on a good footing -- complacently and boringly so. The end of white rule in Southern Africa mainly accounts for this. As such, US-Africa policy is a non-controversial terrain of bipartisan consensus. But it is also by and large in a holding pattern, devoid of strategic vision.
As Africa becomes the focus of competitive economic strategies from traditional and emerging powers alike, the Obama administration's challenge will be to break out of this holding pattern into something more dynamic. This is a challenge for African leaders too. How will they exploit the fact that the world's lone superpower (in relative decline though it is) is led by "one of their own", with roots in the continent? The fact that Obama is of Kenyan descent ought to suggest a broader strategic vision converging with a pan-African strategic impetus. The unfolding East African Community (EAC) integration project could result in the five-nation bloc becoming Africa's first regionally integrated political federation, but this seems as yet unregistered on Washington's radar.
The vision of converging US and African agendas on the continent should be one of regional and continental integration. Unless Obama can, in consultation with Africa's leaders, grasp this, his exhortations about African leadership, responsibility and democratic good governance amounts to little for a continent that must overcome its fragmentation. In practical terms this means revisiting the Southern African Development Community-US Forum or initiating a forum for the US and the Southern African Customs Union. This could lead to new trade agreements. In West Africa, it means establishing an Economic Community of West African States-US forum with a sense of urgency informed by the likely break-up of Côte d'Ivoire, a case of "elite sovereignty" defying "popular sovereignty". Unlike in Southern Africa, there are already structured relations between Ecowas and Africom (as with the African Union as well).
Friends if the SADC
Then there is the break-up looming at the eastern end of the Sudano-Sahelian geocultural fault line. South Sudan has just concluded its self-determination referendum. An EAC-US forum could explore South Sudan's joining EAC. Such a prospect could also offer Somaliland an integrationist option while guiding the Somali region into a greater East African federated community.
The break-up of Sudan and, possibly, Côte d'Ivoire means that Africa may see more fragmentation on the road to integration. But both crises present opportunities for exercising the pan-African imagination. Rather than South Sudan and/or north and south Côte d'Ivoire being recognised as fully sovereign states, their respective regional economic communities could integrate them as self-governing autonomous areas, accelerating regional integration.
Then there is the African diaspora. There is no reason why there should not be a "Friends of Ecowas" among West African immigrants in the US, or equivalent "Friends of the EAC" and "Friends of SADC" in their respective diasporic communities. African Americans could boost their African interests through such constituency-building structures. The US is one of the major African diaspora states.
In short, the creative possibilities emanating from a joint US-African integration project are endless. The US must reposition itself as the strategic partner of a continent that will eventually outstrip both China and India in population. If Obama fails to place US-African relations on a more dynamic footing it is difficult to imagine anyone coming after him who will.
Francis A Kornegay is a research associate at the Institute for Global Dialogue.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
African immigrant found in England from 300AD
January 26 2011 at 08:21pm
You might think that African immigrants are a fairly recent addition to the British scene.
But the discovery of a 1700-year-old skeleton has turned that idea on its head.
Bones unearthed on the site of a Roman cemetery in Warwickshire are the remains of an African man, archaeologists have concluded.
The discovery, made during analysis of remains found near Stratford-upon-Avon, suggests that African immigrants lived far afield of major settlements, such as London and York, as early as the third or fourth century.
Stuart Palmer, Warwickshire County Council’s archaeology projects manager, said the find was surprising because it indicated that people of African descent lived in Warwickshire far earlier than historians thought.
Palmer said: “African skeletons have previously been found in large Romano-British towns such as York, and African units are known to have formed part of the Hadrian’s Wall garrison, but we had no reason to expect any in Warwickshire, and certainly not in a community as small as Roman Stratford.”
Experts think the skeleton, found in the Tiddington Road area of Stratford during a dig in 2009, may be that of a slave or a former Roman soldier.
A report by experts in excavated remains established that the man was of African descent and was probably in his 40’s or 50’s when he died.
Palmer said the skeletal remains also revealed that the man was heavily-built and that the condition of his spine showed he was used to carrying heavy loads.
Although the cause of the man’s death has not been established, examination of his bones found evidence of arthritis and a childhood plagued by disease or malnutrition.
Palmer added: “He could, for instance, have been a merchant although, based on the evidence of the skeletal pathology it is probably more likely that he was a slave or an army veteran who retired to Stratford.” - Daily Mail
You might think that African immigrants are a fairly recent addition to the British scene.
But the discovery of a 1700-year-old skeleton has turned that idea on its head.
Bones unearthed on the site of a Roman cemetery in Warwickshire are the remains of an African man, archaeologists have concluded.
The discovery, made during analysis of remains found near Stratford-upon-Avon, suggests that African immigrants lived far afield of major settlements, such as London and York, as early as the third or fourth century.
Stuart Palmer, Warwickshire County Council’s archaeology projects manager, said the find was surprising because it indicated that people of African descent lived in Warwickshire far earlier than historians thought.
Palmer said: “African skeletons have previously been found in large Romano-British towns such as York, and African units are known to have formed part of the Hadrian’s Wall garrison, but we had no reason to expect any in Warwickshire, and certainly not in a community as small as Roman Stratford.”
Experts think the skeleton, found in the Tiddington Road area of Stratford during a dig in 2009, may be that of a slave or a former Roman soldier.
A report by experts in excavated remains established that the man was of African descent and was probably in his 40’s or 50’s when he died.
Palmer said the skeletal remains also revealed that the man was heavily-built and that the condition of his spine showed he was used to carrying heavy loads.
Although the cause of the man’s death has not been established, examination of his bones found evidence of arthritis and a childhood plagued by disease or malnutrition.
Palmer added: “He could, for instance, have been a merchant although, based on the evidence of the skeletal pathology it is probably more likely that he was a slave or an army veteran who retired to Stratford.” - Daily Mail
Thursday, January 20, 2011
U.S. Sees Success in Immigration Program for Haitians
By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: January 19, 2011
A year after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the American government has received more than 53,000 applications from Haitians seeking temporary legal status in the United States, and it has approved the vast majority, a top immigration official said Wednesday.
The official, Alejandro Mayorkas, director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, said his agency’s response to the disaster showed that it could handle a much larger immigrant legalization program like the proposal known as the Dream Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants.
Tuesday was the deadline for Haitians to apply for the designation, called temporary protected status. The program gives most Haitians who were in the United States on the day of the earthquake the right to stay and work legally for 18 months while Haiti tries to recover.
“I think our performance and our execution of the T.P.S. program serves as a model of our ability to execute immigration reform programs,” Mr. Mayorkas said in an interview. “How quickly, effectively and efficiently we responded to the disaster is a standard for us to adhere to.”
The special designation is scheduled to expire on July 22, but advocates for Haitian immigrants say they expect that the government will extend the status, as it has for immigrants from other countries crippled by war or natural disaster.
At least 46,000 Haitians have been granted the special designation. Immigration officials said that they were still processing applications that arrived before the deadline, and that they expected the total number of approvals to exceed 49,000. That is still lower than the number of people federal officials initially expected might be eligible for the temporary protection.
Immigration officials said they had purposely chosen high estimates of the number of Haitians who might have been eligible, to ensure that they had budgeted enough money and manpower to handle the application process. Within several weeks of the announcement, officials said, they revised down to 70,000 to 100,000 their initial estimate of 100,000 to 200,000, after consulting with academics, immigrant advocates and others familiar with the Haitian diaspora.
Even now, officials said, since there is no way to count the illegal immigrant population, they do not know how many potentially eligible Haitians decided not to file for the special status.
The federal government’s offer was accompanied by a robust outreach effort that included more than 200 public forums, and conference calls between immigration officials and advocacy groups working with Haitians, officials said. Mr. Mayorkas himself led meetings with community leaders and others in New York, Miami and Boston, where large Haitian populations have taken root, and he sent deputies to other locations to explain the program.
Officials at Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, also say that improvements to the agency’s paperwork processing, background screening and public information systems have made it more efficient at handling applications.
Mr. Mayorkas acknowledged that sweeping immigration legislation like the Dream Act would apply to a much larger population: by some estimates, more than 700,000 young illegal immigrants would be eligible under the act. But he said that the difference was “an issue of scale” and that his agency was prepared to handle the increase in applications that an immigration overhaul would spur.
Immigrant advocates and federal officials said that news of the special status seemed to penetrate into the furthest reaches of the diaspora, but some Haitians living in the United States illegally may have decided not to apply because they still feared deportation and did not want to alert the authorities to their whereabouts.
Those who did not apply may now be eligible for deportation. The Obama administration suspended deportations to Haiti immediately after the earthquake and even released many Haitians, including some with criminal convictions.
Last month, however, immigration officials announced that they would resume deportations of Haitians in mid-January. But they also said they intended to focus their deportation efforts only on those who had been convicted of crimes or who posed a threat to public safety.
Haitian leaders in the United States and some public officials have asked the administration to reverse course. On Wednesday, six New York City Council members sent a letter to Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, urging her to suspend deportations once again while Haiti wrestles with its halting reconstruction effort and with fresh political and social unrest.
“Removing Haitians at this time would not only put those removed at risk,” the letter said, “but also hamper efforts of Haitians to rebuild their country, homes and lives.”
Published: January 19, 2011
A year after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the American government has received more than 53,000 applications from Haitians seeking temporary legal status in the United States, and it has approved the vast majority, a top immigration official said Wednesday.
The official, Alejandro Mayorkas, director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, said his agency’s response to the disaster showed that it could handle a much larger immigrant legalization program like the proposal known as the Dream Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants.
Tuesday was the deadline for Haitians to apply for the designation, called temporary protected status. The program gives most Haitians who were in the United States on the day of the earthquake the right to stay and work legally for 18 months while Haiti tries to recover.
“I think our performance and our execution of the T.P.S. program serves as a model of our ability to execute immigration reform programs,” Mr. Mayorkas said in an interview. “How quickly, effectively and efficiently we responded to the disaster is a standard for us to adhere to.”
