JUST WHAT WE NEED

Thousands of African aborigines
headed for the United States

 

10,000 refugees from Burundi coming to U.S.
Reuters Thursday, 19 October 2006 / 4:55 a.m. EDT

CAMP OF THE SAINTS: Tanzanian soldiers
guard Hutu primitivess* from Burundi at
the Ngara refugee camp in 2001.

WASHINGTON — The United States plans to take in about 10,000
Burundian refugees — many of whom fled their landlocked Central
African nation as far back as 1972 — from Tanzania, the U.S.
State Department said on Tuesday.

"We are planning to offer permanent resettlement to a group of
Burundian refugees who've been in western camps in Tanzania,"
State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters, saying
an estimated 10,000 people would be offered residence.

Burundi has been plagued by civil strife since it achieved
independence from Belgium in 1962. Thousands of Burundians
from the Hutu majority fled ethnic massacres by the powerful
Tutsi minority in 1972.

Hundreds of thousands more Burundians fled to neighboring
countries during a 12-year civil war that killed roughly 300,000
people before it ended last year with a U.N.-backed peace
agreement.Casey said the United States agreed to taken in
the refugees at the request of the U.N. High Commissioner
for Refugees. Washington received the request within the past
year, he said.

A UNHCR spokesman said the agency seeks to help refugees
return to their original country or to integrate into the communities
where they have fled. If neither is possible, it looks to resettle
them in third countries.

"This group felt that they were unable or unwilling to return," said
UNHCR spokesman Tim Irwin. Local integration also was not an
option, he said, leading to the decision to seek permanent homes
for them elsewhere.

He said the group had become known as the 1972 Burundians —
referring to the year they left the country — and that many were
born in Tanzania and had no direct experience of Burundi.

 

*Even by African standards, the Hutus — who massacred over a half million Tutsis in neighboring Rwanda in the 1990s — are considered among the lowest of the low.

We are, indeed, truly blessed. Kind of gives you
shivers and makes you feel red, white and blue all over thinking about all these future citizens.