Update September 15th: Chris Coen of Friends of Refugees, who legitimately watches out for the well-being of refugees by keeping an eye on volags (non-profit government contractors), the State Department, and others in the refugee resettlement industry, left the following comment to this Chicago article:
Has anyone asked why 17 refugees are living crammed into a three-bedroom apartment in Chicago’s North Side? Although Dr. Ed Silverman who heads Illinois’s Bureau of Refugee and Immigrant Services claims not to like Tyson recruiting Burmese to leave Chicago, what is he doing to help refugees in Chicago find jobs that can support their families? Does he have any concern for refugees living in squalid, cramped conditions? It has been my experience that Dr. Silverman advocates for as many refugees as he can get into Chicago irrespective of the number of jobs that can support them, or the complete lack of appropriately sized and affordable apartments in Chicago that are available for these families. Christopher Coen Friends of Refugees Minneapolis FORefugees@hotmail.com
Learn more about how Friends of Refugees came into existence—in Chicago of all places here.
Here is an article from Chicago about how meatpackers across the country are now recruiting refugees. If you have been following this blog for the last year, you are probably scratching your head and wondering why this is news.
The differance in this story though is that Tyson’s, and others probably, are now recruiting Burmese Karen Christian workers (no religious accommodation demands!) and some refugee resettlement advocates are expressing concern for the well-being of those newest refugees desparate for work.
A lot of the meat and poultry on U.S. dinner tables is cut and packaged by undocumented immigrants. But federal enforcement is shaking things up. Many packinghouses are turning to a different pool of cheap laborers. These workers have immigration papers. They’re war refugees. In Chicago, Arkansas-based Tyson Foods has been recruiting Burmese refugees to work in plants as far away as Kansas. The Burmese desperately need jobs. But it’s not clear they know what they’re getting in to.
Read the whole story, which by the way mentions meatpackers first recruiting Somalis and Bosnians, and consider that we are bringing one and a half million immigrants into the US each year, so no wonder unemployment is climbing. It is the elephant in the living room that neither Presidential campaign acknowledges.