Thanks to Joanne for sending this story about supposed discrimination against non-English speaking workers at O’Hare airport in Chicago.
Before you read it consider these points:
~The ‘star’ of this story and his Rohingya Muslim fellow worker are ‘boat people’ who arrived in Malaysia, likely with no papers, and only stories about abuse in Burma, or possibly Bangladesh. We brought them as refugees to America.*** So while Congress and others focus their energy on Syrian refugees who CANNOT be thoroughly screened, we admit Rohingya Muslims who have been wandering all over Southeast Asia and we don’t know who they are either!
~This article describes a growing practice of hiring Muslim refugees in airports!
~While there is squawking about companies, like the airplane cleaning company, using non-English speaking workers with suggestions they are being cheated, there is no suggestion that the notorious union SEIU is also using them for its purposes!
~We have admitted (Wrapsnet.org) 13,500 Rohingya Muslims during the Obama Administration. 543 arrived in the last three months.
Here is the news at DNAinfo:
WEST RIDGE — A Rohingya refugee who immigrated to the U.S. two years ago from war-torn Myanmar hoped he would find opportunity and a second chance by settling in Chicago, with a job at O’Hare. Instead, Amir Hussin Bin Mohamadur Rahman has found himself at the center of a workers rights struggle unfolding within Chicago’s labor force.
Rahman, 25, got a job shortly after his arrival in June 2015 with Scrub, Inc., a company that employs workers who clean the cabins of planes after flights.
That relationship ended in late November after Rahman publicly rallied alongside Service Employees International Union members and other airport workers in a one-day strike with the “Fight For $15” minimum wage campaign.
Rahman also spoke out at an employee meeting advocating for Scrub, Inc. workers to unionize, an act he alleges led to his firing.
[….]
At different times, Rahman and Ahmad made their way to Malaysia before immigrating to the U.S. and resettling in the Rogers Park/West Ridge area where an established Rohinga refugee community exists. [It exists because the US State Department and a refugee contractor place them there. Just what Chicago needs (poor refugees competing with poor Americans for jobs)—ed]
Continue reading here.
***We have an extensive archive on Rohingya resettlement, click here (193 posts).