Day: December 19, 2013

Nebraska: Lutheran Family Services partners with ‘big meat’ to bring change to small town

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment
Cargill, the largest employer in the county, gets its refugee laborers through Lutheran Family Services! Taxpayers foot the bill!

Ho hum!  Here we go again.  Why on earth are US taxpayers paying Lutheran Family Services to bring immigrant labor to meat packing towns in the heartland?  And, if you missed our posts the other day, here and here, about Noel, Missouri, maybe you don’t know that the federal contractors, like the Lutherans, are working side by side with the meat packers to get “comprehensive immigration reform” (S.744) through Congress.

Here is the news from the Schuyler Sun:

A growing, distinct group of people has been immigrating to the United States, and Nebraska, in the past few years.

They are refugees, escaping their homeland because of war, oppression or famine.

Two representatives from Lutheran Family Services spoke about Nebraska’s growing refugee population during the quarterly community forum held Dec. 12 at St. John’s Lutheran Church.

Lacey Studnicka, development officer for the community services program, said Schuyler is a good example of how a small town can help refugees looking to start a new life.  [This is a standard talking point—praise the  community for being “welcoming” before they have a chance to complain, or if they are already complaining it’s a way to make them feel guilty!—ed]

[…..]

These refugees come from all over the world, but recently, large populations coming to Nebraska have been from Burma and Bhutan, two countries located in southern Asia.

If you are wondering, the Bhutanese and most of the Burmese are not Muslims.  A few years back it was all the rage to bring Somali laborers for the meat packers, but when Somalis began striking and demanding religious accommodation on the job, the US State Department shifted to bringing in more Bhutanese and Burmese, I believe because they are more docile workers.

The ‘do-gooders’ at Lutheran Family Services depend almost exclusively on taxpayer dollars for anything they do for refugees!  These articles always make it sound like the Lutheran contractor is doing all of this out of private charity.

Lutheran Family Services gets two- to four-weeks notice before the refugees arrive in Nebraska. The organization provides the refugees with a foundation, including a furnished apartment and groceries.

Social security cards are obtained within the first 90 days, the adults receive job-placement services and schools are located for the children.

“Cargill has been a great partner!”

Studnicka gives credit to Cargill, which has helped immigrants and refugees make a life for themselves in the community.  [Oh yeh!  And, Cargill is doing all this out of the goodness of its corporate heart!—ed]

“We have seen a lot of growth,” Studnicka said. “Cargill has been a great partner.”

Lutheran Family Services is the largest refugee-resettlement agency in the state.

Last year was the organization’s busiest yet, with 478 refugees resettled in Omaha and 120 in Lincoln. Statewide, there were almost 1,000 refugees who came to Nebraska.

Read the whole article.

Lutheran Family Services gets paid by the US State Department to bring-’em in by the head. Cargill gets cheap reliable labor while the town and state get to support the immigrant families’ other needs (housing, education, food stamps, medical care).   It’s a great business model, wouldn’t you agree!

Photo is from Cargill’s website, here.

Immigrants moving out of cities to suburbs; Minnesota Somali example

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Census Bureau has a new tracking program (Census Explorer) which allows users to follow the demographic changes in cities and towns across America.  Here is what the Star Tribune reported on Tuesday (emphasis mine):

Yussuf Shafie admits it wasn’t easy being among the first Somali immigrants to arrive in Burnsville’s schools.

Yussuf Shafie opened his Burnsville African restaurant in 2012. Photo by John Gessner

“It wasn’t as diverse as it is today, I’ll tell you that. It was hard to communicate with peers and stuff.”

But now that there’s a “huge Somali population” in the area, he says, things are going swimmingly at his year-old Tawakal Restaurant in the suburb’s downtown. Nor is the place just for immigrants; it functions as an easy point of contact for all kinds of cultures.

“It’s open to everyone who has a wallet,” he cheerfully declares. “If you have a wallet, we can get along!”

He is part of what one analyst on Tuesday called a “dramatic shift” of immigrants out of the central cities after the U.S. Census Bureau released its latest batch of data tracing demographic change.

Burnsville and Eagan emerge among the state’s top 10 destinations for East Africans, while nearby Shakopee is among the leaders for Southeast Asians. Eden Prairie is the state’s leading home for immigrants from India.

“We recently did an analysis showing that every big minority group is now majority suburban,” said University of Minnesota demographer Will Craig.

[…..]

Those moves are visible in a new online mapping program the Census Bureau unveiled on Tuesday, called Census Explorer. The program allows people to easily trace key changes in their own neighborhoods from 1990 to 2000 to today.

Of course, as we learned years ago, the federal refugee resettlement contractors are actively seeking out smaller cities and towns for resettlement of third world refugees.  So, it isn’t necessarily some great spontaneous happening.  And, then there is the meatpacker-induced demographic change!

And, come to think of it, we have been told over and over again that immigrants are re-building the inner cities in places like Buffalo or Erie, PA, this news would indicate that is just a bunch of spin and that the immigrants want to get out of the cities as fast as they can.  This news also means that ‘Welcoming America’ (Tom Negri and David Lubell) are selling Cleveland a bill of goods when they want Cleveland to seek more immigrants to re-build that city.   Sure looks like the immigrants will be out of there soon too!

The photo is from Sun This Week, here.   Just FYI Burnsville has a new mosque too!