After a week of medical time off from the keyboard, immigration news piled up! Today’s five stories are all about Minnesota immigration news.
The Biden administration established a new program that allows private sponsorship of refugees—the Welcome Corps. That sounded great to some refugees already living in Minnesota, who decided to give back by sponsoring someone else.
[Sahan Journal] “Mohamed Dawid spent eight years living in a refugee camp in Kenya, as his family jumped through the many hoops required to come to the U.S. in 1999. His family escaped war where they faced discrimination for being Oromo, an ethnic group in Ethiopia. …
“Robsan Yusuf lived in a refugee camp for five years with his mom and brothers, also struggling to navigate the complex process of coming to the United States as a refugee. When he found out about Welcome Corps through local news, he helped set up a meeting of other members of the Oromo community at a coffee shop. …
“Within one week of having their application approved, Mohamed and Robsan’s sponsor group was matched with Shimirimana.
“Minnesota has consistently led on applications for matching and also for naming,” Koehne said. “We’re just continuing to see more and more Minnesotans learn about Welcome Corps and be sponsors.”
“While the 90-day requirement to support Shimirimana has passed, Mohamed and Robsan continue to help him.”
Minnesota is a doubly welcoming state: welcoming to refugees and immigrants, welcoming to LBGTQ people. That fit the fill for an asylum seeker fleeing persecution in Russia.
[Pioneer Press] “Erik Georgievich Beda arrived at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport last month on a United flight from Chicago with nothing but a small plastic bag containing his Russian passport and other paperwork.
“Beda, who knows only a few words of English, had no money. He hadn’t eaten for almost 24 hours. He arrived in snowy Minnesota wearing all the clothes he had: a button-down long-sleeve shirt, green hiking pants and hiking boots without shoelaces.
…
“As members of the LGBTQ community, Ivan and Erik faced persecution their whole lives together in Russia from family and neighbors,” according to the GoFundMe site. “They experienced physical attacks and eventually they were threatened with arrest by authorities who found out that Erik was trans. Both men are educated biologists who specialized in zoology. They owned a home in the country and raised cattle.”
“The Bedas had to flee when authorities found out about the couple and issued an order for Erik Beda’s arrest, Erik said. They abandoned their farmstead and gave Manny, their beloved Australian cattle dog, back to the breeder.”
Mahi Madhan Kumar is a “documented Dreamer.” He came here with his parents as a young child and lives here with legal documents. Minnesota is home—but when he turns 21, he may lose that home.
[Star Tribune] “Mahi Madhan Kumar is a high achiever. A sophomore at Chanhassen High School, he recently led his robotics team to third place in a regional competition. He is preparing for a debate team competition in Chicago and is studying for his AP exams in calculus and physics. In his spare time, Madhan Kumar helps educate elementary and middle school students in robotics. He is applying for advanced science and math courses at the University of Minnesota.
“But his seemingly limitless trajectory is constrained if he wants to stay in America.
“Madhan Kumar, 16, is set to “age out” of his legal immigration status at age 21, and could be forced to leave the only country he remembers. He came to the U.S. from India as a four-year-old with his parents; his dad is an engineer working under an H-1B visa for highly skilled immigrants that gets renewed every three years. But amid a massive green card backlog for Indian nationals, Madhan Kumar has no direct pathway to stay. …
“The Cato Institute estimates that 100,000 youth stuck in the green card backlog will age out, leaving them to self-deport, try to hop from visa to visa with no guarantees or stay here illegally to remain with their parents. The children are not eligible for Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which protects immigrant “dreamers” brought here without legal permission as minors. Nor are so-called documented dreamers allowed work permits, though DACA dreamers are.”
A third case of abuse of immigrant workers in Minnesota surfaced last week.
[Star Tribune] “Nearly 40 immigrant workers claim in a federal lawsuit that a central Minnesota vegetable farm shorted their paychecks and subjected them to “deplorable” working and living conditions.
“The workers, who hail primarily from Honduras, Mexico and the Dominican Republic, Monday sued John Svihel and Svihel Vegetable Farm in U.S. District Court for Minnesota. They allege Svihel and his company violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.”
Mizna marks its 25th anniversary this year, and Kathy Haddad tells how it all began.
[MPR] “Kathy Haddad and Saleh Abudayyeh founded Mizna in the late ‘90s as a platform for contemporary literature, film, art and cultural production — highlighting the work of Arab, Southwest Asian and North African, or SWANA artists….
“As the organization marks its 25th anniversary in the Twin Cities, Haddad looks back on what motivated her to start it all.
“’I wanted to see stories about our experience, about my experience. I read, and was inspired by Asian American writers, African American writers and lots of writers. And I didn’t see any Arab American writers,’ Haddad said.”
Immigration news 