The special designation is scheduled to expire on July 22, but advocates for Haitian immigrants say they expect that the government will extend the status, as it has for immigrants from other countries crippled by war or natural disaster.
At least 46,000 Haitians have been granted the special designation. Immigration officials said that they were still processing applications that arrived before the deadline, and that they expected the total number of approvals to exceed 49,000. That is still lower than the number of people federal officials initially expected might be eligible for the temporary protection.
Immigration officials said they had purposely chosen high estimates of the number of Haitians who might have been eligible, to ensure that they had budgeted enough money and manpower to handle the application process. Within several weeks of the announcement, officials said, they revised down to 70,000 to 100,000 their initial estimate of 100,000 to 200,000, after consulting with academics, immigrant advocates and others familiar with the Haitian diaspora.
Even now, officials said, since there is no way to count the illegal immigrant population, they do not know how many potentially eligible Haitians decided not to file for the special status.
The federal government’s offer was accompanied by a robust outreach effort that included more than 200 public forums, and conference calls between immigration officials and advocacy groups working with Haitians, officials said. Mr. Mayorkas himself led meetings with community leaders and others in New York, Miami and Boston, where large Haitian populations have taken root, and he sent deputies to other locations to explain the program.
Officials at Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, also say that improvements to the agency’s paperwork processing, background screening and public information systems have made it more efficient at handling applications.
Mr. Mayorkas acknowledged that sweeping immigration legislation like the Dream Act would apply to a much larger population: by some estimates, more than 700,000 young illegal immigrants would be eligible under the act. But he said that the difference was “an issue of scale” and that his agency was prepared to handle the increase in applications that an immigration overhaul would spur.
Immigrant advocates and federal officials said that news of the special status seemed to penetrate into the furthest reaches of the diaspora, but some Haitians living in the United States illegally may have decided not to apply because they still feared deportation and did not want to alert the authorities to their whereabouts.
Those who did not apply may now be eligible for deportation. The Obama administration suspended deportations to Haiti immediately after the earthquake and even released many Haitians, including some with criminal convictions.
Last month, however, immigration officials announced that they would resume deportations of Haitians in mid-January. But they also said they intended to focus their deportation efforts only on those who had been convicted of crimes or who posed a threat to public safety.
Haitian leaders in the United States and some public officials have asked the administration to reverse course. On Wednesday, six New York City Council members sent a letter to Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, urging her to suspend deportations once again while Haiti wrestles with its halting reconstruction effort and with fresh political and social unrest.
“Removing Haitians at this time would not only put those removed at risk,” the letter said, “but also hamper efforts of Haitians to rebuild their country, homes and lives.”
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
The African-American Divide Over Sudan
By: Sunni M. Khalid
Posted: January 7, 2011 at 6:35 PM
The upcoming referendum on Southern independence from Sudan has divided black Americans interested in affairs on the African continent, pitting African-American Muslims against black Christians. Call it Louis Farrakhan vs. the Rev. Al Sharpton.
This Sunday, about 4 million Sudanese in the war-torn Southern part of the country will go to the polls to cast their ballots in a referendum to decide if they should remain a part of Africa's largest country or become the continent's newest nation.
The debate over maintaining Sudan as a unitary state or separating the nation into two is an old one. It is the result of two civil wars that have raged between the North and South for all but 15 of Sudan's 55 years of independence from Egypt and the U.K. It is, perhaps, the most contentious foreign policy question among black Americans since the Angolan Civil War.
Sudan's upcoming referendum has sharply divided African Americans interested in affairs on the continent. And it has called into question past African-American support of African governments, from Idi Amin's Uganda to Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.
For black Americans, there are two conflicting currents in the issue of Southern Sudan. There is a strong religious affinity on one side; on the other, a strong sense of racial unity.
On the religious side are many African-American Muslims, including the largest faction of the original Nation of Islam, led by Louis Farrakhan. They espouse a religious solidarity with the Sudanese government of Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who has held power in Khartoum since he staged a military coup in 1989. Western forces, they argue, are conspiring to undermine Islam. On the opposite side arguing for racial unity are mainly black Christian leaders like the Rev. Al Sharpton and talk-show host Joe Madison, who insist that Southern Sudan is experiencing "genocide by attrition."
Farrakhan has visited Sudan several times and has vigorously rejected charges of slavery there. "While I stand here in the Sudan, there is a war going on, and that war is against Islam," Farrakhan said at a Khartoum press conference in 1994. "And it is headed by the government of the United States of America and the powers of the West. They know that only the unity of Islam will prevent Western hegemony over the world. There is no other force in existence to stop that but Islam." His stand has not wavered since. In recent years, Farrakhan has claimed that there is a Western campaign against Sudan, as well as Iran, based on oil and Zionism.
Can Independence Cure Corruption?
Much African-American Muslim support for the Sudanese government has not diminished, even though Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for his role in prosecuting the government's campaign against dark-skinned, non-Arab Muslims in Darfur.
Both Khartoum and the government-in-waiting in Juba, the capital of the South, he adds, have failed to make unity attractive. But Abdul-Ali also claims that the poverty-stricken Southern Sudan is ill-prepared for independence, and its government has "demonstrated an appalling pattern of corruption, nepotism and a lack of good governance," despite sharing oil revenues with Khartoum for the last five years.
Many of the same charges have been leveled at the Bashir regime, long regarded by some foreign policy experts as one of Africa's most brutal, repressive and corrupt.
Like Farrakhan, Abdul-Ali and others in the Arab and Muslim worlds blame Sudan's predicament on the West, specifically the United States. They argue that Washington has reneged on promises to support theComprehensive Peace Agreement, end severe economic sanctions on Khartoum and remove Sudan from the list of nations supporting international terrorism.
"People on the outside don't understand that the U.S. makes promises," says Ali. "They are encouraging the Southern Sudan to separate because of the oil. But mark my words: Five years from now, the Southern Sudanese will look up and be in worse shape than they are now."
That may be true, but it largely obscures the roots of the second civil war. The Addis Ababa Agreement ended the first civil war in 1972, granting a large degree of autonomy to the South, including freedom of religion. Ten years later, then-Sudanese President Jaafar Numeiri abrogated the pact, split the South into three provinces and established Shariah, or Islamic law, over the whole country. Armed resistance in the South began soon after.
Dr. James Sulton, an African American, is a former president of the Sudan Studies Association. He says that before the start of the second civil war, many African Americans labored under a "cultural myopia" that made them reluctant to criticize African governments because they were African governments.
"The Sudan turned the tide back then," adds Sulton, "because Jaafar Numeiri proved to be more hostile to the Southern Sudanese than any other colonial government could ever be. Numeiri's successors, including Sadiq al-Mahdi, continued Khartoum's war on the South."
A Complex Mix of Race and Religion
Over the years, African-American support for Southern Sudan, if not for outright independence, has gradually increased. Sharpton and Madison, leaders in the Khartoum opposition, have also visited Sudan, leading missions and staging protest marches outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, highlighting the ongoing problem of slavery of dark-skinned Southern Sudanese -- most of whom are non-Muslims.
Hodari Abdul-Ali, an African-American Orthodox Muslim and former consultant to the Sudanese ambassador, is the executive director of the Give Peace a Chance Coalition in Washington, D.C. The group has sponsored several fact-finding trips by African Americans to Sudan. "The impending breakup of the Sudan is nothing but a disaster for Africa, for the African Diaspora and for Sudan," Abdul-Ali asserts.
Both men's efforts have been part of those of Christian Solidarity International. Sharpton mentioned the Sudanese Civil War when he addressed the Democratic National Convention in 2004. "The global response is hypocritical and the U.S. offer to restore ties to Sudan should be met with skeptical caution at best until the conditions of the Darfuris and Southern Sudanese have changed dramatically," Madison wrote after one of his trips to Sudan.
Yet Sudan's tortured internal racial politics are often confusing. What defines one as a "Sudanese Arab" -- a member of the group in power -- and a so-called black African (a member of the oppressed group) is often elastic, since skin color alone is not the sole determinant of "race" or "culture." It is common for so-called Sudanese Arabs to have dark skin, as it is for non-Arab Southern Sudanese to be Muslims. Moreover, Arabic is the lingua franca throughout the North and much of the South.
Given Sudanese politics, where continuous duplicity is the rule -- producing a dizzying history of co-optation, alliances and counter-alliances between, and often among, Southerners and Northerners -- it is often difficult to tell who is on which side, from one moment to the next. But it is the power and primacy of Arab identity that has ruled Sudan, ever since the first Arabs crossed into Africa from the Arabian Peninsula and migrated south along the Nile a thousand years ago.
The current divide over Sudan brings back memories of another contentious foreign policy question among African Americans. In 1975, as Angola was emerging from Portuguese colonial rule, three nationalist movements vied for power. All three appealed to African Americans for moral, political and financial support, prompting them to choose sides.
Many black nationalists gravitated toward the alliance of the FNLA (the National Front for the Liberation of Angola) and UNITA (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola). The MPLA (the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), a multiracial, Marxist-Leninist movement, was favored by African Americans who shared its ideological bent.
The FNLA-UNITA alliance effectively lost much of its support among the African-American community once its military ties to the CIA and apartheid South Africa were exposed. The MPLA, supported by Soviet arms and Cuban troops, won the war and, almost by default, the battle for most African-American hearts and minds.
In the end, the debate over Sudan, like Angola, may be nothing more than a historical footnote. Independence for Southern Sudan appears as imminent as it does inevitable. After six days of voting, official results must be certified within 30 days. Sixty percent of eligible voters must cast ballots for the vote to be judged as valid.
Already, many Southern Sudanese are voting with their feet. According to the United Nations, at least 75,000 Southerners have already returned to their home region in recent weeks from the North. Many more are expected to follow. Some have come back to vote in the referendum, while others say they have left for good, fearing a violent public backlash in the North.
Most of Sudan's oil reserves are located in what could become an independent Southern Sudan, while the pipelines run through the North. A common border remains to be demarcated. And many expect that Khartoum will not relinquish the oil fields, or their significant revenues, without a fight. Sulton, formerly of the Sudan Studies Association, is one of them.
