One of Three, But Should Be Many
Charleston, WV seen from Spring Hill Cemetary. Photo by Michael Kotrady via Wikimedia Commons
“The thing that got me about West Virginia was the beauty of the mountains and peacefulness of the small town,” the man said about finding a home in the mountain states. It is a sentiment that is nearly universal of people who are from, live in, or travel through the 35th state. There is just something about the blankets of green draped over continuous mountains broken up by rivers, the occasional interstate, and not much else. The people who live among it all are just special, not despite their circumstances and surroundings but because of them. “I’m happiest because anywhere I go, people have been helpful,” he continued about his new found home.
“Almost Heaven” reads the signs when you enter the state, goes the opening lyrics to Country Roads, and — the joke goes — confuses some of our Catholic friends who are afraid it might be purgatory.
If you are Najib Ahmad Bakhtari, who is quoted above, it really must seem that way after waiting over three years in war-torn Afghanistan for the chance to come to America while 10 others he knew “disappeared”.
Bakhtari landed in Charleston in April from his hometown of Mazar-i-Sharif, a large Afghan city known for its exquisite, blue-topped mosque that pops against the city’s sandy backdrop.
He left behind his father, mother and two brothers. He doesn’t know when he’ll see them again.
In Charleston, he found friendly people, opportunity and peace of mind he had not known in Mazar-i-Sharif.
“The thing that got me about West Virginia was the beauty of the mountains and peacefulness of the small town,” he said, speaking through a translator as he’s currently learning English through an ESL class. Bakhtari speaks a mixture of Persian and Pashto, an Iranian language.
In Afghanistan, he’d been working as a cook in a kitchen and overseeing dozens of employees who served Americans helping Afghan people — a job that put him in danger, he said.
“Ten people who were working with Americans disappeared,” Bakhtari said, adding that he feared his own life was at risk because of his connections with Americans.
Afghanistan is the most dangerous country in the world due to its high numbers of deaths from war and terrorism, according to a 2019 report by the Institute for Economics and Peace.
His sister, Wafa Bakhtari Noorzai, came to America in 2015. She lives in Charleston with her husband and two children.
She has experienced constant worry for her brothers and parents who remained in Afghanistan, she said.
It took three years for Bakhtari to get his paperwork, which included being linked to his sister and brother-in-law in Charleston, to enter the U.S. under refugee status.
“One day we were sitting at the table eating dinner and talking with [my brother] on the phone. He said, ‘I got the visa!,’ and I [screamed]. I was so excited,” Noorzai said.
Her brother was able to find a home and work in Charleston with the help of West Virginia’s Catholic Charities branch.
“I’ve been working in refugee resettlement for five-and-a-half years,” Libby Ramsey, migration and refugee services program director, said. “I am always struck by how similar refugees are to our native West Virginians in their resiliency, devotion to family and incredibly strong work ethic.”
Back in March, Em along with some Twitter friends debunked a ridiculous viral video decrying the pending invasion of “Syrian Muslims” who were going to set up all sorts of horrors and destroy the United States starting with the West End of Charleston, WV. His hateful screed was easily disproven, to the point fact checkers reached out to Em herself to put together the debunking story. As Em pointed out in her piece, WV had a grand total of 7 Syrian refugees…since 2002. As for the Islamic fearmongering, there has been a Muslim community in Charleston since the 1950s, peaceably living and growing in the valley ever since. Many of them doctors, engineers, and in other high-demand fields who found opportunity in the Mountain State. The Islamic Association of West Virginia is still relatively small in number but has branched out to other places in the state, and is often participating in civic and interfaith activities in their cities.
The truth is, in 2018 — when Grifter McGrifty rolled into Littlepage Terrace to spout his lies — West Virginia took in exactly 1 refugee. In 2019, they went big and tripled that to three.
Charleston Gazette-Mail writer Amelia Ferrell Knisely tracked down Bakhtari in the above piece, and wrote about him in light of the President’s announcement, along with some governors and other municipalities, to cease taking in refugees. She details how he had to wait, how his “link” to a sister and her family already here is what allowed his status, how he has worked since arriving, and the Catholic charity that helped get him on his feet. Perhaps most importantly, Knisely gets to transmit what he thinks about his new home.
