Persecuted Russian Minorities Head to U.S.

[CanOWorms]

Good to see persecuted minorities in Europe making it over here and making a life for themselves.

It's great to see compassion and acceptance still thrives in the US even if it's diminishing elsewhere. We should set up more of these agreements with other countries to take in the persecuted minorities.

I rarely agree with what the Bush admin & government have done recently, but this is something I can support.

Persecuted Russia Minorities Head to U.S.

By MIKE ECKEL
Associated Press Writer

July 21, 2004, 5:58 PM EDT

MOSCOW -- The first members of a long-persecuted minority group began leaving southern Russia for the United States on Wednesday as part of an agreement between Moscow and Washington, officials said.

Eleven Meskhetian Turks departed Krasnodar, about 750 miles south of Moscow, on their way to Philadelphia, said a representative with the Geneva-based International Organization of Migration. Another 30 are to leave for the United States in coming days.

The Meskhetian Turks will be given refugee status in the United States and resettled by volunteer and charitable organizations, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

More Meskhetian Turks could move to the United States in the weeks and months ahead, the official said, adding that all who want to move -- and are approved by U.S. Homeland Security officials -- will be allowed emigrate.

Krasnodar regional authorities said more than 5,000 Meskhetian Turks intend to leave.

"We are going to Philadelphia. Houses, jobs, the whole package is prepared for us. We don't need anything else," Tiashin Svanidze, the head of the Meskhetian Turks diaspora in Krasnodar, told NTV television.

Mark Brown, a representative of the migration organization, said the U.S. State Department specified how people will be selected.

"They must be Turks from Uzbekistan who live in the Krasnodar region. If there are 500 people, OK, they will go. If there are 15,000, all will be accepted. That is, there is no quota," Brown told NTV.

About 20,000 Meskhetian Turks live in limbo in Krasnodar and surrounding regions in the southern Russia, unable to get official residence permission or to rent land -- the result of strict anti-immigrant regulations that regional authorities have imposed.

The regulations have been popular in Krasnodar, where ultranationalist Cossacks work alongside police to keep order and many resent the influx of immigrants fleeing poverty in Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Meskhetian Turks were deported en masse to the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan from the then-Soviet republic of Georgia in the 1940s. In 1989, racial violence broke out in Uzbekistan, and many Meskhetian Turks fled to Krasnodar.

The State Department cited the Meskhetian Turks in its human rights report last year, noting that Krasnodar authorities subject them to special registration requirements, requiring them to register as "guests" every 45 days.

Other measures included a prohibition on employment or commercial activity in markets and being subjected to document checks, detentions, and other harassment by police, the report said.

"The administration of Krasnodar Governor (Alexander) Tkachev appeared to be attempting to use economic measures to force the Meskhetians to leave the territory," the report said.

Tkachev, who has proclaimed that neither Russia nor Krasnodar should be "an open house" for outsiders, blamed Georgia for not doing more to take the Meskhetian Turks back to their ancestral homeland.

 

[Dissipate]

Cheap labor can't hurt.

 

[villager]

Why not send the Cossacks as well? They will probably be more than happy to enlist up.

 

[CanOWorms]

Originally posted by: villager
Why not send the Cossacks as well? They will probably be more than happy to enlist up.

What's their plight? Hopefully more agreements will be met between the US and other countries. Maybe they can make a deal with Slovenia since 95% of Slovenia voted to make their minorities not have any rights. Pretty sad to see such hatred in modern Europe.

 

[digitalsm]

Originally posted by: CanOWorms

Originally posted by: villager
Why not send the Cossacks as well? They will probably be more than happy to enlist up.

What's their plight? Hopefully more agreements will be met between the US and other countries. Maybe they can make a deal with Slovenia since 95% of Slovenia voted to make their minorities not have any rights.

Outside Canada and the USA, most other countries are extremely xenophobic. When it comes to "modern countries" European countries and the former soviet bloc states take the cake.

 

[CrazyHelloDeli]

Originally posted by: digitalsm

Originally posted by: CanOWorms

Originally posted by: villager
Why not send the Cossacks as well? They will probably be more than happy to enlist up.

What's their plight? Hopefully more agreements will be met between the US and other countries. Maybe they can make a deal with Slovenia since 95% of Slovenia voted to make their minorities not have any rights.

Outside Canada and the USA, most other countries are extremely xenophobic. When it comes to "modern countries" European countries and the former soviet bloc states take the cake.

The UK is really xenophobic also? Im asking because I dont know.

I hear the Japanease are scared sh!tless by Black men😀

 

[sMiLeYz]

Originally posted by: digitalsm

Originally posted by: CanOWorms

Originally posted by: villager
Why not send the Cossacks as well? They will probably be more than happy to enlist up.

What's their plight? Hopefully more agreements will be met between the US and other countries. Maybe they can make a deal with Slovenia since 95% of Slovenia voted to make their minorities not have any rights.

Outside Canada and the USA, most other countries are extremely xenophobic. When it comes to "modern countries" European countries and the former soviet bloc states take the cake.

It's true. Rarely do I agree you.

I see this as a good thing, they need a better place to live obviously... we need new blood.

 

[CanOWorms]

Originally posted by: digitalsm

Originally posted by: CanOWorms

Originally posted by: villager
Why not send the Cossacks as well? They will probably be more than happy to enlist up.

What's their plight? Hopefully more agreements will be met between the US and other countries. Maybe they can make a deal with Slovenia since 95% of Slovenia voted to make their minorities not have any rights.