"We may be on the verge of the worst civil war of the decade," warns Sulton, "even as the decade begins."
Sunni M. Khalid is the managing news editor at WYPR-FM and has reported extensively throughout Africa and the Middle East.
Posted: January 7, 2011 at 6:35 PM
The upcoming referendum on Southern independence from Sudan has divided black Americans interested in affairs on the African continent, pitting African-American Muslims against black Christians. Call it Louis Farrakhan vs. the Rev. Al Sharpton.
This Sunday, about 4 million Sudanese in the war-torn Southern part of the country will go to the polls to cast their ballots in a referendum to decide if they should remain a part of Africa's largest country or become the continent's newest nation.
The debate over maintaining Sudan as a unitary state or separating the nation into two is an old one. It is the result of two civil wars that have raged between the North and South for all but 15 of Sudan's 55 years of independence from Egypt and the U.K. It is, perhaps, the most contentious foreign policy question among black Americans since the Angolan Civil War.
Sudan's upcoming referendum has sharply divided African Americans interested in affairs on the continent. And it has called into question past African-American support of African governments, from Idi Amin's Uganda to Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.
For black Americans, there are two conflicting currents in the issue of Southern Sudan. There is a strong religious affinity on one side; on the other, a strong sense of racial unity.
On the religious side are many African-American Muslims, including the largest faction of the original Nation of Islam, led by Louis Farrakhan. They espouse a religious solidarity with the Sudanese government of Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who has held power in Khartoum since he staged a military coup in 1989. Western forces, they argue, are conspiring to undermine Islam. On the opposite side arguing for racial unity are mainly black Christian leaders like the Rev. Al Sharpton and talk-show host Joe Madison, who insist that Southern Sudan is experiencing "genocide by attrition."
Farrakhan has visited Sudan several times and has vigorously rejected charges of slavery there. "While I stand here in the Sudan, there is a war going on, and that war is against Islam," Farrakhan said at a Khartoum press conference in 1994. "And it is headed by the government of the United States of America and the powers of the West. They know that only the unity of Islam will prevent Western hegemony over the world. There is no other force in existence to stop that but Islam." His stand has not wavered since. In recent years, Farrakhan has claimed that there is a Western campaign against Sudan, as well as Iran, based on oil and Zionism.
Can Independence Cure Corruption?
Much African-American Muslim support for the Sudanese government has not diminished, even though Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for his role in prosecuting the government's campaign against dark-skinned, non-Arab Muslims in Darfur.
Both Khartoum and the government-in-waiting in Juba, the capital of the South, he adds, have failed to make unity attractive. But Abdul-Ali also claims that the poverty-stricken Southern Sudan is ill-prepared for independence, and its government has "demonstrated an appalling pattern of corruption, nepotism and a lack of good governance," despite sharing oil revenues with Khartoum for the last five years.
Many of the same charges have been leveled at the Bashir regime, long regarded by some foreign policy experts as one of Africa's most brutal, repressive and corrupt.
Like Farrakhan, Abdul-Ali and others in the Arab and Muslim worlds blame Sudan's predicament on the West, specifically the United States. They argue that Washington has reneged on promises to support theComprehensive Peace Agreement, end severe economic sanctions on Khartoum and remove Sudan from the list of nations supporting international terrorism.
"People on the outside don't understand that the U.S. makes promises," says Ali. "They are encouraging the Southern Sudan to separate because of the oil. But mark my words: Five years from now, the Southern Sudanese will look up and be in worse shape than they are now."
That may be true, but it largely obscures the roots of the second civil war. The Addis Ababa Agreement ended the first civil war in 1972, granting a large degree of autonomy to the South, including freedom of religion. Ten years later, then-Sudanese President Jaafar Numeiri abrogated the pact, split the South into three provinces and established Shariah, or Islamic law, over the whole country. Armed resistance in the South began soon after.
Dr. James Sulton, an African American, is a former president of the Sudan Studies Association. He says that before the start of the second civil war, many African Americans labored under a "cultural myopia" that made them reluctant to criticize African governments because they were African governments.
"The Sudan turned the tide back then," adds Sulton, "because Jaafar Numeiri proved to be more hostile to the Southern Sudanese than any other colonial government could ever be. Numeiri's successors, including Sadiq al-Mahdi, continued Khartoum's war on the South."
A Complex Mix of Race and Religion
Over the years, African-American support for Southern Sudan, if not for outright independence, has gradually increased. Sharpton and Madison, leaders in the Khartoum opposition, have also visited Sudan, leading missions and staging protest marches outside the Sudanese Embassy in Washington, highlighting the ongoing problem of slavery of dark-skinned Southern Sudanese -- most of whom are non-Muslims.
Hodari Abdul-Ali, an African-American Orthodox Muslim and former consultant to the Sudanese ambassador, is the executive director of the Give Peace a Chance Coalition in Washington, D.C. The group has sponsored several fact-finding trips by African Americans to Sudan. "The impending breakup of the Sudan is nothing but a disaster for Africa, for the African Diaspora and for Sudan," Abdul-Ali asserts.
Both men's efforts have been part of those of Christian Solidarity International. Sharpton mentioned the Sudanese Civil War when he addressed the Democratic National Convention in 2004. "The global response is hypocritical and the U.S. offer to restore ties to Sudan should be met with skeptical caution at best until the conditions of the Darfuris and Southern Sudanese have changed dramatically," Madison wrote after one of his trips to Sudan.
Yet Sudan's tortured internal racial politics are often confusing. What defines one as a "Sudanese Arab" -- a member of the group in power -- and a so-called black African (a member of the oppressed group) is often elastic, since skin color alone is not the sole determinant of "race" or "culture." It is common for so-called Sudanese Arabs to have dark skin, as it is for non-Arab Southern Sudanese to be Muslims. Moreover, Arabic is the lingua franca throughout the North and much of the South.
Given Sudanese politics, where continuous duplicity is the rule -- producing a dizzying history of co-optation, alliances and counter-alliances between, and often among, Southerners and Northerners -- it is often difficult to tell who is on which side, from one moment to the next. But it is the power and primacy of Arab identity that has ruled Sudan, ever since the first Arabs crossed into Africa from the Arabian Peninsula and migrated south along the Nile a thousand years ago.
The current divide over Sudan brings back memories of another contentious foreign policy question among African Americans. In 1975, as Angola was emerging from Portuguese colonial rule, three nationalist movements vied for power. All three appealed to African Americans for moral, political and financial support, prompting them to choose sides.
Many black nationalists gravitated toward the alliance of the FNLA (the National Front for the Liberation of Angola) and UNITA (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola). The MPLA (the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), a multiracial, Marxist-Leninist movement, was favored by African Americans who shared its ideological bent.
The FNLA-UNITA alliance effectively lost much of its support among the African-American community once its military ties to the CIA and apartheid South Africa were exposed. The MPLA, supported by Soviet arms and Cuban troops, won the war and, almost by default, the battle for most African-American hearts and minds.
In the end, the debate over Sudan, like Angola, may be nothing more than a historical footnote. Independence for Southern Sudan appears as imminent as it does inevitable. After six days of voting, official results must be certified within 30 days. Sixty percent of eligible voters must cast ballots for the vote to be judged as valid.
Already, many Southern Sudanese are voting with their feet. According to the United Nations, at least 75,000 Southerners have already returned to their home region in recent weeks from the North. Many more are expected to follow. Some have come back to vote in the referendum, while others say they have left for good, fearing a violent public backlash in the North.
Most of Sudan's oil reserves are located in what could become an independent Southern Sudan, while the pipelines run through the North. A common border remains to be demarcated. And many expect that Khartoum will not relinquish the oil fields, or their significant revenues, without a fight. Sulton, formerly of the Sudan Studies Association, is one of them.
"We may be on the verge of the worst civil war of the decade," warns Sulton, "even as the decade begins."
Sunni M. Khalid is the managing news editor at WYPR-FM and has reported extensively throughout Africa and the Middle East.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Obama to increase engagement with Africa in 2011
By theGrio
9:57 AM on 01/03/2011
HONOLULU (AP) - President Barack Obama is quietly but strategically stepping up his outreach to Africa, using this year to increase his engagement with a continent that is personally meaningful to him and important to U.S. interests.
Expectations in Africa spiked after the election of an American president with a Kenyan father. But midway through his term, Obama's agenda for Africa has taken a backseat to other foreign policy goals, such as winding down the Iraq war, fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and resetting relations with Russia.
Obama aides believe those issues are now on more solid footing, allowing the president to expand his international agenda. He will focus in Africa on good governance and supporting nations with strong democratic institutions.
Obama delivered that message on his only trip to Africa since taking office, an overnight stop in Ghana in 2009, where he was mobbed by cheering crowds. In a blunt speech before the Ghanaian parliament, Obama said democracy is the key to Africa's long-term development.
"That is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places, for far too long," Obama said. "That is the change that can unlock Africa's potential. And that is a responsibility that can only be met by Africans."
The White House says Obama will travel to Africa again and the political calendar means the trip will almost certainly happen this year, before Obama has to spend more time on his re-election bid. No decision has been made on which countries Obama will visit, but deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said stops will reflect positive democratic models.
The administration is monitoring more than 30 elections expected across Africa this year, including critical contests in Nigeria and Zimbabwe.
"The U.S. is watching and we're weighing in," Rhodes said.
John Campbell, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, said the different elections give the Obama administration the opportunity to establish clear policies.
The administration "should be less willing to cut slack when those elections are less than free, fair and credible," Campbell said.
The White House can send that message right now as it deals with the disputed election in Ivory Coast and an upcoming independence referendum in Sudan, which could split Africa's largest country in two.
Rhodes said the president has invested significant "diplomatic capital" on Sudan, mentioning the referendum in nearly all of his conversations with the presidents of Russia and China, two countries which could wield influence over that Sudan's government.
