LEWISTON — Virtually all of the Somalis who have come to Lewiston since January 2001 are legal residents of the United States. The vast majority arrived with refugee status, meaning they had lived in refugee camps in Kenya or other countries neighboring Somalia and were not able to return home because of “well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group,” criteria for refugee status in the United States, according to a 2010 Senate report.
With Somalia still in the throes of a clan- and class-based civil war, that fear of persecution was very much alive in the refugee camps. Among the Somalis who made it to Lewiston, “adults grew up in a place that was destroyed by war,” said Holly Stover, acting director of the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Multicultural Affairs.
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http://www.sunjournal.com/news/city/2011/12/18/vast-majority-somali-immigrants-arrived-refugees/1127418
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