Up to 60,000 Bhutanese refugees to be resettled in United States

[jetsetter]

The Nepal government has issued exit permits to Bhutanese refugees who have opted for third country resettlement.

This allows refugees to leave the camps in eastern Nepal for third countries once their cases are accepted.

In a statement on Monday, the UNHCR welcomed the Nepal government’s decision to issue exit permits to the Bhutanese refugees and stated that third country settlement is an important step towards finding solution to the refugee stalemate.

More than 107,000 Bhutanese refugees have been languishing in seven camps in Jhapa and Morang districts for 17 years.

However, the refugees are sharply divided over the resettlement issue. There have been frequent clashes between refugees opposing the third country resettlement and those in favour of it.

Meanwhile, the UN refugee agency has said the group resettlement process has been gaining momentum in the camps since it started late last year. “Thousands of refugees have expressed interest, and UNHCR has submitted the details of nearly 10,000 interested refugees for consideration by the resettlement countries. The refugees are currently in various stages of the process, ranging from interviews to extensive medical screening and cultural orientation before departure.”

The United States has offered to resettle at least 60,000 Bhutanese refugees and Canada has indicated it will accept up to 5,000. Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Norway have also shown their willingness to take in refugees.

The first batch of refugees is set to fly to the United States in March while larger numbers will be leaving Nepal starting in July. nepalnews.com mk Feb 04 08

http://www.nepalnews.com/archive/2008/feb/feb04/news06.php




KATHMANDU, 5 February 2008 (IRIN) - The international community is working actively with the Nepalese government to help resettle thousands of Bhutanese refugees in Europe and North America, with the USA alone accepting at least 60,000 refugees, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

In addition, thousands of refugees will also get the chance to resettle in Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Norway, which have indicated their willingness to accept the Bhutanese refugees, said senior UNHCR officials.

“Now finally, here is our new chance of living with dignity,” refugee Ashok Gurung told IRIN in Kathmandu on 4 February. He said most of the 107,000 Bhutanese refugees are enthusiastic about resettling in third countries and many have already started applying for resettlement.

Since 1990 Bhutanese citizens of Nepalese origin - also known as `Lhotsampas’ in Bhutan - have been living in refugee camps in Jhapa District, nearly 500km southeast of Kathmandu, after they were evicted from their homes by the Bhutanese government which introduced a law stripping them of citizenship and civil rights due to their ancestry.

New confidence among refugees

“The refugees are no longer in a dilemma over the options offered to them by the UNHCR,” said another Bhutanese refugee, Thakur Prasad Mishra, who is also editor of the Bhutan News Service, an independent news agency run by Bhutanese refugee journalists.

Mishra said there was new confidence among refugees that they would be allowed to leave their camps easily, after the recent announcement by the Nepalese government that it would issue exit visas to Bhutanese refugees who voluntarily opted for resettlement.

“There is also less fear of applying for resettlement because the number of applicants is growing a lot,” said Mishra explaining how the refugees are constantly living in fear of being attacked by those who oppose resettlement and who are campaigning for repatriation to Bhutan.

These groups include Communist Party of Bhutan, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, Bhutan Tigers Force and Cobra whose leaders are all underground and operate from outside the camps, according to refugees who requested anonymity.

Refugees told IRIN that while they may not be totally happy about resettling in foreign countries this seemed to be the only immediate solution to easing their difficult and hard lives. “This is just one step for us but not always a durable solution,” said Mishra.

“I’m ready to go”

The UNHRC said it had already submitted details of nearly 10,000 refugees for consideration by resettlement countries; all were in various stages of the process, from interviews to extensive medical screening and cultural orientation before departure.

“I’m ready to go and so are thousands of other Bhutanese refugees as this could be our only solution to the humanitarian problems that we are currently facing,” said Gurung.

Refugees suffer from health problems, depression, financial hardship, lack of jobs and are dependent on humanitarian aid for everything, they told IRIN.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=76563


Very good news.

[Vorian]

Great move from USA
Also Canada and the others.

I uess that's the good part having such a vast country you always have room for further building

[signatory]

Explain why this is ok but getting the US to accept Iraqi refugees is almost impossible?

[Basillicus]

Explain why this is ok but getting the US to accept Iraqi refugees is almost impossible?

It's pretty obvious that these Bhutanese folks are much less "flammable material" than Iraqi.