Outside Canada and the USA, most other countries are extremely xenophobic. When it comes to "modern countries" European countries and the former soviet bloc states take the cake.

Oh, I definitely know. I've been reporting on it for about a year on this forum. Most Americans and Canadians don't realize what the situations are like in Europe since it's not in the US press that often.

 

[CanOWorms]

Originally posted by: HelloDeli

Originally posted by: digitalsm

Originally posted by: CanOWorms

Originally posted by: villager
Why not send the Cossacks as well? They will probably be more than happy to enlist up.

What's their plight? Hopefully more agreements will be met between the US and other countries. Maybe they can make a deal with Slovenia since 95% of Slovenia voted to make their minorities not have any rights.

Outside Canada and the USA, most other countries are extremely xenophobic. When it comes to "modern countries" European countries and the former soviet bloc states take the cake.

The UK is really xenophobic also? Im asking because I dont know.

I hear the Japanease are scared sh!tless by Black men😀

They're probably below US/Canada, but better than many in Europe. They do have a white supremacist political party and at one point 16% surveyed said they would consider voting for them, but only like 3-5% ended up voting for them in the recent elections. Also, I've read news about their chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality actually said some controversial comments :Q

 

[KevinH]

You're right Can. A lot of Europeans are to busy taking shots at the USA to take a look at their own social ills. Some of the most ardently racist (or ignorant how you want to look at it) people I met were some of the Europeans exchange students. Whereas there certain problems with race here, as a whole, there are certain PC tendencies that most of AMerica adheres to with regards to race. Most Europeans I know have that threshold set a whole lot lower, albeit almost unknowingly. For example, consider stereotypes...the moment a stereotype is declared, almost without fail most Americans will say "wow that's stereotyping, they're not all like that"...our media and education has made a concerted effort to make sure we have that mentality. On the ohter hand, take a look at show as mundane as UK's Top Gear. Although not overtly racist, there was an episode on there where they reviewed a Cadillac Escalade. Needless to say it was associated many times with "black rappers and black athletes". The audience didn't even bat an eye. You even think of something along that lines here in teh States and I garuntee you that the host woulda been deservedly canned.

 

[TheBDB]

Funny I was just reading a history of the 20th century and the author pointed out how much the US and Britain benefited from Germans and Jews fleeing from Nazi persecution, and from Eastern Europeans fleeing from Soviet rule.

 

[CanOWorms]

Originally posted by: KevinH
You're right Can. A lot of Europeans are to busy taking shots at the USA to take a look at their own social ills. Some of the most ardently racist (or ignorant how you want to look at it) people I met were some of the Europeans exchange students. Whereas there certain problems with race here, as a whole, there are certain PC tendencies that most of AMerica adheres to with regards to race. Most Europeans I know have that threshold set a whole lot lower, albeit almost unknowingly. For example, consider stereotypes...the moment a stereotype is declared, almost without fail most Americans will say "wow that's stereotyping, they're not all like that"...our media and education has made a concerted effort to make sure we have that mentality. On the ohter hand, take a look at show as mundane as UK's Top Gear. Although not overtly racist, there was an episode on there where they reviewed a Cadillac Escalade. Needless to say it was associated many times with "black rappers and black athletes". The audience didn't even bat an eye. You even think of something along that lines here in teh States and I garuntee you that the host woulda been deservedly canned.

I suspect that might be one of the main problems - they don't want to acknowledge the fact that things are bad and getting worse. They just want to ignore it. It's really scary how far-right political parties and their beliefs are becoming mainstream there, too.

You can bring about the most change if you criticize yourself.

 

[CanOWorms]

Originally posted by: TheBDB
Funny I was just reading a history of the 20th century and the author pointed out how much the US and Britain benefited from Germans and Jews fleeing from Nazi persecution, and from Eastern Europeans fleeing from Soviet rule.

I could definitely believe that! I think we also have a nice brain drain from non-European countries, too. Most people would rather go to the US/Canada where they're treated better.

 

[CanOWorms]

I found an article that talks about this group a bit more.

Meskheti Turks to start emigrating to U.S. from Russia

KRASNODAR. July 20 (Interfax-South) - The first 11 of more than 5,000 Meskheti Turks who live in Russia who have accepted a U.S. offer to immigrate are leaving for the United States on Wednesday, a Russian official said.

Another 49 will leave for the U.S. by Monday, the official, who serves in the administration of Krasnodar region, told Interfax.

The Meskheti Turks are an ethnic group that the Stalin regime deported en masse in 1944 from Meskheti and another Georgian region, Javakheti, to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.

After being targets of mass violence in Uzbekistan in the late 1980s, many of the country's Meskheti Turks moved to other former Soviet republics. The majority of them now live in Krasnodar region and Azerbaijan.

According to the official interviewed by Interfax, of 11,999 Meskheti Turks living in Krasnodar region today, 4,943 have received Russian citizenship, 744 have embarked on Russian naturalization procedures, more than 5,000 have expressed a desire to emigrate to the United States, and some have said they would like to return to Meskheti.

Earlier, Chingiz Neiman-zade, chairman of Vatan, a Meskheti Turkish association based in Georgia, said the United States had offered to accept Meskheti Turks living in Krasnodar as immigrants.

"On February 16, the International Migration Organization began an information program [in Krasnodar] to explain the terms for the resettlement of Meskheti Turks in the U.S.," Neiman-zade said.

"The immigrants will be provided with housing and furniture, they will be helped to learn the English language and to complete formalities needed for residence in the U.S., which is especially important, and have been promised life-long welfare allowances for pensioners and the disabled."