Day: October 16, 2008

Mainstream media discovers the Somali meatpacker conflict

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

First it was the New York Times this morning and now it appears that USA Today is in on the action.  In this case, I really am glad the mainstream media reporters are a bunch of sheep.

“Prayer leads to work disputes” in USA Today doesn’t add a whole lot of new information from what we have been telling you for a month or so now, but check out the photo of one of the Somalis planning to file a complaint.  

Abdi Mohamed, 28, came to the USA as a refugee from Somalia a year ago. For most of his eight months at the Grand Island plant, his boss let him slip away for seven minutes at sunset to pray in the locker room, allowing him to balance his job cutting beef with a tenet of Islam.

“Anytime I’m not (praying), I’m damaging my relationship with God,” he says through a translator.

Mohamed, who lost his job Sept. 19, says he plans to file a discrimination complaint. “We are refugees to this country,” he says, “and now we are made to be refugees within America.”

That is one mean looking dude on the right.  The complaint filer must be the one on the left.  If anyone has a little investigation time, I bet the one on the right (the mean dude) is one of the community organizers.  Could it be mouthpiece Graen Isse?

By the way, hurry on over to USA Today  where a lot of hot comments are flying around on this story.  Once before when USA Today did something controversial about refugees the comments were very quickly yanked.

For new readers there are a couple of posts you need to check out.   The first is our research on how many Somalis have been admitted to the US by the State Department here.   And, the other is that as a result of DNA testing that showed that 80% of East Africans (including Somalis) trying to enter the US through the family reunification part of refugee resettlement were committing fraud, the program is presently suspended.

Somali conflicts in meatpacking towns make the New York Times

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update October 17th:   Read all the comments at the NYT about this article here.

Update:  I have been out all morning and in my travels I picked up today’s New York Times (only the second copy I’ve bought in years) and this Somali story is on the front page ABOVE THE FOLD.  Amazing!

 

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this link at the Religion of Peace blog this morning.  It is from the New York Times of all places and it’s a pretty thorough discussion of the tension growing in small town America over the arrival of Somali refugees.   The article entitled, “Somali influx unsettles Latino meatpackers” begins:

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. — Like many workers at the meatpacking plant here, Raul A. Garcia, a Mexican-American, has watched with some discomfort as hundreds of Somali immigrants have moved to town in the past couple of years, many of them to fill jobs once held by Latino workers taken away in immigration raids.

Mr. Garcia has been particularly troubled by the Somalis’ demand that they be allowed special breaks for prayers that are obligatory for devout Muslims. The breaks, he said, would inconvenience everyone else.

“The Latino is very humble,” said Mr. Garcia, 73, who has worked at the plant, owned by JBS U.S.A. Inc., since 1994. “But they are arrogant,” he said of the Somali workers. “They act like the United States owes them.”

Read it all, it is choke full of all sorts of interesting information.    The only thing missing is any discussion about the US State Department’s role in bringing all the Somalis here in the first place.  See our numbers post here.

And, just as I said in many previous posts, the Somalis have brought in community organizers to try to tamp down the multicultural anger toward the demanding Somalis!

Xawa Ahmed, 48, a Somali, moved to Grand Island from Minnesota last month to help organize the Somali community. A big part of her work, Ms. Ahmed said, will be to help demystify the Somalis who remain.

The New York Times needs to ask the follow-up question.  Who is paying these community organizers?