[Deurzakker]

I'd prefer to see some pressure being put on Bhutan to take their own people back, but other than that they are welcome.

[seraosha]

Explain why this is ok but getting the US to accept Iraqi refugees is almost impossible?

Gosh, Buddhists vs Muslims as a neighbor.....what was the name of that extremist militant Buddhist group that perpetrates terrorist attacks against folks in the name of Buddha?

And yes, I realize that's bigoted, but how far from the truth is it?

[PsychoMantis]

Gosh, Buddhists vs Muslims as a neighbor.....what was the name of that extremist militant Buddhist group that perpetrates terrorist attacks against folks in the name of Buddha?

And yes, I realize that's bigoted, but how far from the truth is it?
Not at all,im glad someone cut the PC Bull. Im pretty sure the Bhutanese would have an easier tiem to adapt to the US anyway.

[LaoSexMachine]

Not at all,im glad someone cut the PC Bull. Im pretty sure the Bhutanese would have an easier tiem to adapt to the US anyway.

But remember that as Buddhist we can't think that we are better then someone who's not. Buddhism doesn't makes us better then the next person.

[cbreedon]

Why is this the US's problem? We have enough of our own people to deal with as does Europe... Sorry but we're full

[LaoSexMachine]

US is doing this voluntary

[cbreedon]

I don't think I or anyone else I know had a vote on this? Not very voluntarily to me ;-)

[LaoSexMachine]

When was the last time we the public were given a choice who immigrate here?

[jetsetter]

Why is this the US's problem? We have enough of our own people to deal with as does Europe... Sorry but we're full

We are quite from full. I hope in the future we make it easier for people to immigrate to the US and become citizens. In addition, we should take in more refugees.

[cbreedon]

When was the last time we the public were given a choice who immigrate here?

Shouldn't the people here get a voice in it? not some unelected bureaucrat...

[LaoSexMachine]

Shouldn't the people here get a voice in it? not some unelected bureaucrat...

we never had. so everytime we annouce that we are letting people in LEGALLY we have to have a national vote?

[Ordie]

Refugees from Bhutan?
I'd thought Bhutan was one of the happiest place on Earth.

See Article:



