Since I started my new position at Minnesota Council of Churches Refugee Services on Monday, it has become very clear to me that Americans know little to nothing about the refugee or asylee population that lives with us. Following the mustache post with this rather more sobering one feels uneven but important to what I’m doing with my life right now, so I’ve decided to post some
FUN REFUGEE FACTS (that are not so fun)
The difference between an asylee and a refugee:
Both of these individuals meet the same definition/requirements: an individual who, “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country” (1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees). However, a refugee is given refugee status while NOT in the US, and an asylee is granted asylee status while already IN the US.
The (or a) difference between a refugee and an immigrant:
An immigrant has chosen to come to the US, is seeking status as a Lawfully Permanent Resident, and must prove that they will not use government services such as welfare but instead will be a contributing member to their community. A refugee is given multiple services and is not expected to prove their self-sufficiency in the same way.
After a year refugees have to return to the Department of Homeland security for “inspection and examination for admission,” which generally means that they either file for a green card (status as a Lawfully Permanent Resident or LPR), are detained by the government for various reasons, or can be sent home if political conditions there have changed in a way to alter their status as a refugee.
Three kinds of refugees:
Priority 1–
Status is determined on an individual case basis; personal life experiences meet the definition of refugee.
Priority 2–
Status is determined by belonging to an ethnic group that is determined by the Department of State to fit, as a group, the definition of refugee status. Each year this list is changed; examples for 2008 include the Sudanese in Iraq or the Bhutanese in Nepal.
Priority 3–
Refugees who are spouses, unmarried children under 21, or parents of individuals already lawfully admitted to the United States as refugees or asylees.
This year the ceiling (as in limit, not quota) on refugees admitted the US is 70,000. The number actually expected is 52,000. The world refugee population for 2008 is 11.4 million.
Hope that cheered everyone up.

Willi Chevalier
Sigmaringen, Germany
Sigmaringen Beard Club
Partial beard freestyle category (“Willi has won this category at all WBMC’s in memory with the exception of the 2003 WBMC when he was on injured reserve following an unfortunate encounter with a power drill”)
The mustache is a widely debated form of facial hair that I, for one, was never a fan of until just recently when I discovered this: the World Beard and Mustache Championships . Only eighteen years old, this amazing phenomenon brings together hirsute competitors to rival one another in a range of categories (six specifically for mustaches: natural, Hungarian, Dalí, English, imperial, and freestyle).

Elmar Weisser
Brigachtal, Germany
Swabian Beard Club
(Beard depicts Berlin’s Brandenberg Gate)
After being held in Sweden, England, Germany, Norway, and other locations, this coming year’s championship games will be hosted in Anchorage, Alaska. Beard Team USA is sadly less impressive than many other teams, but according to the World website, in 2007 “Upstart Beard Team USA mounted a serious challenge to the always dominant Germans, taking first in five categories.”

Burke Kenny
Olympia, Washington
Beard Team USA
(Kenny is “a former pizza delivery professional”)
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The Dalí category makes a great deal of sense if you’re familiar with pictures of the painter, one of which is below. Dalí not only dedicated paintings to his stache, he also created a book of his mustache with photographer Philippe Halsman.

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All of this made me curious about Guinness Book World Records, so I discovered Badamsinh Juwansinh Gurjar–the man designated in 2004 as winner of the world’s longest mustache. At that time his mustache was twelve and a half feet and he had not cut it for twenty-two years. Gurjar is pictured below.

Austin Kleon is a poet whose basic tools include a black marker and the New York Times rather than pen and paper. Kleon, recognized by NPR and Toronto’s National Post as an original, insightful poet with a fresh take on the world of poetry, has a blog featuring new poems every few days. Many are funny, some are weird, and a few are insightful. An interesting take on form and restrictions when there are so many debates going on in the poetry world about what constitutes avant-garde, whether there should be a return to traditional forms, and what the role of poetry is today–how relevant is it and how relevant it should be, what the act of poetry is (very controversial when you get people like Levertov saying that ‘writing the poem is the poet’s means of summoning the divine”).

Thanks go to Aaron for the discovery of Kleon.