“I want people to see and learn from what I get to do here and see the freedom I have in the United States,” he said to conclude the piece.
Thinking we are better off without such people in our nation is lunacy.
Refugees are a specific type of newcomer to our country, legally protected and worthy of time and effort by our government and society. Thoroughly vetted and with family ties already in place, such folks are not only happy to be here, but for the most part motivated to succeed, grateful for the opportunity, and wanting to make a life for themselves and their families in their new land. For a state that is demographically bleeding to death, folks from the outside that see it as a land of opportunity apart from the current issues those who are leaving see, it is one of the only available options for states like West Virginia and regions like Appalachia. If you are not birthing them, or retaining the ones who are, or replacing an elderly generation rapidly passing into history, you better find folks who want to be here. With West Virginia flirting with the bottom ten states in birth rates, a decline in population that will result in loss of a congressional district, and the third oldest population over 65 in the country, any influx of people who want to call the hills and hollars of West Virginia home should have the state’s arms flung around them in welcome. The same for other areas of our great nation with struggling populations. Rebirth and renewal is as much a part of American tradition as anything else, and should be celebrated and carefully considered and nurtured, not fearmongered and denigrated over points of bias and ignorance to the folks wanting to come.
Folks from other places, with no where else to go, willing to do the hard things to survive, thrive, and make life better for themselves is an honored tradition in West Virginia. It should always be that way. Lest some day we have almost no West Virginians left at all.
The folks who risked their lives, and their families lives, to work with American forces seem to be great additions to the nation, and far more patriotic than most of the natives. Immigrant doctors, engineers, and regular folks have become esteemed community members in Appalachia. Southern California has a thriving community of Middle Eastern Christian refugees, and other areas have wonderful networks of Hindus, Sikhs, Vietnamese, and even Irish.
On the other hand, there are some, like certain members of “The Squad”, who seem to hate America and everyone in it, and seem to want us to become like Hamas or Hezbollah. In Ilhan Omar’s case, she almost certainly resorted to fraud to game the system, moving here from England by providing false information (the dark depths of which I’ll not mention), and then proceeding to drive wedges between the Muslim immigrant community and the local Jewish community that had welcomed them.
Some cities have seen lots of trouble, for example, Somali refugees engaging in attacks on regular basis while turning Minneapolis in a hub of terrorist recruitment. Culture and numbers matter, because where a single refugee will try to fit in, a whole community of them, coming from the wrong place, will sometimes fail to integrate and instead stick to what they know, which apparently is robbery, gang violence, and perhaps piracy. Culture and numbers matter, such that too many at once from a dysfunctional culture can maintain that culture in their adoptive country. This happened during the last century with the waves of Italian immigrants, who settled densely enough in major US urban areas to support mafia activities like numbers running, illegal gambling, prostitution, bootlegging, and shaking down business owners for protection money.
Amsterdam has recently come out and said that they’re becoming a narco state because they added too many refugees to a city that already had drugs, and putting two-and-two together, the refugees became violent drug lords, conducting assassinations and bomb attacks in what had been a tranquil city. Few communities want to become gang turf, whether the gang is moving in from LA, Chicago, or Mogadishu.
Ideally, or refugee program selects for those who are fleeing dysfunction, not those who are the dysfunction. Obviously we’ve fallen short of that ideal on more than one occasion. It’s great when a refugee arrives in some small corner of the US and sees our home with new eyes, astonished at the lush and open landscape, the barely touched natural beauty, the friendly and welcoming nature of the locals, and the idea that here a person’s future is unwritten. But we should take more care to avoid admitting those who would see that same community in the most negative terms, in much the same way the European imperialists used to view the peoples and lands they once conquered.
