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.