Update: Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit reports today that the percentage of young people (ages 16-24) working this summer is the lowest ever, here.
For those of you who are going to wonder what this has to do with refugees, I’ll tell you right now. The unemployment rate for refugees is probably around 50%. Of course that’s a guess because the Office of Refugee Resettlement is several years behind with the facts on that, but here you have the US State Department in charge of refugees and at the same time importing competition for the refugees (and for Americans desperate to work) in a nightmare job market (Just in: new jobless claims rise!)
This belongs in a not-yet-created-but-needed category called OMG! Can you believe it—the US State Department has a program known as the J-1 Visa that allows 120,000 foreign students to come to the US to work! This when AMERICAN KIDS HAVE NO SUMMER JOBS!
How did I learn about this? That d*** SEIU (Service Employees International Union) and another “guest worker” union have encouraged FOREIGN students to strike at the Hershey Chocolate plant in Pennsylvania! And, now SEIU is sending out a plea for money—to be sent to SEIU—to help the kids! This is what SEIU is saying in an urgent e-mail today:
Against all odds, students working for the famous chocolate factory in Hershey, Pennsylvania have gone on strike to fight back against the company’s predatory practices and to win fair wages.
Their story has inspired national attention and a State Department investigation, but since many of them make $8 an hour (with “program fees” and rent automatically dedicated) they’re running out of time and on the verge of being unable to afford basic necessities: food and rent.
The students need to raise $15,000 to keep up the fight, and the SEIU family can help them. [What! no money and SEIU will walk away?]
Here is what the New York Times said about the “strike” just this week.
About 400 foreign students are working at the Palmyra plant under a summer cultural exchange program for work and travel offered by the State Department. About 120,000 students come to the United States each year on what are known as J-1 visas, which allow them to work for several months and then travel for a month as tourists. Their employment is organized by some 52 nonprofit sponsoring agencies in this country.
The students at the packing plant, who came from China, Romania, Ukraine, Nigeria and other nations, were employed through one of those agencies, the Council for Educational Travel, U.S.A., based in California.
The students protested that they were forced to continuously lift boxes of candy weighing more than 50 pounds and work on night shifts beginning at 11 p.m. on production lines moving too fast for them to keep up. They said that after the council deducted as much as $400 a month from their paychecks for rent, they did not earn enough to cover their expenses or to afford to travel, or even to earn back the up to $6,000 many had paid to obtain the visas.
[….]
Most of the students returned to their jobs in recent days, according to a spokeswoman for Exel, the logistics company that operates the plant for Hershey’s.
Several dozen of them wore armbands as a way to continue their protest inside the plant. A small group of students did not return to work but will go on tours in Pennsylvania and New York organized by labor unions.
“There’s nothing wrong with paid vacations, but a paid vacation won’t cover up the truth” that Hershey knew, condoned and benefited from the low-wage labor of the students, said Saket Soni, executive director of the National Guestworker Alliance, a labor group that helped the students organize their protest.
What is the National Guestworker Alliance?* Who did the students pay $6000 to? Who are these non-profit groups that arrange to help bring foreign kids while your kids wish they had a job! And, whose brilliant idea is this whole thing?
Most importantly, who makes sure these “kids” leave the country when their time is up?
* Check them out here—it’s all about evil Hershey’s Chocolates! And, you know what else is funny? They are located in New Orleans, isn’t that where ACORN and all its spin-offs were located too?