As a side note, some of the immigrants and refugees in Europe have blamed European multiculturalists for causing many of Europe’s current problems. When immigrants were coming in dribs and drabs, they primarily identified as members of their profession, such as doctors, dentists, lawyers, and engineers, working diligently to settle in and become a native. But once those governments started making funds, privileges, and special programs available to particular ethnic groups, those ethnic groups were forced to come together to compete with other ethnic groups for status, recognition, and funds. Suddenly certain members would leap to the fore to represent their community, and those are often the sorts that won’t assimilate. Immigrants who formerly didn’t even bother with their fellow ex-pats get bombarded with messages about “their community”, band together to form a power base, and tribal thinking takes hold where it had not even existed before. The government programs launched to help immigrants and ease assimilation become the biggest obstacle to assimilation.Report
As a Minneapolis resident I’m not sure what’s more disappointing; your utter flim-flam about the Somali community in Minneapolis or the fact that Minnesota is utterly bereft of the Somali Pirates you said are abounding. You owe me at least one gang of Mississippi Somali Pirates complete with a ship and preferably some cannon George.
I hope the rest of your post exceeds the factual standard that you set in your part on Minneapolis. It wouldn’t be a high bar to exceed.Report
Mississippi Somali Pirates
Worst Johnny Depp movie ever.Report
Might still be better than Waterworld.Report
On Iron Ranger TidesReport
Somali refugees engaging in attacks on regular basis while turning Minneapolis in a hub of terrorist recruitment
St. Paul had better watch its step.Report
I think five Minnesotans have been killed while fighting for al-Shabaab. Then there’s the time a Somali stabbed 10 people in the St Cloud mall. A decade ago CBS estimated that there were 400 to 500 Somalis in the four big Minneapolis Somali gangs (the Madhibaan, the Outlaws, the Hot Boys, and the Somali Mafia – following their clan lines from back home). In 2018 the violent crime rate in the area where they’re active (Little Mogadishu) went up about 50%. The police are hiring Somalis to help with outreach, but occasionally they shoot Australian women for no apparent reason.
They might have been better off just importing 75,000 Norwegians, who would have added just as much cultural diversity, plus insider connections to Santa’s workshop.Report
I too have Google, and have found the article George is passing off as his own thinking. Anyway, kinda weird that it came out of the Tennessee Star, a nonsense publication staffed by unhinged conspiracists whose racism is barely masked.Report
I don’t know anything about the Tennessee Star, and don’t know enough about the facts on the ground to say anything about the broader narrative, but the two claims in that article that are repeated in George’s comment above are attributed to mainstream sources, namely CBS and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and the links are right there in the article. If it’s fake news, it didn’t originate there.Report
George, tread carefully here and in the future when you make comments of this nature, you need to provide link support at the least so that we can appraise whether the source is reliable or, as Sam puts it (thought he link doesn’t work), nonsense.Report
There was that line in Moscow On The Hudson where someone asks Robin Williams’ character “What do you think about Americans?” and he answers, “I don’t know, everyone I meet is from somewhere else.”
As I’ve written before, I live in that world. I spend my days living and working in a world where the majority of people speak English as a second language, or have an ancestry from somewhere other than Europe, or a religious tradition other than Christianity.
I guess that’s why I find these Ermagerd stories about culture clashes baffling.
I’m at a meeting where the laborers are explaining the problem in Spanish, then someone stops to translate into English, and the engineer gets on the phone and greets his colleague in Farsi. Someone worries that the interior designer will not be able to get some drawings during the Christmas break but it turns out he is working on the 25th, since he already took off for Tet.
I mean, all these people likewise live and work in a world that isn’t made for them, a world where their culture is alien and mystifying to others.
But they don’t whine or snivel about it. They don’t stamp their foot because Starbucks cups don’t say “Blessed Eid” or something.
A Senator asks Elena Kagen how she celebrates Christmas, and she just chuckles good naturedly and answers “Eating Chinese food.”
White straight Christian folks are just now learning how to adapt to a world not built for them, a world where everything was written from their point of view.Report
A Senator asks Elena Kagen how she celebrates Christmas, and she just chuckles good naturedly and answers “Eating Chinese food.”
I always wondered what Lindsey Graham was up to with that, though I recall taking a trip to Charleston when Nikki Haley, a Sikh, was running in the Republican gubernatorial primary against someone, whose name I forget, who was Catholic. The Charleston paper thought it necessary to explain not only about Sikhism — can’t have the voters think she’s a damn Mooslim, after all — but also about Catholicism. I have to assume the paper knew its readers, and knew they would find both Sikhs and Catholics exotic enough to require explanation.Report