October 4, 2005

A New Measure of Well-Being From a Happy Little Kingdom

By ANDREW C. REVKIN (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=ANDREW C. REVKIN&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=ANDREW C. REVKIN&inline=nyt-per)
What is happiness? In the United States and in many other industrialized countries, it is often equated with money.
Economists measure consumer confidence on the assumption that the resulting figure says something about progress and public welfare. The gross domestic product, or G.D.P., is routinely used as shorthand for the well-being of a nation.
But the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has been trying out a different idea.
In 1972, concerned about the problems afflicting other developing countries that focused only on economic growth, Bhutan's newly crowned leader, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, decided to make his nation's priority not its G.D.P. but its G.N.H., or gross national happiness.
Bhutan, the king said, needed to ensure that prosperity was shared across society and that it was balanced against preserving cultural traditions, protecting the environment and maintaining a responsive government. The king, now 49, has been instituting policies aimed at accomplishing these goals.
Now Bhutan's example, while still a work in progress, is serving as a catalyst for far broader discussions of national well-being.
Around the world, a growing number of economists, social scientists, corporate leaders and bureaucrats are trying to develop measurements that take into account not just the flow of money but also access to health care, free time with family, conservation of natural resources and other noneconomic factors.
The goal, according to many involved in this effort, is in part to return to a richer definition of the word happiness, more like what the signers of the Declaration of Independence had in mind when they included "the pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right equal to liberty and life itself.
The founding fathers, said John Ralston Saul, a Canadian political philosopher, defined happiness as a balance of individual and community interests. "The Enlightenment theory of happiness was an expression of public good or the public welfare, of the contentment of the people," Mr. Saul said. And, he added, this could not be further from "the 20th-century idea that you should smile because you're at Disneyland."
Mr. Saul was one of about 400 people from more than a dozen countries who gathered recently to consider new ways to define and assess prosperity.
The meeting, held at St. Francis Xavier University in northern Nova Scotia, was a mix of soft ideals and hard-nosed number crunching. Many participants insisted that the focus on commerce and consumption that dominated the 20th century need not be the norm in the 21st century.
Among the attendees were three dozen representatives from Bhutan - teachers, monks, government officials and others - who came to promote what the Switzerland-size country has learned about building a fulfilled, contented society.
While household incomes in Bhutan remain among the world's lowest, life expectancy increased by 19 years from 1984 to 1998, jumping to 66 years. The country, which is preparing to shift to a constitution and an elected government, requires that at least 60 percent of its lands remain forested, welcomes a limited stream of wealthy tourists and exports hydropower to India.
"We have to think of human well-being in broader terms," said Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley, Bhutan's home minister and ex-prime minister. "Material well-being is only one component. That doesn't ensure that you're at peace with your environment and in harmony with each other."
It is a concept grounded in Buddhist doctrine, and even a decade ago it might have been dismissed by most economists and international policy experts as naïve idealism.
Indeed, America's brief flirtation with a similar concept, encapsulated in E. F. Schumacher's 1973 bestseller "Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered," ended abruptly with the huge and continuing burst of consumer-driven economic growth that exploded first in industrialized countries and has been spreading in fast-growing developing countries like China.
Yet many experts say it was this very explosion of affluence that eventually led social scientists to realize that economic growth is not always synonymous with progress.
In the early stages of a climb out of poverty, for a household or a country, incomes and contentment grow in lockstep. But various studies show that beyond certain thresholds, roughly as annual per capita income passes $10,000 or $20,000, happiness does not keep up.
And some countries, studies found, were happier than they should be. In the World Values Survey, a project under way since 1995, Ronald Inglehart, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, found that Latin American countries, for example, registered far more subjective happiness than their economic status would suggest.
In contrast, countries that had experienced communist rule were unhappier than noncommunist countries with similar household incomes - even long after communism had collapsed.
"Some types of societies clearly do a much better job of enhancing their people's sense of happiness and well-being than other ones even apart from the somewhat obvious fact that it's better to be rich than to be poor," Dr. Inglehart said.
Even more striking, beyond a certain threshold of wealth people appear to redefine happiness, studies suggest, focusing on their relative position in society instead of their material status.
Nothing defines this shift better than a 1998 survey of 257 students, faculty and staff members at the Harvard School of Public Health.
In the study, the researchers, Sara J. Solnick and David Hemenway, gave the subjects a choice of earning $50,000 a year in a world where the average salary was $25,000 or $100,000 a year where the average was $200,000.
About 50 percent of the participants, the researchers found, chose the first option, preferring to be half as prosperous but richer than their neighbors.
Such findings have contributed to the new effort to broaden the way countries and individuals gauge the quality of life - the subject of the Nova Scotia conference.
But researchers have been hard pressed to develop measuring techniques that can capture this broader concept of well-being.
One approach is to study how individuals perceive the daily flow of their lives, having them keep diary-like charts reflecting how various activities, from paying bills to playing softball, make them feel.
A research team at Princeton is working with the Bureau of Labor Statistics to incorporate this kind of charting into its new "time use" survey, which began last year and is given to 4,000 Americans each month.
"The idea is to start with life as we experience it and then try to understand what helps people feel fulfilled and create conditions that generate that," said Dr. Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton economist working on the survey.
For example, he said, subjecting students to more testing in order to make them more competitive may equip them to succeed in the American quest for ever more income. But that benefit would have to be balanced against the problems that come with the increased stress imposed by additional testing.
"We should not be hoping to construct a utopia," Professor Krueger said. "What we should be talking about is piecemeal movement in the direction of things that make for a better life."
Another strategy is to track trends that can affect a community's well-being by mining existing statistics from censuses, surveys and government agencies that track health, the environment, the economy and other societal barometers.
The resulting scores can be charted in parallel to see how various indicators either complement or impede each other.
In March, Britain said it would begin developing such an "index of well-being," taking into account not only income but mental illness, civility, access to parks and crime rates.