When Obama stopped in at a White House meeting last month of his national security advisers and United Nations ambassadors, the first topic he broached was Sudan, not Iran or North Korea. And as lawmakers on Capitol Hill neared the December vote on a new nuclear treaty with Russia, Obama called southern Sudan leader Salva Kiir by telephone to offer support for the referendum.
White House officials believe the postelection standoff in Ivory Coast could be the model for Obama's stepped-up engagement in Africa.
The president tried to call incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo twice last month, from Air Force One as Obama returned from Afghanistan and then a week later. Neither call reached Gbagbo; administration officials believe the Ivorian leader sought to avoid contact. So Obama wrote Gbagbo a letter, offering him an international role if he stopped clinging to power and stepped down.
But Obama also made clear that the longer Gbagbo holds on, and the more complicit he becomes in violence across the country, the more limited his options become, said a senior administration official. The official insisted on anonymity to speak about administration strategy.
Rhodes said the White House understands that U.S. involvement in African politics can be viewed as meddling. But he said Obama can speak to African leaders with a unique level of candor, reflecting his personal connection to Africa and that his father and other family members have been affected by the corruption that plagues many countries there.
Officials also see increased political stability in Africa as good for long-term U.S. interests -- a way to stem the growth of terrorism in east Africa and counterbalance China's growing presence on the continent.
The U.S. was caught off guard during the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen when several African countries voted with China and not the U.S., the administration official said. The official said the administration must persuade African nations that their interests are better served by aligning with the U.S.
9:57 AM on 01/03/2011
HONOLULU (AP) - President Barack Obama is quietly but strategically stepping up his outreach to Africa, using this year to increase his engagement with a continent that is personally meaningful to him and important to U.S. interests.
Expectations in Africa spiked after the election of an American president with a Kenyan father. But midway through his term, Obama's agenda for Africa has taken a backseat to other foreign policy goals, such as winding down the Iraq war, fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan and resetting relations with Russia.
Obama aides believe those issues are now on more solid footing, allowing the president to expand his international agenda. He will focus in Africa on good governance and supporting nations with strong democratic institutions.
Obama delivered that message on his only trip to Africa since taking office, an overnight stop in Ghana in 2009, where he was mobbed by cheering crowds. In a blunt speech before the Ghanaian parliament, Obama said democracy is the key to Africa's long-term development.
"That is the ingredient which has been missing in far too many places, for far too long," Obama said. "That is the change that can unlock Africa's potential. And that is a responsibility that can only be met by Africans."
The White House says Obama will travel to Africa again and the political calendar means the trip will almost certainly happen this year, before Obama has to spend more time on his re-election bid. No decision has been made on which countries Obama will visit, but deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said stops will reflect positive democratic models.
The administration is monitoring more than 30 elections expected across Africa this year, including critical contests in Nigeria and Zimbabwe.
"The U.S. is watching and we're weighing in," Rhodes said.
John Campbell, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, said the different elections give the Obama administration the opportunity to establish clear policies.
The administration "should be less willing to cut slack when those elections are less than free, fair and credible," Campbell said.
The White House can send that message right now as it deals with the disputed election in Ivory Coast and an upcoming independence referendum in Sudan, which could split Africa's largest country in two.
Rhodes said the president has invested significant "diplomatic capital" on Sudan, mentioning the referendum in nearly all of his conversations with the presidents of Russia and China, two countries which could wield influence over that Sudan's government.
When Obama stopped in at a White House meeting last month of his national security advisers and United Nations ambassadors, the first topic he broached was Sudan, not Iran or North Korea. And as lawmakers on Capitol Hill neared the December vote on a new nuclear treaty with Russia, Obama called southern Sudan leader Salva Kiir by telephone to offer support for the referendum.
White House officials believe the postelection standoff in Ivory Coast could be the model for Obama's stepped-up engagement in Africa.
The president tried to call incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo twice last month, from Air Force One as Obama returned from Afghanistan and then a week later. Neither call reached Gbagbo; administration officials believe the Ivorian leader sought to avoid contact. So Obama wrote Gbagbo a letter, offering him an international role if he stopped clinging to power and stepped down.
But Obama also made clear that the longer Gbagbo holds on, and the more complicit he becomes in violence across the country, the more limited his options become, said a senior administration official. The official insisted on anonymity to speak about administration strategy.
Rhodes said the White House understands that U.S. involvement in African politics can be viewed as meddling. But he said Obama can speak to African leaders with a unique level of candor, reflecting his personal connection to Africa and that his father and other family members have been affected by the corruption that plagues many countries there.
Officials also see increased political stability in Africa as good for long-term U.S. interests -- a way to stem the growth of terrorism in east Africa and counterbalance China's growing presence on the continent.
The U.S. was caught off guard during the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen when several African countries voted with China and not the U.S., the administration official said. The official said the administration must persuade African nations that their interests are better served by aligning with the U.S.
Ethiopia lives in L.A. hearts
By Kate Linthicum, Los Angeles Times
January 3, 2011
Fassil Abebe drives in rush-hour traffic to a bustling stretch of Fairfax Avenue, where the smells of cumin and roasting coffee carry down the street. With handshakes and cries of "Salaam!" he greets a dozen men and women who have gathered in the back room of a friend's restaurant to organize a fundraiser for Seifu Makonnen, a fellow Ethiopian immigrant who is ill.
Nearly every month in Los Angeles, Ethiopians host a benefit like this one. Last year, at events for two compatriots with cancer, Abebe's group raised more than $55,000.
It's not as if they have time or money to spare. Many Ethiopians here work as taxicab drivers or parking attendants, and most send large remittances to relatives back home. But they give because they know that if ever they need help, they will get it. They give because this is a community that takes care of its own.
You can see it at the home of a family that has just lost a loved one, where friends arrive for days of mourning, each with food, drinks or an envelope of money. You can see it at the hospital, where it's not uncommon for an Ethiopian patient to receive 300 visitors a day.
It's a way of life they learned at home, and it helps keeps them connected here.
"In Ethiopia when someone is sick, the whole town brings food," Abebe said. "When someone is having a wedding for his daughter, he doesn't do it alone. We believe we are our brother's keeper, so when our brother needs us, we are here to help."
Seeking asylum
Makonnen was once one of the most feared boxers in East Africa. A heavyweight with a fierce punch, he was called Tibo, Amharic for "knockout."
He has a clutch of gold medals from various victories across the world and a tattoo on his right shoulder of five interlocked rings — a reminder of when he represented Ethiopia at the 1972 summer Olympics in Munich.
But he hit his peak just as a hard-line military junta swept into power in his country, after the 1974 ousting of Emperor Haile Selassie I.
The communist regime put him in jail for several months. Later he was sent to train in Cuba. On a layover in Montreal on the way back to Ethiopia, he slipped a letter to airport police seeking political asylum.
He moved to Los Angeles with refugee status in 1978 and gave up boxing for another fight.
When Makonnen arrived in L.A., there were no Ethiopian restaurants or churches.
"Back then, everybody was on his own," he said.
Makonnen helped found St. Mary's Ethiopian Apostolic Church on Compton Avenue, the nation's first Ethiopian church. While living in Washington, D.C., briefly, he opened a health center where Ethiopian athletes could train and started a weekly radio program about Ethiopian sports.
He helped build the community that now is helping him.
Together to help
The fundraiser-planning dinners have the feel of school board meetings. Decisions are made by consensus. Each person takes notes. One woman jots down the minutes, which are later typed up and sent out on the group's listserv.
After three months of twice-monthly get-togethers, the event hall has been rented and the musicians' travel arranged. But there is still much to be done. The invitations must be printed and the dinner menu chosen. Someone needs to make the rounds of all the Ethiopian-owned businesses to sell ad space in the February gala's program.
The volunteers have embraced the American "do-it-yourself" ethic, with an Ethiopian flavor. Those who are hungry order food, and all eat from the same plate. They never raise their voices during two hours of sorting out event details. The meetings get heated only at the end, when the bill comes and they argue over who gets to pay it.
Beloved figure
Abebe first met Makonnen when he moved to L.A. in 1983. The former boxer was driving a taxi then, and he taught the newcomer from Addis Ababa how to find his way across a vast, unfamiliar metropolis.
Makonnen was diagnosed with diabetes in the 1980s.
The man who once skipped deftly in the boxing ring now steps slowly. He spends three days a week at a clinic undergoing dialysis. The treatments leave him exhausted and unable to work.
When Abebe heard about the fundraiser for his old mentor, he happily agreed to help. He drives to the Little Ethiopia meeting from Inglewood, where he lives with his wife and two children. Others come from the San Fernando Valley and Orange County.
"A lot of people love him and know him," Abebe said of Makonnen, who has two grown children. "He needs another chance to live."
When Makonnen heard about the gala, he was happy but not surprised.
"In Ethiopia, there is no 'individual,' " he said. "You help people, and they'll do good for you."
kate.linthicum@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
January 3, 2011
Fassil Abebe drives in rush-hour traffic to a bustling stretch of Fairfax Avenue, where the smells of cumin and roasting coffee carry down the street. With handshakes and cries of "Salaam!" he greets a dozen men and women who have gathered in the back room of a friend's restaurant to organize a fundraiser for Seifu Makonnen, a fellow Ethiopian immigrant who is ill.
Nearly every month in Los Angeles, Ethiopians host a benefit like this one. Last year, at events for two compatriots with cancer, Abebe's group raised more than $55,000.
It's not as if they have time or money to spare. Many Ethiopians here work as taxicab drivers or parking attendants, and most send large remittances to relatives back home. But they give because they know that if ever they need help, they will get it. They give because this is a community that takes care of its own.
You can see it at the home of a family that has just lost a loved one, where friends arrive for days of mourning, each with food, drinks or an envelope of money. You can see it at the hospital, where it's not uncommon for an Ethiopian patient to receive 300 visitors a day.
It's a way of life they learned at home, and it helps keeps them connected here.
"In Ethiopia when someone is sick, the whole town brings food," Abebe said. "When someone is having a wedding for his daughter, he doesn't do it alone. We believe we are our brother's keeper, so when our brother needs us, we are here to help."
