Month: January 2008

As Lionheart goes, so go we

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update 1/30/08:   Gates of Vienna blog has up-to-date news on Lionheart, calls him ‘canary in the coal mine for western free speech’ here.   Don’t miss audio of Lionheart on a US radio station.

I’ve written lately about the importance of keeping our free speech and that proliferating blogs is the way for just regular people to defend and keep that important freedom.   As I said, it’s like the gun issue, if we all have one it will be harder for them to strip our rights.

I don’t have time to do the post justice this morning, but please read Us or Them blog here on the case of British blogger Lionheart who is on the run from British police for speaking his mind on his blog.   He said similar things to what I posted the other day about the Nadia Convenience store raid in our county, and has thus broken the law in his native England. 

Iraqis arriving in Manchester, NH

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

According to the Manchester Union Leader today, New Hampshire will be getting a new wave of refugees beginning with Iraqis and followed by Burundians. 

Eight Iraqi refugees, including two physicians, will fly from Turkey to New Hampshire this week to rebuild their lives nearly 6,000 miles from their war-battered homeland.

_______

They will receive medical check-ups, tuberculosis tests, English training and food stamps to help get them started in their new world. In return, they are expected to get a job within 4 1/2 months and eventually pay back their airfare to America.

_______

They are part of the first wave of Iraqi refugees fleeing the war to land in New Hampshire.

The article goes on to report that Manchester has had its share of refugees since the Refugee Act of 1980 went into effect.

 Since 1980, more than 5,000 refugees — roughly the population of Auburn or New Boston — have been resettled in Manchester from a variety of countries.

But the article was strangely silent on the ruckus that occured there a few years ago when residents of the city went ballistic when Somali Bantu arrived there in large numbers.  I guess the refugee agencies have figured that the city had calmed down enough to bring more refugees.   The article says the Iraqis are well educated, many speak English and had been translators (uh oh!), but the Burundians have lived in camps since 1972.

One thing is for sure, if the Iraqi doctors aren’t happy with America, like those Iraqis who have gone to Arizona, they won’t be getting a ticket home anytime soon.

“They left their houses, they left family members, they’re coming to a new culture,” he [Nabil Migalli, chairman of the Arab-American Forum]* said. “Will they go back to Iraq? Maybe some people might want to go back to Iraq. The situation doesn’t allow that to happen immediately or in the near future.”

 No indeed, Mr. Migalli, there is work to be done here in America.

*Who is Nabil Migalli?  According to New Hampshire magazine he is IT for 2007.

New Hampshire Magazine’s it List: Consider it the guest list for the best cocktail party ever. The 2007 It List is our selection of the 34 most interesting, happening, talked about people in the state. If you got these folks all in the same room, no telling what would transpire, but you can bet it wouldn’t be boring.

I bet he would be the life of the party if he explained over cocktails (no cocktails thank you!), this bit from a letter his Arab-American Forum of New Hampshire signed when it joined International ANSWER in 2004.

In the United States, we, Arab-Americans and Muslims have been maliciously targeted, stripped of our rights, and positioned outside the constitutional framework of this country. A new COINTELPRO has been unleashed against our homes and living rooms, as our fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters are plucked away and thrown into unknown prison cells.

Malicious targeting!  Stripped of rights!  Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters thrown into unknown prison cells.  AAAAAH, say it isn’t so, not in the Live Free or Die state! 

So, lets get this straight, Mr. Migalli, why then are you so eager to bring Iraqi refugees to this hell-hole of a country?

Another story about Iraqis trying to adjust to America

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update 1/31/08:   A refugee advocate from Arizona wrote a critical letter to the editor at Time.  See her letter here.

