Right Rachel... these folks don't know much about racism or poverty. Life in America is really going to smack them in the face, isn't it?
Yes, totally. The phrasing is awful, sure, but it's safe to say that the refugees have a highly idealistic view of what their life is going to be like in the West. They are illiterate farmers with zero education, conservative Muslims, very very traditional.. And they think everyone in the US is rich and happy and there's always work for men and so on. Being the poorest of the poor in the US may be an improvement on absolute poverty, but it's probably no picnic either.
I've been at that Kenyan refugee camp, carried out my MSc thesis work there. The Somali Bantu were a fun group to interview, they would listen to my interpretor speaking Somali but the older people would refuse to speak any Somali words, so I needed another interpretor to translate from Maay Maay to Somali.. They really were treated like cattle before, I think slavery in Somalia was outlawed in 1940s by the Italian colonialists.