In June, British officials released their first effort along those lines, a summary of "sustainable development indicators" intended to be a snapshot of social and environmental indicators like crime, traffic, pollution and recycling levels.
"What we do in one area of our lives can have an impact on many others, so joined-up thinking and action across central and local government is crucial," said Elliot Morley, Britain's environment minister.
In Canada, Hans Messinger, the director of industry measures and analysis for Statistics Canada, has been working informally with about 20 other economists and social scientists to develop that country's first national index of well-being.
Mr. Messinger is the person who, every month, takes the pulse of his country's economy, sifting streams of data about cash flow to generate the figure called gross domestic product. But for nearly a decade, he has been searching for a better way of measuring the quality of life.
"A sound economy is not an end to itself, but should serve a purpose, to improve society," Mr. Messinger said.
The new well-being index, Mr. Messinger said, will never replace the G.D.P. For one thing, economic activity, affected by weather, labor strikes and other factors, changes far more rapidly than other indicators of happiness.
But understanding what fosters well-being, he said, can help policy makers decide how to shape legislation or regulations.
Later this year, the Canadian group plans to release a first attempt at an index - an assessment of community health, living standards and people's division of time among work, family, voluntarism and other activities. Over the next several years, the team plans to integrate those findings with measurements of education, environmental quality, "community vitality" and the responsiveness of government. Similar initiatives are under way in Australia and New Zealand.
Ronald Colman, a political scientist and the research director for Canada's well-being index, said one challenge was to decide how much weight to give different indicators.
For example, Dr. Colman said, the amount of time devoted to volunteer activities in Canada has dropped more than 12 percent in the last decade.
"That's a real decline in community well-being, but that loss counts for nothing in our current measure of progress," he said.
But shifts in volunteer activity also cannot be easily assessed against cash-based activities, he said.
"Money has nothing to do with why volunteers do what they do," Dr. Colman said. "So how, in a way that's transparent and methodologically decent, do you come up with composite numbers that are meaningful?"
In the end, Canada's index could eventually take the form of a report card rather than a single G.D.P.-like number.
In the United States there have been a few experiments, like the Princeton plan to add a happiness component to labor surveys. But the focus remains on economics. The Census Bureau, for instance, still concentrates on collecting information about people's financial circumstances and possessions, not their perceptions or feelings, said Kurt J. Bauman, a demographer there.
But he added that there was growing interest in moving away from simply tracking indicators of poverty, for example, to looking more comprehensively at social conditions.
"Measuring whether poverty is going up or down is different than measuring changes in the ability of a family to feed itself," he said. "There definitely is a growing perception out there that if you focus too narrowly, you're missing a lot of the picture."
That shift was evident at the conference on Bhutan, organized by Dr. Colman, who is from Nova Scotia. Participants focused on an array of approaches to the happiness puzzle, from practical to radical.
John de Graaf, a Seattle filmmaker and campaigner trying to cut the amount of time people devote to work, wore a T-shirt that said, "Medieval peasants worked less than you do."
In an open discussion, Marc van Bogaert from Belgium described his path to happiness: "I want to live in a world without money."
Al Chaddock, a painter from Nova Scotia, immediately offered a suggestion: "Become an artist."
Other attendees insisted that old-fashioned capitalism could persist even with a shift to goals broader than just making money.
Ray C. Anderson, the founder of Interface Inc., an Atlanta-based carpet company with nearly $1 billion in annual sales, described his company's 11-year-old program to cut pollution and switch to renewable materials.
Mr. Anderson said he was "a radical industrialist, but as competitive as anyone you know and as profit-minded."
Some experts who attended the weeklong conference questioned whether national well-being could really be defined. Just the act of trying to quantify happiness could threaten it, said Frank Bracho, a Venezuelan economist and former ambassador to India. After all, he said, "The most important things in life are not ****e to measurement - like love."
But Mr. Messinger argued that the weaknesses of the established model, dominated by economics, demanded the effort.
Other economists pointed out that happiness itself can be illusory.
"Even in a very miserable condition you can be very happy if you are grateful for small mercies," said Siddiqur Osmani, a professor of applied economics from the University of Ulster in Ireland. "If someone is starving and hungry and given two scraps of food a day, he can be very happy."
Bhutanese officials at the meeting described a variety of initiatives aimed at creating the conditions that are most likely to improve the quality of life in the most equitable way.
Bhutan, which had no public education system in 1960, now has schools at all levels around the country and rotates teachers from urban to rural regions to be sure there is equal access to the best teachers, officials said.
Another goal, they said, is to sustain traditions while advancing. People entering hospitals with nonacute health problems can choose Western or traditional medicine.
The more that various effects of a policy are considered, and not simply the economic return, the more likely a country is to achieve a good balance, said Sangay Wangchuk, the head of Bhutan's national parks agency, citing agricultural policies as an example.
Bhutan's effort, in part, is aimed at avoiding the pattern seen in the study at Harvard, in which relative wealth becomes more important than the quality of life.
"The goal of life should not be limited to production, consumption, more production and more consumption," said Thakur S. Powdyel, a senior official in the Bhutanese Ministry of Education. "There is no necessary relationship between the level of possession and the level of well-being."
Mr. Saul, the Canadian political philosopher, said that Bhutan's shift in language from "product" to "happiness" was a profound move in and of itself.
Mechanisms for achieving and tracking happiness can be devised, he said, but only if the goal is articulated clearly from the start.
"It's ideas which determine the directions in which civilizations go," Mr. Saul said. "If you don't get your ideas right, it doesn't matter what policies you try to put in place."
Still, Bhutan's model may not work for larger countries. And even in Bhutan, not everyone is happy. Members of the country's delegation admitted their experiment was very much a work in progress, and they acknowledged that poverty and alcoholism remained serious problems.
The pressures of modernization are also increasing. Bhutan linked itself to the global cultural pipelines of television and the Internet in 1999, and there have been increasing reports in its nascent media of violence and disaffection, particularly among young people.
Some attendees, while welcoming Bhutan's goal, gently criticized the Bhutanese officials for dealing with a Nepali-speaking minority mainly by driving tens of thousands of them out of the country in recent decades, saying that was not a way to foster happiness.
"Bhutan is not a pure Shangri-La, so idyllic and away from all those flaws and foibles," conceded Karma Pedey, a Bhutanese educator dressed in a short dragon-covered jacket and a floor-length rainbow-striped traditional skirt.
But, looking around a packed auditorium, she added: "At same time, I'm very, very happy we have made a global impact."



Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/04/science/04happ.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

[signatory]

Gosh, Buddhists vs Muslims as a neighbor.....what was the name of that extremist militant Buddhist group that perpetrates terrorist attacks against folks in the name of Buddha?

And yes, I realize that's bigoted, but how far from the truth is it?

Maybe it's bigoted but without a doubt it's also 100% idiotic.

See, the Iraqi refugees fleeing into western Europe, Lebanon (and the few permitted into the US) is for the most part Christians. Since their faith is what you care about I thought you'd be interested to hear that. There's only 25% left of them in Iraq now.

The US is rejecting Christian refugees as much as muslims. Perhaps it's not about evil muslims sneaking in dirty bombs after all... Yeah I guess you forgot even arabs can be christians. Oh sh|t eh!?

Brilliant.

[szr]

Maybe it's bigoted but without a doubt it's also 100% idiotic.

See, the Iraqi refugees fleeing into western Europe, Lebanon (and the few permitted into the US) is for the most part Christians. Since their faith is what you care about I thought you'd be interested to hear that. There's only 25% left of them in Iraq now.

The US is rejecting Christian refugees as much as muslims. Perhaps it's not about evil muslims sneaking in dirty bombs after all... Yeah I guess you forgot even arabs can be christians. Oh sh|t eh!?

Brilliant.You completely miss the point. America is actively trying to rehabilitate that country so it is habitable by all its residents, and we'd like the Iraqis to stay with us in Iraq and be active partners towards that goal. What kind of message would it send to the Iraqi people and, indeed, to the rest of the world if we started selectively relocating only the Christians and leaving the non-Christians to languor in Iraq? Saying it would be counter productive would be an understatement.

[cbreedon]

double post

[cbreedon]

we never had. so everytime we annouce that we are letting people in LEGALLY we have to have a national vote?
Sure why not... If you are having a party at your house shouldn't you have a say??

[SOG]

Taken in 60,000 people is a hell of a choice. Where will they be placed, what town will they settle in? What will the impact of so many people be? How will they find work and acclimate to the country and locals overall? I would like to know how this decision was come to, by who, the devil in the details and how much it will cost. There are a lot of other immigrants waiting to get in legally but these people just got fast trained in because of their countries dilemma. But their are a lot of countries with severe problems, yet are we taking them in by the boat load as well?

I don't know of these people or their plight and I have nothing against them. BUT, I would like to know we are being prudent in this move instead of just political. Looking at the numbers of what countries are taking in how much you really have to wonder.

[Vorian]

Taken in 60,000 people is a hell of a choice. Where will they be placed, what town will they settle in? What will the impact of so many people be? How will they find work and acclimate to the country and locals overall? I would like to know how this decision was come to, by who, the devil in the details and how much it will cost. There are a lot of other immigrants waiting to get in legally but these people just got fast trained in because of their countries dilemma. But their are a lot of countries with severe problems, yet are we taking them in by the boat load as well?

