Somalis Resettle Into New Life In Greeley

About 300 Somalis Escape War, Famine

 
Sunday, May 11, 2008

GREELEY, Colo. -- The four Somalis moved into the apartment last August, six floors up in a downtown Greeley building. The living room is furnished with only a metal folding chair and small table covered in papers and a laptop computer. A Somali flag, a white star against light blue, is the only wall hanging, draped behind the table.

A 25-year-old man identifying himself as Mohamed Mohamed sits on the floor helping Nafiso Mohamed Abdi, 20, fill out a rental application form for another Greeley apartment complex.

It's noon on Wednesday, and in three hours they will be working along with scores of Somalis at the JBS Swift & Co. meatpacking plant.

"It's a good place to work," Mohamed said. "It's a hard job, but it's good."

While they eat and sleep in the two-bedroom apartment, the Somalis mostly direct their energies outward into this new community half the globe away from their war-torn homeland.

They stroll Greeley's supermarkets, banks, video stores, and motor vehicles office, and they are frequently seen walking downtown streets. Many congregate at a south Greeley restaurant that serves Somali dishes.

"It's a really unsafe place," Ibraham Mohamed said of his native country. "There are warlords. There's no government existing, so everyone has a gun. You never know when you're going to die."

Abdullah Mohamed, 54, works the second shift -- roughly from 3 p.m.-midnight -- at Swift. The job is physically taxing but worth it, allowing him to send money to his wife and children in Seattle. He hopes they will be able to join him in Greeley.

A resident of a refugee camp for 16 years, Abdullah Mohamed likes the feeling of safety in his new country. Here, he is a legal refugee, enjoying United Nations protection and eligibility for employment.

"I can sleep at night," he said.

Ibraham Mohamed is a Greeley caseworker for Lutheran Family Services, which provides refugee resettlement services. He estimates that about 300 east Africans are in Greeley, and that "every day, 20 or 30 people are coming to get started at Swift, maybe 15 (a day). It depends on how they get the job."

He said many hear about plant openings from friends and relatives.

They come for opportunity and safety. Jobs on the recently added second shift at JBS Swift & Co. offer a living wage for Africans accustomed to extreme poverty.

The east Africans, mostly Somalis, who've arrived in the past year are further diversifying Greeley, which has long been dominated by Anglos and Latinos. The city, with its agricultural roots, has historically attracted waves of immigrants, from Swedes and German-Russians to Japanese and Latinos.

This arrival represents Greeley's first distinct ethnic wave of the 21st century, and it follows patterns seen in other U.S. cities and towns, particularly in the Midwest.

A 2003 study by the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire found that almost 30,000 Somali refugees had resettled in the United States, with the majority in Minnesota. The largest numbers in the Midwest, as in Greeley, work in meatpacking plants and other places that use unskilled labor.

"It does seem to be work that doesn't require a lot of English and that is not contrary to any of their customs or any part of their religion," said Christine Marston, an economics professor at the University of Northern Colorado. Swift pays $12 an hour to starting workers, "and Greeley doesn't have that high of a cost of living compared to some parts of the U.S., so I think it's an attractive place of employment for those reasons."

Doug Schult, who heads employee and labor relations at Swift, said refugees are coming from several east African countries. They are working at Swift plants across the nation, from Greeley to Kentucky.

Their numbers have "probably grown in the last year and a half (at Swift in Greeley), and I would say that's probably universal across the country as these refugees come in," Schult said.

Swift is coming off a year in which 270 Latino employees were stung in a raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. The number of Latino workers at the plant has dropped from 90 percent of its total work force to about 80 percent. The disruption of the raid, coupled with the addition of 1,300 jobs on the second shift, has opened the doors for African refugees, who are legally here and eager to start their lives anew.

"I like so much the U.S.," said Abdiqadir Jama, 20, another Somali refugee. "A lot of opportunity. You can do anything you want."

Last year, 1,085 refugees overall streamed into Colorado, according to Paul Stein, coordinator of the Colorado State Refugee Services Program.

Nationally, the U.S. Refugee Service Program will cap African refugees at 16,000 in 2008 (the number varies year to year based on a presidential determination). In the first four months of fiscal 2008, which began last October, 687 Somalis had entered the country. The African nations with the most refugees so far this year are Liberia (764) and Burundi (1,781).

By CHRIS CASEY Greeley Tribune

Source: AP, May 11, 2008