1/27/2024 0 Comments Somaliland ilhan omar tim mynett“America… for so many people living abroad, including myself when I lived in a refugee camp, is a place where people do get an opportunity to fulfil their promise. “It certainly has,” she answers, pausing for a moment before continuing. Nearly four years in, does she feel as though the American dream – the one she represents – has been tarnished by the Trump presidency? ![]() As Omar became the highest-ranking Somali American elected to office, Trump was set on a path which would see him use the power of the presidency to block refugees like Omar ever coming to America. Their victories were both historic, and seemingly at odds. The same day, Mr Trump won the presidency. Sixteen years later, at 34, she won her first political race when she was elected to Minnesota’s state house of representatives. Omar became a US citizen at 17 years of age, in the year 2000, the same year that Mr Trump ran his first ill-fated campaign for president. He replied: “Well we haven’t gotten to our America yet, you just need to be patient.” “This doesn’t look like the America you promised,” she later recalled telling her father. She has also recounted how her initial impressions of America were so different from the one she expected, the one her father had described: a country where everyone had the same chance at success. In her book, she writes about being on the receiving end of racism and bullying, but also of how she learned to fight back (in her book, she describes herself as “small but a good fighter”). Her first years in America were difficult. In 1995, they immigrated to the United States, arriving first in Virginia, then two years later moving on to Minneapolis. Omar and her family managed to escape the country to Kenya, where they lived in a refugee camp for four years. The sun was beating down and we didn’t have water, but we kept going.” I was barefoot as we ran as fast as we could towards the makeshift border with the sounds of weapons firing at our backs. ![]() We jumped out of the truck, forgetting to take the few things we had brought with us from home. “People crawled over one another without regard, scrambling to get out without getting shot. Chaos immediately broke out in the back of the truck,” she writes of that fateful escape. “Suddenly, out of nowhere, we heard massive gunfire and men screaming. She writes vividly of that early experience of war in her recently published memoir, This Is What America Looks Like: My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman. Her family was forced to flee when civil war broke out in 1991. Her mother died when she was a child, leaving her father – a teacher trainer – and her grandfather to raise her. She was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1982, the youngest of seven siblings. Omar’s ability to identify the deep, structural problems facing America and still recognise its potential for change has its roots in her own story. It’s one of the greatest constitutions in the world.” “I believe we have here in the United States really good institutions that have withstood four years of Trump and can withstand many things. “Of course we’re alarmed with what we are witnessing right now, but there is a distinction between those who have lived with conflict and unrest but have institutions that are strong enough to withstand, and those that diverge into a civil war and become a failed state,” she says. ![]() ![]() “After everything America has done for Omar, and her family, she hates this country more than ever,” he said last year, and has repeated since.Īnd yet even in a time of national crisis, when many cannot see beyond the doom of the moment, when democracy is at stake, Omar is remarkably hopeful about its future. Tucker Carlson, the Fox News commentator and Trump confidant, has deployed it frequently, framing her journey from refugee to citizen as a gift that should buy her silence. It’s useful to consider one of the most frequent attacks levelled against Omar, who was first elected by Minnesota’s 5th congressional district in 2019.
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