My question is, so how much of the governor’s enthusiasm for refugees is because the meat and poultry industry in Nebraska has gotten addicted to cheap LEGAL immigrant labor?
There isn’t much different here than in dozens of sobs stories in recent days (that I can’t keep up with) about Refugee Resettlement contracting agencies having to reduce staff as the number of refugees arriving in the US begins to slow.
‘Religious charities,’ helping to supply BIG MEAT with laborers, are paid by the head (from the US Treasury) to seed refugees into your towns, and so obviously their money is drying up.
Nebraska was on my summer tour of states where meatpackers and poultry plants are changing the face of heartland towns with their greedy desire for cheap labor. Humanitarianism is only the cover!
Be sure to see Bloomberg’s ‘Big Meat Braces for a Refugee Shortage.’ I wrote about it here.
By the way, it is a fabulous business model for BIG MEAT (BIG TURKEY! BIG CHICKEN!) because US taxpayers bring the laborers directly to them, they pay wages much lower than they did 20 years ago, ‘religious charities’ get them settled in town, and then the refugee families’ lives are subsidized by taxpayers again in the form of social services (aka welfare).
This is the sob story from the Lincoln Journal Star yesterday:
Two of Nebraska’s three refugee resettlement agencies are cutting back their staffs in the wake of President Donald Trump’s executive order on immigration.
Lutheran Family Services of Nebraska, the largest of the three, announced Friday that it will eliminate 15 jobs in anticipation of a significant decline in refugee arrivals. Six of those jobs are in Lincoln.
Omaha’s Refugee Empowerment Center has also experienced cutbacks.
[….]
Trump’s order reduced the overall number of refugees allowed into the U.S. this year from 110,000 to 50,000. [Here we go with the bs again. Obama only wished for 110,000 in the year he would no longer be in office, 50,000 is still higher than 4 of George W. Bush’s years!—-ed]
That will have a significant impact in Nebraska, which led the nation in the number of refugees it accepted per capita last fiscal year.
[….]
The president clamped down on refugee resettlement and other travel into the U.S. following a wave of questions, mostly from Republicans, about the vetting process for refugees from Syria and other war-torn Middle East countries.
Gov. Pete Ricketts has said he supports Trump’s efforts to “strengthen security screening in the refugee process” but urged the White House to “quickly put new vetting processes in place, so we can continue to safely welcome refugees from all parts of the world.”
Continue reading here.
I fear that with everyone focusing on the security screening that most Republicans, who are driven by corporate donations and Chambers of Commerce, will not have any desire to reform this program with its huge economic and cultural costs.
Grassroots investigators should be looking for evidence that your elected officials are being lobbied by, or funded by, the meat and poultry giants in your states.
See our Nebraska archive by clicking here. Note the problems Nebraska has with TB in the migrant population there.