US Will Send 4,000 Somalis Back to Their Home Country

[brooklynite]

Voice of America:

Somalia’s ambassador to the United States says his embassy has learned that U.S. immigration officers plan to deport about 4,000 Somali nationals.

Ahmed Isse Awad is the Somali ambassador to the U.S. He spoke to the Voice of America’s Somali service on Saturday.

He said that most of those set to be removed are not in detention centers.

The Somali embassy in Washington reopened in November 2015. Since then, Awad said, about 170 Somali immigrants have been deported to Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital. Some of them broke U.S. law. Others applied for asylum but were denied.

[PatrickforO]

1. Here are some facts about Somalia:

The Somalis were part of a British colony.

When they left, or were forced out, a strong government took over and (gasp!) nationalized the moneymaking industries. Unfortunately, they kind of hogged the income within their clan and this caused a civil war. Two unrecognized countries broke off, Somaliland and Puntland. They are not doing much better than Somalia proper.

Basically the country is a desert with only some grasslands that can support cattle, and fishing off the coast.

Fishing, you ask? Yes, indeed. Somalis, especially in the new Puntland, were relatively successful subsistence fishermen. They had enough.

Here's an educational excerpt about how western capitalist overlords fucked over the Somali people:

High-seas trawlers from countries as far flung as South Korea, Japan and Spain have operated down the Somali coast, often illegally and without licenses, for the better part of two decades, the U.N. says. They often fly flags of convenience from sea-faring friendly nations like Belize and Bahrain, which further helps the ships skirt international regulations and evade censure from their home countries. Tsuma Charo of the Nairobi-based East African Seafarers Assistance Programme, which monitors Somali pirate attacks and liaises with the hostage takers and the captured crews, says "illegal trawling has fed the piracy problem." In the early days of Somali piracy, those who seized trawlers without licenses could count on a quick ransom payment, since the boat owners and companies backing those vessels didn't want to draw attention to their violation of international maritime law. This, Charo reckons, allowed the pirates to build up their tactical networks and whetted their appetite for bigger spoils.

Beyond illegal fishing, foreign ships have also long been accused by local fishermen of dumping toxic and nuclear waste off Somalia's shores. A 2005 United Nations Environmental Program report cited uranium radioactive and other hazardous deposits leading to a rash of respiratory ailments and skin diseases breaking out in villages along the Somali coast. According to the U.N., at the time of the report, it cost $2.50 per ton for a European company to dump these types of materials off the Horn of Africa, as opposed to $250 per ton to dispose of them cleanly in Europe.

Somali fisherman bringing in a swordfish. No more.