Don’t know about Minnesota, but Maine (where I live) has a big Somali community. They started coming via Atlanta seven years ago (Atlanta was too expensive and had too much crime). Most Somalis have now settled in Portland and Lewiston, and there’s probably around 2,000 here now, with more arriving all the time. Many of them came from Mogadishu or from the camps in Kenya.
There’s a lot of racism for them to contend with (Maine is the most white state in the nation). The Lewiston mayor wrote an infamous letter to the community asking the Somalis to tell their relatives to quit coming-this was a while back. I blogged on it if you’re interested: http://newsoutofafrica.blogspot.com/2008/02/observations-on-somali-diaspora.html
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