Over the past 25 years, the United States has admitted about 84,000 Somali refugees. Close to 40 percent live in Minnesota. “The institutions of this state, private or public, have an important place in the mind of Somalis,” Dr. Ahmed Samatar noted.
It is perhaps the least likely place to find tens of thousands of African refugees: the cold, snowy, middle of America. So why are there so many Somalis in Minnesota?
“Maybe someday they will enjoy the ice fishing,” laughed Dr. Ahmed Samatar, dean of the Institute for Global Citizenship at Macalester College. Samatar was born in Somalia.
As far as living in such a cold weather climate, “on the surface it may look bizarre,” said Samatar, however “there is so much goodness in this state.”
The Somalis are here as legal refugees, largely. The Somalis Minnesota story tracks to 1991, when civil war broke out in Somalia. Millions fled to refugee camps, many in Kenya.
Two years later, the first wave of Somali refugees were sent to Minnesota.
“In the beginning the U.S. federal government assigns people,” said Samatar.
[…]
