Actually this shouldn’t be titled as I have it above, it should be “Baltimore Sun Pimps for Business”.   I asked these questions a few days ago when I posted about Louisville, KY and its huge immigrant population:  is refugee resettlement being driven by the need for business to import immigrant labor?  Is this about depressing wages of low income workers?   Is this about having a captive work force partially supported by the taxpayer?  Are these humanitarian groups making themselves feel good while knowingly or unknowingly abetting big business interests?  It sure looks like it.

Here is just one of several quotes from The Sun about how happy employers of low-skilled labor are about refugees:

“To be honest with you, we’ve had a hard time finding people who want to work here from the Hagerstown area,” said Cheryl Eyler of Parker Plastics, who has hired about eight refugees. “The refugees have a great work ethic. They’re here every day, they don’t call in sick and they work hard. … They’re extremely thankful for having a job.”

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Eyler currently has a few openings for $10- to $11-an-hour packing jobs. She would like to hire more refugees, she said, but now that is unlikely.

Of course, now I’m wondering who encouraged all these factory, warehouse, distribution employers to come to Hagerstown without first asking where the labor force was going to come from?  Do we change the way we live to oil the machinery of big business? 

Refugee Resettlement needs to be reformed and as a first step the Refugee Act of 1980 needs to be updated with an amendment requiring a social and economic impact study of a city or town PRIOR to the arrival of refugees.