Seeking asylum
Makonnen was once one of the most feared boxers in East Africa. A heavyweight with a fierce punch, he was called Tibo, Amharic for "knockout."
He has a clutch of gold medals from various victories across the world and a tattoo on his right shoulder of five interlocked rings — a reminder of when he represented Ethiopia at the 1972 summer Olympics in Munich.
But he hit his peak just as a hard-line military junta swept into power in his country, after the 1974 ousting of Emperor Haile Selassie I.
The communist regime put him in jail for several months. Later he was sent to train in Cuba. On a layover in Montreal on the way back to Ethiopia, he slipped a letter to airport police seeking political asylum.
He moved to Los Angeles with refugee status in 1978 and gave up boxing for another fight.
When Makonnen arrived in L.A., there were no Ethiopian restaurants or churches.
"Back then, everybody was on his own," he said.
Makonnen helped found St. Mary's Ethiopian Apostolic Church on Compton Avenue, the nation's first Ethiopian church. While living in Washington, D.C., briefly, he opened a health center where Ethiopian athletes could train and started a weekly radio program about Ethiopian sports.
He helped build the community that now is helping him.
Together to help
The fundraiser-planning dinners have the feel of school board meetings. Decisions are made by consensus. Each person takes notes. One woman jots down the minutes, which are later typed up and sent out on the group's listserv.
After three months of twice-monthly get-togethers, the event hall has been rented and the musicians' travel arranged. But there is still much to be done. The invitations must be printed and the dinner menu chosen. Someone needs to make the rounds of all the Ethiopian-owned businesses to sell ad space in the February gala's program.
The volunteers have embraced the American "do-it-yourself" ethic, with an Ethiopian flavor. Those who are hungry order food, and all eat from the same plate. They never raise their voices during two hours of sorting out event details. The meetings get heated only at the end, when the bill comes and they argue over who gets to pay it.
Beloved figure
Abebe first met Makonnen when he moved to L.A. in 1983. The former boxer was driving a taxi then, and he taught the newcomer from Addis Ababa how to find his way across a vast, unfamiliar metropolis.
Makonnen was diagnosed with diabetes in the 1980s.
The man who once skipped deftly in the boxing ring now steps slowly. He spends three days a week at a clinic undergoing dialysis. The treatments leave him exhausted and unable to work.
When Abebe heard about the fundraiser for his old mentor, he happily agreed to help. He drives to the Little Ethiopia meeting from Inglewood, where he lives with his wife and two children. Others come from the San Fernando Valley and Orange County.
"A lot of people love him and know him," Abebe said of Makonnen, who has two grown children. "He needs another chance to live."
When Makonnen heard about the gala, he was happy but not surprised.
"In Ethiopia, there is no 'individual,' " he said. "You help people, and they'll do good for you."
kate.linthicum@latimes.com
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
Monday, December 27, 2010
African Immigrants in Minnesota Urge to Seek US Citizenship
(Dec 27, 2010) By: Omari Jackson
BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. December 27, 2010: African immigrants and refugees have been asked to seek citizenship, to avoid problems that are often tied to one’s immigration status.
At the end of a one-day immigration informational session held on Friday Dec. 10, in Brooklyn Center, Minn., the head of immigration practice at the Cundy and Martin law firm, Vincent Martin, told attendees to remember that plea agreements in any court system, “affect your immigration status in some ways.”
He told them, “instead of guessing about the laws, it’s always good to check in with immigration attorneys.”
Organized by the African Immigrant Services, also called AIS, in collaboration with the Miracle Redemption Center International, the session brought together nearly 240 African immigrants who braved the inclement weather.
Martin discussed immigration policies and laws, including how to petition for family members, how to seek asylum, as well as permanent residency status and citizenship processes and applications.
Martin represents individuals and employers, families seeking to sponsor other family members, and those facing deportation.
Also contributing, Advocates for Human Rights’ director of advocacy, Michelle Garnett-McKenzie, encouraged African immigrants to take advantage of legal resources to avoid problems in the future.
From experience, she said, some of the problems immigrants and refugees encounter could easily be resolved if they would seek appropriate resources and attend informational sessions.
Garnett-McKenzie has worked extensively with refugee and immigrant groups. She joined The Advocates in 1999 as a staff attorney representing asylum seekers and immigration detainees and, in 2003, became the Refugee and Immigrant Program Director, managing the asylum, detention, and walk-in clinic projects.
By nearly all accounts, the town-hall-style event was warmly received, as participants and beneficiaries expressed their appreciation and hoped that such a useful venture would be held often.
“The session was one of the best events I’ve seen in the African community. AIS did a great job”, said Duanna Siryon, founder of Pro-USA, an African immigrant youth sports development non-profit group in the Twin Cities.
Saran Daramy, an African immigrant business owner who came to get information to help her cousin, said, “It was educational. A wide range of topics was covered. I think we should have more of it, to help our community.”
“Some of our African folks need guidance when it comes to immigration issues. But again, they just don’t know where to get basic information”, explained Abu Massaley, an African-born immigrant. “This event was helpful, because it provided an opportunity for them to understand what was at stake regarding immigration laws. I also think there is a need for AIS to do one-on-one session, where folks will be able to ask some very personal questions.”
“We’re very pleased with the outcome,” said Cairbeh Dahn, outreach coordinator of AIS. “We exceeded our initial expectation, especially in terms of attendance and the level of participation.”
AIS Board chairman, Momodu Kemokai said, “Our goal is four sessions a year, serving about 800 African immigrants and refugees. And we are proud of the initial impact.”
AIS believes that these sessions are an important piece in a larger strategy to address a wide range of problems tied to immigration status.
“ When African immigrants and refugees face problems related to their legal or immigration status, their housing, health, job, education and other aspects of their lives are also affected”, said Abdullah Kiatamba, executive director of AIS.” That is why everybody wins when African immigrants and refugees gain greater access to a wide range of relevant legal resources.”
He said the just concluded session is the first, “of the journey,” his organization has embarked upon, and appealed to African immigrants and refugees to volunteer and participate in programs and services that are critical to their aspirations.
Noble Fahnbulleh, AIS’ volunteer and technology coordinator, said, “Linking African immigrants and refugees to resources is critical to our work at AIS.”
He meanwhile requested participants to provide AIS with feedback and suggestions on how to make future sessions more effective.
Earlier, Rev. Vandyke Noah of the Redemption Center, expressed appreciation for the session, because, “our people need this kind of opportunity to address their doubts and concerns.”
Established in 2005 and reactivated in 2009, AIS works to empower African immigrants and refugees to integrate into mainstream communities and to increase their participation in civic life.
AIS is at www.aisusa.org
BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. December 27, 2010: African immigrants and refugees have been asked to seek citizenship, to avoid problems that are often tied to one’s immigration status.
At the end of a one-day immigration informational session held on Friday Dec. 10, in Brooklyn Center, Minn., the head of immigration practice at the Cundy and Martin law firm, Vincent Martin, told attendees to remember that plea agreements in any court system, “affect your immigration status in some ways.”
He told them, “instead of guessing about the laws, it’s always good to check in with immigration attorneys.”
Organized by the African Immigrant Services, also called AIS, in collaboration with the Miracle Redemption Center International, the session brought together nearly 240 African immigrants who braved the inclement weather.
Martin discussed immigration policies and laws, including how to petition for family members, how to seek asylum, as well as permanent residency status and citizenship processes and applications.
Martin represents individuals and employers, families seeking to sponsor other family members, and those facing deportation.
Also contributing, Advocates for Human Rights’ director of advocacy, Michelle Garnett-McKenzie, encouraged African immigrants to take advantage of legal resources to avoid problems in the future.
From experience, she said, some of the problems immigrants and refugees encounter could easily be resolved if they would seek appropriate resources and attend informational sessions.
Garnett-McKenzie has worked extensively with refugee and immigrant groups. She joined The Advocates in 1999 as a staff attorney representing asylum seekers and immigration detainees and, in 2003, became the Refugee and Immigrant Program Director, managing the asylum, detention, and walk-in clinic projects.
By nearly all accounts, the town-hall-style event was warmly received, as participants and beneficiaries expressed their appreciation and hoped that such a useful venture would be held often.
“The session was one of the best events I’ve seen in the African community. AIS did a great job”, said Duanna Siryon, founder of Pro-USA, an African immigrant youth sports development non-profit group in the Twin Cities.
Saran Daramy, an African immigrant business owner who came to get information to help her cousin, said, “It was educational. A wide range of topics was covered. I think we should have more of it, to help our community.”
“Some of our African folks need guidance when it comes to immigration issues. But again, they just don’t know where to get basic information”, explained Abu Massaley, an African-born immigrant. “This event was helpful, because it provided an opportunity for them to understand what was at stake regarding immigration laws. I also think there is a need for AIS to do one-on-one session, where folks will be able to ask some very personal questions.”
“We’re very pleased with the outcome,” said Cairbeh Dahn, outreach coordinator of AIS. “We exceeded our initial expectation, especially in terms of attendance and the level of participation.”
AIS Board chairman, Momodu Kemokai said, “Our goal is four sessions a year, serving about 800 African immigrants and refugees. And we are proud of the initial impact.”
AIS believes that these sessions are an important piece in a larger strategy to address a wide range of problems tied to immigration status.
“ When African immigrants and refugees face problems related to their legal or immigration status, their housing, health, job, education and other aspects of their lives are also affected”, said Abdullah Kiatamba, executive director of AIS.” That is why everybody wins when African immigrants and refugees gain greater access to a wide range of relevant legal resources.”
He said the just concluded session is the first, “of the journey,” his organization has embarked upon, and appealed to African immigrants and refugees to volunteer and participate in programs and services that are critical to their aspirations.
Noble Fahnbulleh, AIS’ volunteer and technology coordinator, said, “Linking African immigrants and refugees to resources is critical to our work at AIS.”
He meanwhile requested participants to provide AIS with feedback and suggestions on how to make future sessions more effective.
Earlier, Rev. Vandyke Noah of the Redemption Center, expressed appreciation for the session, because, “our people need this kind of opportunity to address their doubts and concerns.”
