Month: December 2007

Are immigrants taking jobs natives want?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yes, at least that is what the British are experiencing these days (hat tip: Infinicat).   Here is an article in the London Daily Mail last week.

More than 100,000 young Britons may have been pushed into unemployment by the recent waves of economic immigrants from Eastern Europe, according to a new report by a leading economic thinktank.

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Since 1997, 1.5 million foreign workers have entered the British workplace, with many of these arriving from Eastern Europe in just the past three years, according to a report by the influential economic analysts, the Ernst & Young ITEM Club.

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During the same three years, the number of unemployed British 18 to 24 year olds has increased by 100,000.

Steven Camarata at the Center for Immigration Studies writing at Frontpage Magazine says the same thing is happening in America.

Shelbyville Bantu Background

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I missed this article in the Times-Gazette of Shelbyville, TN yesterday when I wrote about Somalis swarming to that city.  The extreme cultural adjustment problems of Somalis are ones we have heard about elsewhere.

The Bantu have enormous barriers to overcome in their introduction to American society. Their status as immigrants, their lack of English skills, illiteracy and the fact they possess no modern job skills, will only make the challenge that much harder.

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The Center [Cultural Orientation Resource Center] also states that resettlement professionals will have to deal with significant health care, sanitation, and social support issues relating to small children and mothers, pointing out that the Bantu use pit latrines and “are unfamiliar with typical American bathroom facilities and common sanitation items such as diapers and feminine care products.”

Somalis swarm to Shelbyville, TN

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The small town of Shelbyville, TN doesn’t know what hit them as about a thousand Somali refugees have arrived to work at Tyson’s Food.  Today the Times-Gazette  ran the first of a five-part series on the impact the Somalis are having on this Tennessee town.    The Somalis are part of waves of secondary migration of the African Muslim refugees brought to America by the US State Department with the help of volags (mostly church groups in this case) that have rocked small American cities over the last few years.   Lewiston, ME, Manchester, NH and most recently Emporia, KS have had to come to grips with Somalis who can now apply to bring more family members to the US.

According to Regina Surber, director of community services in Tennessee for the Department of Human Services (DHS), some of the Somali refugee arrivals to the area are direct resettlement clients while others may be “secondary migrants” who were originally resettled in other states and / or other parts of Tennessee.

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“What happens most often in new resettlement communities is that the first to move there are newly arriving refugees, who, after becoming familiar with the area, encourage their relatives and friends to join them,” she said.

I commend the Times-Gazette for this straightforward report on how Refugee Resettlement works.  Our newspaper, The Herald-Mail in Hagerstown, MD, steadfastly refused to even tell the public how the program works and as a result we publish Refugee Resettlement Watch to help other communities know what’s coming.

Note that the Times-Gazette has a forum for commenting at the end of today’s article.

Also, check our earlier post about the Tennessee Somali allegedly involved in a government funding scam.