Denver metro area home to 30,000 Ethiopians, Eritrean immigrants
Article subtitle:
Because of countless languages and past political alliances, their culture is divided
Article publisher:
The Denver Post
Article date:
26 July 2013
Article category:
Colorado News
Medium
Article Body:
There are more than 30,000 Ethiopian immigrants in the Denver area, but because of countless languages and past political alliances, their culture is divided.
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[...] A bloody, 17-year civil war that began in 1974 drove a mass migration to the United States ...Others followed to join families, for education, for job opportunities.
But for all their growth and enterprise, Denver's newer demographic has struggled for cohesion, fragmented by 84 mostly tribal languages and dialects, old-country politics and a determination to put their native country's troubled past behind them...
Earlier this month, the specter of Ethiopia's past re-emerged in Colorado. An aging Aurora parking lot attendant admitted in federal court that he was Kefelegne Alemu Worku, accused of participating in at least 101 deaths as a guard at a makeshift prison in the late 1970s, when thousands of Ethiopians were killed for political reasons ...
Esubalew Johnston's journey to the United States in 1997 is rooted in a triumph over cruelty much like the Ethiopians who came to Colorado in the 1970s and '80s.
When he was 5 or 6, men from the capital city, Addis Ababa, came to his remote village, where he lived in a flimsy grass hut with his mother, grandmother and sister. They convinced his mother they would take him to a school.
Instead, they blinded him by putting poisonous tree sap in his eyes, and forced him to beg on the street, because blind children can earn the most. His future seemed hopeless, the 24-year-old Metropolitan State University of Denver graduate said last week ...
Johnston is looking for a job and hopes to work with adopted children.
He's determined to send money back to Ethiopia ...
CAIRCO Research
CRSP is a division of the Colorado Department of Human Services and funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, under the authority of the Refugee Act of 1980. Its goal is to ensure effective resettlement of officially designated refugees and to promote refugee self sufficiency. Refugees are federally defined as having legal status and a lawful presence in the state.
Programs and Funding
CRSP has a FFY 2011 budget of $19,470,172 [millions] - CRSP is 100% federally funded, and receives no Colorado General Fund
Wilson-Fish: $3,342,403 [millions] –
Refugee Social Services: $1,617,208 [millions] –
Targeted Assistance Grant: $1,095,531 [millions] –
Cash and Medical Assistance: $7,726,696 [millions] –
Preventive Health: $95,000 [thousands] –
Refugee School Impact Grant: $450,000 [thousands] –
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families: $5,143,334 [millions] –