Refugees in the U.S. - hostility and xenophobia

i tutored several somali refugees when i lived and worked in portland, maine, so this article has some special meaning... they were great people and i was impressed with their ability and willingness to learn but i could see how, in "whitebread," yankee country, problems were bound to happen and evidently they have...

Fleeing civil war and economic and political chaos in their home country, they came to the United States a few years ago, where they tried to settle down in a small town. Though initially welcomed by the locals, they didn't have to wait long to face hostility and xenophobia.

Within months after the Somali refugees arrived in the small town of Lewiston in the northeastern state of Maine, some groups began to see them as a burden on the local economy and as aliens who were taking jobs away from the natives, while receiving free cars and apartments.

Yielding to pressure from anti-immigrant groups, the city's mayor Larry Raymond, declared: "It's time for the Somali community to exercise discipline. We have been overwhelmed. Our city is maxed out financially, physically and emotionally."

The Somali leaders denounced the mayor's statement as "inflammatory and disturbing", saying he was an "ill-informed leader who is bent upon bigotry." Some residents of the town joined their voices in solidarity. But the anti-immigrant wave continued to gather steam.

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