By Jason Burke
Ilhan Omar on the campaign trail in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Ilhan Omar, (click here) who lived in a Somali refugee camp when she was a girl and was elected to the US Congress last week, has said she hopes her victory would give hope to those whose childhoods resembled hers.
Omar fled the civil war in Somalia with her family in 1991 and spent four years in the Utango camp, near the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa, before arriving in the US with her six brothers and sisters under a resettlement programme.
“I would have loved to have heard a story like mine. I could have used it as an inspiration to get by. The lesson is to be hopeful, to dream and to aspire for more,” said the 36-year-old member-elect of the US House of Representatives for Minnesota’s fifth district.
Omar, a Democrat, will assume office in January, sharing with Rashida Tlaib the historic distinction of being the first Muslim women elected to the US Congress.
Multiple media outlets, including the Guardian, have reported that Omar lived in the vast Dadaab camp, which opened to receive civil war refugees around the same time as the Utango facility....
Ilhan Omar, (click here) who lived in a Somali refugee camp when she was a girl and was elected to the US Congress last week, has said she hopes her victory would give hope to those whose childhoods resembled hers.
Omar fled the civil war in Somalia with her family in 1991 and spent four years in the Utango camp, near the Kenyan coastal city of Mombasa, before arriving in the US with her six brothers and sisters under a resettlement programme.
“I would have loved to have heard a story like mine. I could have used it as an inspiration to get by. The lesson is to be hopeful, to dream and to aspire for more,” said the 36-year-old member-elect of the US House of Representatives for Minnesota’s fifth district.
Omar, a Democrat, will assume office in January, sharing with Rashida Tlaib the historic distinction of being the first Muslim women elected to the US Congress.
Multiple media outlets, including the Guardian, have reported that Omar lived in the vast Dadaab camp, which opened to receive civil war refugees around the same time as the Utango facility....
Chris Hayes also spent time with her and her story about Somalia is very compeling. She remembers quite vividly how her family was only one step ahead of certain execution. Eight year olds would be fearful enough to remember all that. She is a living example of American policy and it is a policy to be proud of and the hope for many.
November 19, 2021
Representative Ilhan Omar (click here) was just eight years old when her life turned upside down. After an armed compound attack, her family fled Mogadishu, and ultimately ended up in a refugee camp in Kenya. It was there that she experienced the reality that hundreds of millions of refugees worldwide endure. After an intense vetting and interview process, her family was eventually granted asylum in the U.S. and emigrated to Arlington, Virginia. In 2016, she was elected as a Minnesota House Representative, making her the highest-elected Somali-American public official in the U.S. and the first Somali-American State legislator. Omar joins to discuss her new book, “This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman,” how she got into politics, her response to accusations of anti-Semitism and what’s needed to ensure more productivity and less combativeness among members of Congress....