Established in 2005 and reactivated in 2009, AIS works to empower African immigrants and refugees to integrate into mainstream communities and to increase their participation in civic life.
AIS is at www.aisusa.org
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
African Farmers Displaced as Investors Move In
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/world/africa/22mali.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Published: December 21, 2010
SOUMOUNI, Mali — The half-dozen strangers who descended on this remote West African village brought its hand-to-mouth farmers alarming news: their humble fields, tilled from one generation to the next, were now controlled by Libya's leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and the farmers would all have to leave.
"They told us this would be the last rainy season for us to cultivate our fields; after that, they will level all the houses and take the land," said Mama Keita, 73, the leader of this village veiled behind dense, thorny scrubland. "We were told that Qaddafi owns this land."
Across Africa and the developing world, a new global land rush is gobbling up large expanses of arable land. Despite their ageless traditions, stunned villagers are discovering that African governments typically own their land and have been leasing it, often at bargain prices, to private investors and foreign governments for decades to come.
Organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank say the practice, if done equitably, could help feed the growing global population by introducing large-scale commercial farming to places without it.
But others condemn the deals as neocolonial land grabs that destroy villages, uproot tens of thousands of farmers and create a volatile mass of landless poor. Making matters worse, they contend, much of the food is bound for wealthier nations.
"The food security of the country concerned must be first and foremost in everybody's mind," said Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, now working on the issue of African agriculture. "Otherwise it is straightforward exploitation and it won't work. We have seen a scramble for Africa before. I don't think we want to see a second scramble of that kind."
A World Bank study released in September tallied farmland deals covering at least 110 million acres — the size of California and West Virginia combined — announced during the first 11 months of 2009 alone. More than 70 percent of those deals were for land in Africa, with Sudan, Mozambique and Ethiopia among those nations transferring millions of acres to investors.
Before 2008, the global average for such deals was less than 10 million acres per year, the report said. But the food crisis that spring, which set off riots in at least a dozen countries, prompted the spree. The prospect of future scarcity attracted both wealthy governments lacking the arable land needed to feed their own people and hedge funds drawn to a dwindling commodity.
"You see interest in land acquisition continuing at a very high level," said Klaus Deininger, the World Bank economist who wrote the report, taking many figures from a Web site run by Grain, an advocacy organization, because governments would not reveal the agreements. "Clearly, this is not over."
The report, while generally supportive of the investments, detailed mixed results. Foreign aid for agriculture has dwindled from about 20 percent of all aid in 1980 to about 5 percent now, creating a need for other investment to bolster production.
But many investments appear to be pure speculation that leaves land fallow, the report found. Farmers have been displaced without compensation, land has been leased well below value, those evicted end up encroaching on parkland and the new ventures have created far fewer jobs than promised, it said.
The breathtaking scope of some deals galvanizes opponents. In Madagascar, a deal that would have handed over almost half the country's arable land to a South Korean conglomerate helped crystallize opposition to an already unpopular president and contributed to his overthrow in 2009.
People have been pushed off land in countries like Ethiopia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Zambia. It is not even uncommon for investors to arrive on land that was supposedly empty. In Mozambique, one investment company discovered an entire village with its own post office on what had been described as vacant land, said Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations food rapporteur.
In Mali, about three million acres along the Niger River and its inland delta are controlled by a state-run trust called the Office du Niger. In nearly 80 years, only 200,000 acres of the land have been irrigated, so the government considers new investors a boon.
"Even if you gave the population there the land, they do not have the means to develop it, nor does the state," said Abou Sow, the executive director of Office du Niger.
He listed countries whose governments or private sectors have already made investments or expressed interest: China and South Africa in sugar cane; Libya and Saudi Arabia in rice; and Canada, Belgium, France, South Korea, India, the Netherlands and multinational organizations like the West African Development Bank.
In all, Mr. Sow said about 60 deals covered at least 600,000 acres in Mali, although some organizations said more than 1.5 million acres had been committed. He argued that the bulk of the investors were Malians growing food for the domestic market. But he acknowledged that outside investors like the Libyans, who are leasing 250,000 acres here, are expected to ship their rice, beef and other agricultural products home.
"What advantage would they gain by investing in Mali if they could not even take their own production?" Mr. Sow said.
As with many of the deals, the money Mali might earn from the leases remains murky. The agreement signed with the Libyans grants them the land for at least 50 years simply in exchange for developing it.
"The Libyans want to produce rice for Libyans, not for Malians," said Mamadou Goita, the director of a nonprofit research organization in Mali. He and other opponents contend that the government is privatizing a scarce national resource without improving the domestic food supply, and that politics, not economics, are driving events because Mali wants to improve ties with Libya and others.
The huge tracts granted to private investors are many years from production. But officials noted that Libya already spent more than $50 million building a 24-mile canal and road, constructed by a Chinese company, benefiting local villages.
Every farmer affected, Mr. Sow added, including as many as 20,000 affected by the Libyan project, will receive compensation. "If they lose a single tree, we will pay them the value of that tree," he said.
But anger and distrust run high. In a rally last month, hundreds of farmers demanded that the government halt such deals until they get a voice. Several said that they had been beaten and jailed by soldiers, but that they were ready to die to keep their land.
"The famine will start very soon," shouted Ibrahima Coulibaly, the head of the coordinating committee for farmer organizations in Mali. "If people do not stand up for their rights, they will lose everything!"
"Ante!" members of the crowd shouted in Bamanankan, the local language. "We refuse!"
Kassoum Denon, the regional head for the Office du Niger, accused the Malian opponents of being paid by Western groups that are ideologically opposed to large-scale farming.
"We are responsible for developing Mali," he said. "If the civil society does not agree with the way we are doing it, they can go jump in a lake."
The looming problem, experts noted, is that Mali remains an agrarian society. Kicking farmers off the land with no alternative livelihood risks flooding the capital, Bamako, with unemployed, rootless people who could become a political problem.
"The land is a natural resource that 70 percent of the population uses to survive," said Kalfa Sanogo, an economist at the United Nations Development Program in Mali. "You cannot just push 70 percent of the population off the land, nor can you say they can just become agriculture workers." In a different approach, a $224 million American project will help about 800 Malian farmers each acquire title to 12 acres of newly cleared land, protecting them against being kicked off.
Jon C. Anderson, the project director, argued that no country has developed economically with a large percentage of its population on farms. Small farmers with titles will either succeed or have to sell the land to finance another life, he said, though critics have said villagers will still be displaced.
"We want a revolutionized relationship between the farmer and the state, one where the farmer is more in charge," Mr. Anderson said.
Soumouni sits about 20 miles from the nearest road, with wandering cattle herders in their distinctive pointed straw hats offering directions like, "Bear right at the termite mound with the hole in it."
Sekou Traoré, 69, a village elder, was dumbfounded when government officials said last year that Libya now controlled his land and began measuring the fields. He had always considered it his own, passed down from grandfather to father to son.
"All we want before they break our houses and take our fields is for them to show us the new houses where we will live, and the new fields where we will work," he said at the rally last month.
"We are all so afraid," he said of the village's 2,229 residents. "We will be the victims of this situation, we are sure of that."
Monday, December 20, 2010
Haitians in U.S. Brace for Deportations to Resume
By KIRK SEMPLE
December 19, 2010
December 19, 2010
he Obama administration has been quietly moving to resume deportations of Haitians for the first time since the earthquake last January. But in New York's Haitian diaspora, the reaction has been far from muted, including frustration and fear among immigrants and anger from their advocates, who say that an influx of deportees will only add to the country's woes.
Haiti is racked today by a cholera epidemic and political turmoil, as well as the tortuously slow reconstruction.
"I don't think Haiti can handle more challenges than what it has right now," said Mathieu Eugene, a Haitian-American member of the New York City Council. "The earthquake, the cholera, the election — everything's upside down in Haiti."
Federal officials suspended deportations to Haiti immediately after the Jan. 12 earthquake. In addition, a special immigration status, sometimes granted to foreigners who are unable to return safely to their home countries because of armed conflict or natural disasters, was extended to Haitians in the United States, allowing them to remain temporarily and work. Many Haitians, including some with criminal convictions, were also released from detention centers across the country.
But in recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, has begun rounding up Haitian immigrants again, including some who had been released earlier this year, immigration lawyers said. On Dec. 10, the agency disclosed, in response to questions from The Associated Press, that it would resume deportations by mid-January.
Immigration officials said they would deport only Haitians who had been convicted of crimes and had finished serving their sentences.
Barbara Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in a statement last week that the agency was deciding whom to deport in a manner "consistent with our domestic immigration enforcement priorities," but did not elaborate. The Obama administration has said it is focusing immigration enforcement efforts on catching and deporting immigrants who have been convicted of the most serious crimes or who pose a threat to national security.
Haitians who have been granted the special immigration status, known as temporary protected status, will continue to be shielded from deportation, officials said. The protection was granted for 18 months and is set to expire in mid-July; Haitians who have committed felonies or at least two misdemeanors were not eligible for the program.
Immigration officials did not say how many people they planned to send back to Haiti when deportations resume next month, but they revealed last week that 351 Haitians were in detention.
Mr. Eugene and other Haitian community leaders in New York said that despite the limits of the government's plan, the city's Haitians were bracing for a resumption of wider deportations.
"The people in the community are worried because they don't know what the next target population is going to be," Mr. Eugene said.
Ricot Dupuy, the manager of Radio Soleil, a Creole-language station in Flatbush, Brooklyn, said he had been "flooded with calls" about the plans for deportations.
Immigration officials would not say when they planned to resume deportations of noncriminals. The Haitian government has apparently not commented on Washington's decision to resume deportations. The consul general in New York did not respond to phone messages, and the Haitian Embassy did not respond to calls and e-mails.
Nearly a year after the quake, an estimated 1.3 million Haitians are still displaced from their homes. The cholera outbreak has killed more than 2,500 people and hospitalized 58,000 more, according to the Haitian government. And disputes over the preliminary results of the presidential election last month have escalated into violence.