I don't know of these people or their plight and I have nothing against them. BUT, I would like to know we are being prudent in this move instead of just political. Looking at the numbers of what countries are taking in how much you really have to wonder.


My guess is they are going to build a new town for them in some empty area. There are still places aren't they (guilty of having watched too many western movies with towns built from scratch in the wild)

[Ordie]

My guess is they are going to build a new town for them in some empty area. There are still places aren't they (guilty of having watched too many western movies with towns built from scratch in the wild)

How about North Georgia near Tenn.
Shocker could use the business.

[ed316]

My guess is they are going to build a new town for them in some empty area. There are still places aren't they (guilty of having watched too many western movies with towns built from scratch in the wild)


They are not going to one place. They are going to be free to go anywhere. If they are going to do any cheap labor they will have stiff competition.

[Noble713]

We are quite from full. I hope in the future we make it easier for people to immigrate to the US and become citizens. In addition, we should take in more refugees.

Yeah, because we REALLY need to increase our supply of unskilled and low-skilled labor. :roll:

[rajkhalsa]

The refugees talked about here are ethnic Nepali Hindus. They've lived in Bhutan since the 1800s, but have been denied equal rights as the ethnic Bhutanis.

I like Bhutan, but this policy is virtually racism. But on the other hand, like in India's NE and Bangladeshi refugees, throwing open the doors can overwhelm unique indigenous cultures by sheer demographics.

But unlike Bangladeshi refugees in the NE who came in the last 10 years, the Lhotsampas have lived in Bhutan for over a century -- in many areas, for centuries.

[jetsetter]

Yeah, because we REALLY need to increase our supply of unskilled and low-skilled labor. :roll:

How many people are of Irish and German heritage today in the United States? Look at what their successive generations have created.

[Noble713]

How many people are of Irish and German heritage today in the United States? Look at what their successive generations have created.

Capitalism + huge land area + abundant natural resources = economic powerhouse, regardless of where the inhabitants came from.

The fact is, this isn't the Industrial Revolution anymore. We have a mature, developed economy already. We're beginning to see signs of serious institutional/structural deficiencies though. We need to rectify these deficiencies and restore stability.

Opening (or re-opening) the floodgates to the poor, starving masses would inject an unknown quantity into the equation. You don't improve stability by increasing uncertainty.

[haze99]

I second SOG and noble713's post! Allow me to expand on their post!
The Balkanization of America continues...

1. How does this solve the problem in Bhutan?
2. Will these 60,000+ folks be screened for disease and criminal background? Who will provide them medical care until they begin working and can pay for themselves?
2A. How many are seniors in need of home medical care or extended hospitalization?
3. What education-level are they coming here with?
4. What job skills do they have? Can they begin work right away? Or are they sheep herders? (I don't have a problem with sheep herders, I just don't think that is a viable trade in the 21st-Century USA!)
5. Plus, can they even cope with the 1st world, face-paced society that we have here in the USA? (That's their problem, boy are they in for a culture shock!) Can they handle indoor plumbing, Hi-Def TV, fast food & billboard's with scantly-clad babes selling all types of goods?
Now the same can be said of any immigrant coming here, I am not singling out the Bhutanese. Let's get past the Be Attitudes of the situation and look at the details!

[LaoSexMachine]

my family were refugees too(Laos). i was 6 when i arrived in texas. you are screen for disease and the likes. criminal background? well, kind of hard to check since we lived in a dirt floor hut. when you live in refugee camps the process of coming to america is different then waiting at your own home for a letter from the us embassy.

as for culture shock. some will adapt faster then others. english is easy if you just try.

when you are a refugee they dont screen you like if someone was trying to get a student or work visa. because as you have the status of refugee you are basically homeless.

[Gfunk]

We are quite from full. I hope in the future we make it easier for people to immigrate to the US and become citizens. In addition, we should take in more refugees.

Wow, thank God you are not in a position of power.

Why again do we care about these people and are we whoring out America for them?

[Eknytz]

Wow, thank God you are not in a position of power.

Why again do we care about these people and are we whoring out America for them?
Nonsense, the US will always have room for more people.

[shocker1]

How about North Georgia near Tenn.
Shocker could use the business.
Chattanooga has a large immigrant population from, Somalia, Balkans,Vietnam and other places. They are all welcome so long as they are doing it legal like. ya know?