Time magazine this week has a story about Iraqi refugees trying to adjust to America — the country where they thought every car was new and everyone was rich.   Instead they find roach infested apartments and menial work.   We reported on a similar article in the Washington Post a couple of months ago.  Here is how the Time article begins:

There are moments when Faeza Jaber wants to pick up Khattab, her 7-year-old son, and flee back to Baghdad. Life in Phoenix is proving harder than she had expected. She needs a job that will pay her rent–not easy for a 48 year-old single mother with basic English and little local experience. Then there are a number of smaller challenges that, taken together, can seem insurmountable for a woman who has never previously lived away from her homeland–where to find day care for Khattab, how to decipher utility bills, what to do about her car that’s been towed away. Just the thought of more logistics is daunting. “My head is tired,” she says, her voice shaking. “All these papers. In America, a woman must be a man.” So sometimes she dreams of going back to Baghdad, where she knows the language and the streets and has friends and family–and where the men do the paperwork.

Read it, its just another in a long line of stories about refugees whose expectations of America have not been realized.   Makes you wonder who is preparing them for the culture shock.

My dream to be a meat packer

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Just happened to come across this website called “Colorado Confidential” with an article about African refugees who dream of jobs in meat packing.   And, for those who want to get a broader view of what goes on behind the scenes in refugee resettlement its a good overall article.   But, in light of what happened yesterday at Tyson’s Food in Emporia, KS, I wonder if there needs to be a reassessment of the job prospects in that industry.

Omar, 23, also from Somalia, spent nearly five years as a refugee in Nepal* before finally being resettled in Colorado. He arrived in mid-December. Once he gets a Social Security number, Omar plans to move to Greeley for a job at the Swift meat-processing plant, where wages start at about $10 an hour.

* A side issue:   What was Omar doing in Nepal?  It’s not exactly next door to Somalia and in fact it’s on another continent!

This was interesting in the article too.

Krassin Gueorguiev is program coordinator and lead teacher at the Spring Institute for Intercultural Learning, which has offered WorkStyles, an intensive course on American employment culture for refugees and asylees, for 25 years. Gueorguiev says many refugees arrive with a utopian image of life in the United States, and the reality – that most of them barely scrape by – is a hard slap.

The Spring Institute is the same outfit that was involved in settling the Somalis in Emporia, KS, so will they go back there now and help them find new employment?    On the Spring Institute’s Form 990 it states that “Grants are received from the federal as well as local governments to assist foreign students to work with US companies.”     At least $900,000 was received as a government contract in FY 2006.  You are paying for this.

As for the last line in the quote above:  “utopian image of life in the United States.”   I discussed that increasing problem in yesterday’s post on Bhutan.  Guess they got a hard slap in Emporia yesterday.

Here’s a shocker for you: Tyson’s meat packing plant in Emporia to close

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

 Update 1/28/08:  To get a feel for what is happening in Emporia, where the shock is barely settling in with residents, read these four articles and the comments from the Emporia Gazette (here, here, here and here).

Update 1/29/08:    American Congress for Truth blog has a post on the Emporia situation today here. Post says Somalis plan to leave Emporia.

We have been writing for several months about the fact that the Tyson’s meat packing plant in Emporia, KS had been bringing hundreds of Somali workers (400 by one count) and their families to this Kansas city causing a culture clash of some magnitude.   As a matter of fact, we have a whole category (over 20 posts) here at RRW addressing that controversy.

Now comes the news, out of the blue and late on a Friday, that Tyson’s will lay off 1500 workers at that plant.

Beef slaughter operations will cease within the next few weeks. However, the facility will still be used as a cold storage and distribution warehouse and will process ground beef.

_________

The discontinuation of slaughter operations will result in the elimination of approximately 1,500 of the 2,400 jobs currently provided at the Emporia plant.

I’ve wondered on previous occasions what happens to refugees and towns flooded with immigrants if the economy starts to tank.  It is already difficult enough I’m told to find work for unskilled laborers such as the Somalis, where will they go now?    Will they stay in Emporia on welfare?  Or, move with Tyson’s to another unsuspecting city?  Time will tell.

Affected workers will continue to be paid and receive benefits for 60 days. Tyson Human Resources representatives will begin meeting with them next week to discuss other employment opportunities within the company. The workers will be encouraged to consider transferring to other Tyson locations, such as company beef facilities at Finney County, Kansas; Dakota City and Lexington, Nebraska; and Joslin, Illinois.

Come to think of it, didn’t Tyson’s representatives only about two months ago lecture the people of Emporia to welcome these newcomers to their city, that the Somalis were now part of the community?