Advocacy groups have been lobbying the Obama administration to postpone the deportations. The Center for Constitutional Rights, based in New York, wrote President Obama to say that their resumption would endanger the deportees' lives. The Haitian government often detains criminals deported from abroad, the organization said; because cholera is quickly spreading through that country's detention system, the policy "would end up being a death sentence for many," it said.
An official of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the State Department had been working with Haitian officials "to ensure that the resumption of removals is conducted in a safe, humane manner with minimal disruption to ongoing rebuilding efforts."
Among those who have been rounded up in the past several weeks is a 42-year-old odd-jobs man who was detained last week by immigration officials in Manhattan and was being held on Friday in a jail in Hudson County, N.J., said his lawyer, Rachel Salazar, who asked that her client's name be withheld because she did not want to jeopardize his case.
The man, who immigrated to the United States as a legal permanent resident in 1990 and has a 5-year-old child, was last detained in February because of three past felony convictions, including for assault, petty larceny and attempted robbery, for which he had served time. But he was released in May, during the moratorium on deportations, Ms. Salazar said.
The detainee said he was being held with about 40 other Haitians, the lawyer said, and he had not been told when the government planned to deport him.
Julia Preston and Deborah Sontag contributed reporting. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/nyregion/20haitians.html?tntemail1=y&_r=1&emc=tnt&pagewanted=print)
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Census Bureau reports 1 in 3 people with Somali ancestry in US lives in Minnesota
http://www.newser.com/article/d9k3vuh01/census-bureau-reports-1-in-3-people-with-somali-ancestry-in-us-lives-in-minnesota.html
ASSOCIATED PRESS | Dec 14, 2010 5:35 PM CST in US
Nearly one in three people with Somali ancestry in the United States now live in the Minnesota, which has the largest concentration in the country, according to government data released Tuesday.
The latest report from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey found about 25,000 of the 85,700 Somalis in the U.S. live in Minnesota. Ohio, Washington and California also had large populations of Somalis, but the survey data found no more than 10,500 of them in any state except Minnesota.
There, the Somali population is growing, Minnesota State Demographer Tom Gillaspy said. The 2000 Census pegged it at 11,164.
The proof is on the streets of the Twin Cities, said Hashi Shafi of the Somali Action Alliance in Minneapolis.
Minneapolis Public Schools reported 1,345 of the district's students spoke Somali at home during the 2008-2009 school year, and Shafi said the number is growing every year.
He remembers a time when there were only two mosques in Minneapolis _ now he can point to four on one block.
"When you come on Friday, they are all full," he said.
Shafi said Somalis often estimate their own population in Minnesota at about 70,000, but he didn't know what that was based on. He has worked with the Census Bureau to overcome cultural and language barriers to get more Somalis counted.
"People don't know why this is important," he said, noting that government funding is often based on census data.
Gillaspy said the federal estimate, which includes people born in Somalia and their descendants, was in line with the state's, although based on different sources. The information released Tuesday came from five years of surveys, and Gillaspy said it provides the best look at small population groups and small geographic areas since the 2000 Census.
The American Community Survey is sent to about one in 10 households each year. It includes questions on ancestry, national origin and many other traits that are no longer asked about in the census done every 10 years.
The exodus from Somalia began after the Horn of Africa nation fell into lawlessness in 1991. Thousands of Somalis began to settle in the U.S., usually in cities with nonprofit groups that would help them.
In many communities _including Minneapolis, Seattle, San Diego, and Columbus, Ohio _ the population has grown and prospered, with Somali-owned shops and mosques proliferating. Somali translators work in the schools, the children of refugees go on to college and community leaders become public figures.
But there have been worrying signs about the second generation, with reports out of Minnesota of Somali gangs running interstate prostitution rings and investigations of young men going to fight with al-Shabab, which seeks to establish an Islamic state in Somalia.
Ahmed Sahid, president of Somali Family Services of San Diego, said the local population there was swelling with a "second migration" driven by Somalis leaving cold parts of the United States.
The government estimates there are 5,000 Somalis in the San Diego area, but Sahid said estimates are often wrong, and he thought there were 15,000 to 20,000.
"A lot of people don't know how to report themselves," he said last week. "I don't think the Census will show a true figure of the population."
The population is growing in Seattle, too, with the survey estimating it at about 8,600.
Bernardo Ruiz, manager of community and family partnerships for the Seattle public schools, said four years ago, Somali was the fourth most common foreign language spoken at home by students in the schools. Three years ago, it was third. Now, it's second after Spanish with, by the district's count, 1,680 students.
In response to the growth, the district has created a variety of support services including bilingual tutoring and a Saturday school that teaches English, math and life skills. It also hired Mohamed Roble, a Somali elder who works with families from Somalia and other East African countries.
Roble said he sees a second wave immigration into the area from Minneapolis and other Somali communities around the United States. He said Somalis were coming to Seattle partly to escape violence in other American cities.
"We don't have a lot of gangs like Minnesota or San Diego," he said.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Poland swears in Nigerian Godson as first black MP
14 December 2010 Last updated at 06:18 ET
John Abraham Godson, a Polish citizen born and raised in Nigeria, has been sworn in as the first black member of Poland's parliament.
Mr Godson had served as a councillor in the city of Lodz before taking up a parliamentary seat, vacated by a party colleague after local elections.
His entry into parliament has created a media stir in the mainly white country.
He came to Poland in the 1990s, opening an English-language school and working as a pastor in a Protestant church.
He has since married a Polish woman and the couple have four children.
Beaten up twice
A member of the centre-right Civic Platform party, he was appointed to the seat vacated by party colleague Hanna Zdanowskaafter after she became mayor of Lodz.
It is still quite rare to see black people even in the Polish capital Warsaw, Poland's most cosmopolitan city, the BBC's Adam Easton reports.
Racism is still a problem in Poland, where it is not uncommon for well-educated people to make racist jokes, our correspondent says.
Mr Godson was beaten up twice in the early 1990s but he says attitudes to black people in Poland are changing for the better, particularly since the country joined the EU six years ago.
Speaking earlier to Polish radio, Mr Godson said: "I am from Lodz, I will live here, I want to die here and I want to be buried here."
John Abraham Godson, a Polish citizen born and raised in Nigeria, has been sworn in as the first black member of Poland's parliament.
Mr Godson had served as a councillor in the city of Lodz before taking up a parliamentary seat, vacated by a party colleague after local elections.
His entry into parliament has created a media stir in the mainly white country.
He came to Poland in the 1990s, opening an English-language school and working as a pastor in a Protestant church.
He has since married a Polish woman and the couple have four children.
Beaten up twice
A member of the centre-right Civic Platform party, he was appointed to the seat vacated by party colleague Hanna Zdanowskaafter after she became mayor of Lodz.
It is still quite rare to see black people even in the Polish capital Warsaw, Poland's most cosmopolitan city, the BBC's Adam Easton reports.
Racism is still a problem in Poland, where it is not uncommon for well-educated people to make racist jokes, our correspondent says.
Mr Godson was beaten up twice in the early 1990s but he says attitudes to black people in Poland are changing for the better, particularly since the country joined the EU six years ago.
Speaking earlier to Polish radio, Mr Godson said: "I am from Lodz, I will live here, I want to die here and I want to be buried here."
CARIBBEAN GROUP PUSHES FOR MORE POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT
Written by CAROLYN GUNISS
Special to South Florida Times
MIAMI GARDENS — Worried about the direction the set-to-change U.S. Congress will take on immigration and other hot-button issues, a group of professionals and retirees from English-speaking Caribbean countries recently came together and sounded a rallying cry.
There were no bullhorns, crudely painted signs and people milling in the street.
In the backyard of Evrol and Bernice Adams in Miami Gardens on a recent Sunday evening, the loosely formed group, called Caribbean Action Team (CARAT), staged its Second Caribbean Mobilization Rally. Its purpose: to advocate, agitate and activate people who hail from West Indian countries, especially when it comes to the political process.
The group said it is not motivated by the looming 2012 elections, though it showed plenty of concern about the results of the 2010 mid-term general elections which shifted the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives to Republican control. The Democrats barely managed to hold on to the Senate.
Rather, CARAT is more concerned with the lame-duck Congress and new policies that could arise and affect the immigrant community.
One issue in its sights is the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act -- the DREAM Act -- first introduced in 2001. The measure, supported by some Republicans and Democrats, allows certain undocumented students, who came to the US before age 16 with their parents, to obtain legal permanent status. They would be granted permanent status only if, over a number of years, they successfully complete several conditions, including graduating from college or serving in the US military.
The legislation, which would affect an untold amount of Caribbean children, is expected to be voted on by the Senate before it goes on holiday. President Barack Obama wants the bill signed by the new year.
Opponents say that Dream Act is amnesty masquerading in a different form and that the students will take resources away from law-abiding American children.
To combat an ongoing smear campaign against the act, Marlon Hill, partner in the law firm delancyhill, and a CARAT member, said information about the proposed law and its potential impact on West Indians will be given to community leaders for distribution to residents.
Hill said this is the sort of effort CARAT plans to mobilize in the future.
“The key thing is to act on issues that affect the community at large,” Hill said. “No one has a monopoly on ideas.”
CARAT held its first rally two weeks before the Nov. 2 mid-term elections. Jerry Nagee, a former journalist, said she was motivated to form the group after receiving many calls over the years to help people choose candidates for elections.
Nagee is concerned that many people from the English-speaking Caribbean come to America and blend in and become silent bystanders, especially in the political process.
A big part of the problem is the way election of candidates differs from what happens in Caribbean countries, she said. In those places, there are no judges to elect, for example, and candidates hold huge rallies to introduce themselves to voters. In America, she said, candidates present themselves to voting blocs. She said she had to beg candidates to advertise in Caribbean newspapers.
At the rally held Nov. 28, when Hill handed out the election results, Marcia Magnus, a Jamaican professor of nutrition at Florida International University, asked if he had Kleenex to go with them.
Hill discussed how some of the key Democratic races, such as Alex Sink’s bid to become governor, sank because of poor voter turnout.
