Day: November 13, 2008

Ft. Morgan, CO: Let’s be just like Minneapolis!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yippee!   Representatives of Ft. Morgan and Greeley, CO traveled to Minnesota recently to see the wonderous things that immigrants have brought to that “international” city.  Ft. Morgan has a newly acquired flood of Somali refugee workers thanks to the local Cargill meatpacking plant.  Greeley has hundreds too compliments of Swift & Co meatpacking.  From the Ft. Morgan Times:

Immigrant integration workers returned from Minnesota this week with a more optimistic view of the future.

OneMorgan County Coordinator Brenda Zion said the Minnesota efforts to help immigrants assimilate to America hold out great hope for Morgan County.

She took a trip to greater Minneapolis and several agencies this week along with Karen Liston, an English as a Second Language teacher with the Fort Morgan School District, and others from Greeley, Zion said.

It may seem surprising, but Minneapolis is a pretty international city, she said.

It began dealing with an influx of Hispanics and Somalis many years ago, which has given it experience to share with other cities, Zion said.

The article in the Ft. Morgan Times goes on to gush about all the enviable programs and amenities that Minneapolis has in addition to its international flavor.  It has “multicultural services,” “integration navigators,” English and citizenship classes, and a Somali mall and a “global market.”  

It even has a what—a budding Sharia law center to settle disputes:

The Confederation of the Somali Community acts as a community center and works to help settle disputes that arise when cultures clash, Zion said.

The Ft. Morgan Times article gushes on.   However, it doesn’t mention that a large number of the Somalis they are welcoming to Ft. Morgan are illegal aliens according to the State Department yesterday.

Not a word about Minneapolis Somali gangs (just think, Ft. Morgan, you can have community meetings someday to discuss what to do about the Somali murder rate).  Not a word about voter irregularity in the Somali community of Minneapolis.  Not a word about the cost to towns like Emporia, KS incurred when it expanded services and then the nomadic Somalis moved on.  Not a word about how the Somalis have been harrassing the mayor of Grand Island, NE.  Not a word about polygamy in the Somali community.  Not a word about such issues as TB (remember the Somali who died at Tyson’s in Emporia from TB).  Not a word about the controversy over the Muslim “public” school illegally teaching religion.  Not a word about the second class treatment of women (right there in Ft. Morgan). Not a word about Somali lawsuits against employers.  The list actually goes on, I just got tired of putting in links!

The Ft. Morgan Times is doing an injustice to its citizens.   This one-sided report is why the mainstream media, including the print media, is increasingly disregarded.   People deserve to hear all the facts about what is happening in their community, not just the cherry-picked facts from the multiculturalism-is-grand elitists.

For more background see our whole category on the Greeley, Grand Island, Ft. Morgan Somali issue here.

Somalis move with meatpacking jobs, leave towns in a lurch

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Your tax dollars:

If you are a longtime reader of RRW, you will remember how Emporia, KS struggled with a flood of Somali refugees who came to town for jobs at the local Tyson’s meatpacking plant.   Fort Morgan, CO, take note.

In an effort to do good by all the refugees who had no education and didn’t speak English, a program was set up at the local community college to give free classes to help them advance their education.  Then Tyson’s pulled the plug on the plant and moved its Somali (mostly illegal as we learned yesterday) workforce to another unsuspecting town.   The taxpayers are left holding the bag for this program as well as an expansion of the local health department.  I bet they had also hired extra ESL teachers for the public elementary and high schools.

From the Emporia Gazette (Hat tip: Bluelitespecial):

One response the program had was to develop a pre-GED Adult Beginning Education class. “We knew that they were going to leave us, but we wanted them to leave us with very specific, transferable job skills,” Ortiz [Kelsey Ortiz the programs director] said. “We actually have two new computer labs that are up and running” for the office skills emphasis of the program. “… The whole idea is, we want you to leave knowing that you’re a lifelong learner and that you have skills that you can use in whatever you want to use.”

According to grant projections, the program is trying to enroll 320 participants for Fiscal Year 2009, with 221 of them advancing one educational level within one year of study. In FY 2008 there were 106 students, “and right now we’re down to about 76,” Ortiz said, a drop of 29 percent. “Some of that is just that we’re in a rebuilding phase over the last two years because of what’s happened” with the Somali workers who left after the Tyson closing. According to Ortiz, the program lost 70 to 100 Somali students.

I have a reform idea.  How about all these meatpackers and other big businesses that are bringing in cheap foreign labor be required to educate them right at the facility at the companies expense.

For background on Emporia, KS see our category on that town here.