ABSTRACT
A refugee is an individual with a national origin no longer enjoying the protection of the national government and who had not acquired the nationality of the host country. Thousands of Somali refugees are scattered all over the world waiting to acquire the citizenship of their respective host nations, as part of the process in the making of a modern Diaspora. According to the 2002 world refugee survey,1 there are 40 million displaced people throughout the world, of whom 15 million are asylum seekers. In addition, the prospect of life and liberty in the United States has attracted immigrants and fortune seekers from all over the world. However, about 13,500 Somali Bantu refugees currently being resettled in the United States are among those persons forced either into exile or internally displaced because of the ongoing regional war in southern Somalia. The Somali Bantu regions were seized and are under the control of the warring nomadic militiamen, thus forcing the Bantu to flee because of well-founded fear of persecution. Prior to their acceptance into the United States for resettlement, the Bantu refugees were willing to resettle anywhere in the world because their war wrecked homeland (Somalia) was not an option for them.2