“Sadly, too many of us stayed home,” Hill said. “People did not call their people. Everyone is responsible.”
Hill wants CARAT to concentrate on building a network of people to call during elections and at other times. He asked attendees to make a list of people with whom they interact and provide them with relevant information.
Hill also wants to politically educate college-age students and young people, such as Kamilah Ragoo, 27, who attended the rally with her father, Dave Francis Ragoo, the evening’s master of ceremonies.
Many impassioned speeches had the same theme: a need for people to educate their network of family and friends.
Magnus, who is a member of the Caribbean American Politically Active Citizens, publisher of the Miami-Dade and Broward Voters’ Guide, was concerned that CARAT doesn’t have an action plan. She suggested writing a letter and sending a picture to Lieutenant Governor-elect Jennifer Carroll, introducing themselves as a group of concerned citizens.
“We can talk about what is, what was and what should be, but the problem of misinformation and no information are too severe for us to just talk,” Magnus said.
For more information on the Caribbean Action Team, call Marlon Hill at 786-777-0184.
JAMES FORBES/FOR SOUTH FLORIDA TIMES. POLITICAL TALK: Attorney Marlon Hill speaks about the Nov. 2 mid-term elections during the second Caribbean Mobilization Rally held by the Caribbean Action Team at a Miami Gardens backyard on Nov. 28.
Special to South Florida Times
MIAMI GARDENS — Worried about the direction the set-to-change U.S. Congress will take on immigration and other hot-button issues, a group of professionals and retirees from English-speaking Caribbean countries recently came together and sounded a rallying cry.
There were no bullhorns, crudely painted signs and people milling in the street.
In the backyard of Evrol and Bernice Adams in Miami Gardens on a recent Sunday evening, the loosely formed group, called Caribbean Action Team (CARAT), staged its Second Caribbean Mobilization Rally. Its purpose: to advocate, agitate and activate people who hail from West Indian countries, especially when it comes to the political process.
The group said it is not motivated by the looming 2012 elections, though it showed plenty of concern about the results of the 2010 mid-term general elections which shifted the balance of power in the U.S. House of Representatives to Republican control. The Democrats barely managed to hold on to the Senate.
Rather, CARAT is more concerned with the lame-duck Congress and new policies that could arise and affect the immigrant community.
One issue in its sights is the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act -- the DREAM Act -- first introduced in 2001. The measure, supported by some Republicans and Democrats, allows certain undocumented students, who came to the US before age 16 with their parents, to obtain legal permanent status. They would be granted permanent status only if, over a number of years, they successfully complete several conditions, including graduating from college or serving in the US military.
The legislation, which would affect an untold amount of Caribbean children, is expected to be voted on by the Senate before it goes on holiday. President Barack Obama wants the bill signed by the new year.
Opponents say that Dream Act is amnesty masquerading in a different form and that the students will take resources away from law-abiding American children.
To combat an ongoing smear campaign against the act, Marlon Hill, partner in the law firm delancyhill, and a CARAT member, said information about the proposed law and its potential impact on West Indians will be given to community leaders for distribution to residents.
Hill said this is the sort of effort CARAT plans to mobilize in the future.
“The key thing is to act on issues that affect the community at large,” Hill said. “No one has a monopoly on ideas.”
CARAT held its first rally two weeks before the Nov. 2 mid-term elections. Jerry Nagee, a former journalist, said she was motivated to form the group after receiving many calls over the years to help people choose candidates for elections.
Nagee is concerned that many people from the English-speaking Caribbean come to America and blend in and become silent bystanders, especially in the political process.
A big part of the problem is the way election of candidates differs from what happens in Caribbean countries, she said. In those places, there are no judges to elect, for example, and candidates hold huge rallies to introduce themselves to voters. In America, she said, candidates present themselves to voting blocs. She said she had to beg candidates to advertise in Caribbean newspapers.
At the rally held Nov. 28, when Hill handed out the election results, Marcia Magnus, a Jamaican professor of nutrition at Florida International University, asked if he had Kleenex to go with them.
Hill discussed how some of the key Democratic races, such as Alex Sink’s bid to become governor, sank because of poor voter turnout.
“Sadly, too many of us stayed home,” Hill said. “People did not call their people. Everyone is responsible.”
Hill wants CARAT to concentrate on building a network of people to call during elections and at other times. He asked attendees to make a list of people with whom they interact and provide them with relevant information.
Hill also wants to politically educate college-age students and young people, such as Kamilah Ragoo, 27, who attended the rally with her father, Dave Francis Ragoo, the evening’s master of ceremonies.
Many impassioned speeches had the same theme: a need for people to educate their network of family and friends.
Magnus, who is a member of the Caribbean American Politically Active Citizens, publisher of the Miami-Dade and Broward Voters’ Guide, was concerned that CARAT doesn’t have an action plan. She suggested writing a letter and sending a picture to Lieutenant Governor-elect Jennifer Carroll, introducing themselves as a group of concerned citizens.
“We can talk about what is, what was and what should be, but the problem of misinformation and no information are too severe for us to just talk,” Magnus said.
For more information on the Caribbean Action Team, call Marlon Hill at 786-777-0184.
JAMES FORBES/FOR SOUTH FLORIDA TIMES. POLITICAL TALK: Attorney Marlon Hill speaks about the Nov. 2 mid-term elections during the second Caribbean Mobilization Rally held by the Caribbean Action Team at a Miami Gardens backyard on Nov. 28.
South Sudanese to vote in Arlington
Posted Dec 12, 2010 @ 04:00 PM
Last update Dec 13, 2010 @ 11:11 AM
From 1956 to 2005, with a brief hiatus in the 1970s, the people of South Sudan fought a war against Sudan’s Khartoum regime in which two million South Sudanese died and another four million were displaced.
Between now and Jan. 9 the mostly black and Christian South will be voting on whether to secede from the union with the mostly Arab and Muslim North that was imposed on them more than a century ago by the British colonial power. Most observers believe that when the votes are counted South and North Sudan will be two separate countries.
The peace agreement brokered by the Bush administration in 2005 ended the civil war and set the referendum on secession that will now be taking place. Sudanese refugees living in other countries, including the United States, are permitted to vote.
The International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental organization that implements the world’s orderly refugee movement, is overseeing the vote here and in other diaspora countries. Arlington has been selected as one of several American registration and voting sites.
The South Sudanese Community Center, where the voting will be held, is home to The Sudanese Education Fund, which assists the Sudanese refugee community with educational stipends, tutoring, women’s programs, childhood enrichment programs and other services.
Last update Dec 13, 2010 @ 11:11 AM
From 1956 to 2005, with a brief hiatus in the 1970s, the people of South Sudan fought a war against Sudan’s Khartoum regime in which two million South Sudanese died and another four million were displaced.
Between now and Jan. 9 the mostly black and Christian South will be voting on whether to secede from the union with the mostly Arab and Muslim North that was imposed on them more than a century ago by the British colonial power. Most observers believe that when the votes are counted South and North Sudan will be two separate countries.
The peace agreement brokered by the Bush administration in 2005 ended the civil war and set the referendum on secession that will now be taking place. Sudanese refugees living in other countries, including the United States, are permitted to vote.
The International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental organization that implements the world’s orderly refugee movement, is overseeing the vote here and in other diaspora countries. Arlington has been selected as one of several American registration and voting sites.
The South Sudanese Community Center, where the voting will be held, is home to The Sudanese Education Fund, which assists the Sudanese refugee community with educational stipends, tutoring, women’s programs, childhood enrichment programs and other services.
Israel to send 150 illegals back to Sudan: report
13 DECEMBER 2010 - 22H03
AFP - Israel on Monday was to deport 150 Sudanese who entered the country illegally in search of work, the private Channel Two television station reported.
It said they would leave aboard a chartered aircraft for a third country before then being repatriated, without specifying the transit destination.
The illegal immigrants, who had agreed to leave voluntarily, would be given "a small sum of money to start a new life in their home country," the broadcaster reported.
It said the repatriation was being carried out by the foreign and interior ministries "with the support of the United Nations."
On November 38, the Israeli government approved the creation of a detention centre near its southern border with Egypt to house thousands of illegal immigrants from Africa seeking work in the Jewish state.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement the cabinet endorsed the plan for the camp as a matter of necessity, as economic migrants were arriving at an average rate of more than 1,200 each month.
"This wave is growing and it threatens the jobs of Israelis. It is changing the face of the state and we have to stop it," Netanyahu said before a weekly cabinet meeting.
Israel has also begun constructing a 250-kilometre (155-mile) fence along the Egyptian border aimed at stopping the influx of migrants.
The barrier is expected to cost 365 million dollars and will incorporate unspecified technological measures.
The Israel-Egypt border has become a major transit route for economic migrants and asylum-seekers, many from Sudan and Eritrea.
AFP - Israel on Monday was to deport 150 Sudanese who entered the country illegally in search of work, the private Channel Two television station reported.
It said they would leave aboard a chartered aircraft for a third country before then being repatriated, without specifying the transit destination.
The illegal immigrants, who had agreed to leave voluntarily, would be given "a small sum of money to start a new life in their home country," the broadcaster reported.
It said the repatriation was being carried out by the foreign and interior ministries "with the support of the United Nations."
On November 38, the Israeli government approved the creation of a detention centre near its southern border with Egypt to house thousands of illegal immigrants from Africa seeking work in the Jewish state.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement the cabinet endorsed the plan for the camp as a matter of necessity, as economic migrants were arriving at an average rate of more than 1,200 each month.
"This wave is growing and it threatens the jobs of Israelis. It is changing the face of the state and we have to stop it," Netanyahu said before a weekly cabinet meeting.
Israel has also begun constructing a 250-kilometre (155-mile) fence along the Egyptian border aimed at stopping the influx of migrants.
The barrier is expected to cost 365 million dollars and will incorporate unspecified technological measures.
The Israel-Egypt border has become a major transit route for economic migrants and asylum-seekers, many from Sudan and Eritrea.
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