Large swaths of the refugee/immigrant labor force that came to America (or who were brought here by the federal government) to provide a ready supply of cheap labor for giant global corporations are still sick or are afraid to return to work in the meatpacking industry.
The Chinese virus has exposed a great vulnerability not just for the companies, but for the future of the country. Any intelligent company will now begin to see the need to move faster toward automationand then what happens to the literally millions of immigrant workers with no skills and no English to learn new skills.
Reutersthis week canvassed some of the BIG MEAT companies and reports that meat production is still not returning to its former capacity. Workers are sick or scared to return to work.
Notice how they even have to put Trump into this story headline, as if Trump’s order had anything to do with the continued problems of an industry that was not forward thinking.
Meatpacking workers often absent after Trump order to reopen
[Chinese owned] Smithfield Foods Inc [SFII.UL] is missing about a third of its employees at a South Dakota pork plant because they are quarantined or afraid to return to work after a severe coronavirus outbreak, according to the workers’ union.
Tyson Foods Inc (TSN.N) was forced to briefly close its Storm Lake, Iowa plant – a month after U.S. President Donald Trump’s April 28 order telling meatpackers to stay open – as worker absences hobbled its slaughter operations.
Nationwide, 30% to 50% of meatpacking employees were absent last week, said Mark Lauritsen, a vice president at the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW).
[….]
Infections have risen steadily in rural counties that are home to large meatpacking plants since Trump ordered them to stay open. At least 15 meatpacking counties now report a higher infection rate, on a per capita basis, than New York City, the virus’s epicenter – though that is likely a reflection of the extensive testing of workers and local residents along with elevated infection rates.
More than a dozen meatpacking workers, union leaders and advocates told Reutersthat many employees still fear getting sick after losing confidence in management during coronavirus outbreaks in April and May. Absenteeism varies by plant, and exact data is not available, but some workers’ unwillingness to return poses a challenge to an industry still struggling to restore normal meat output.
In a report about refugees working in food processing in Abilene, Texas we see the same story.
If you have been wondering why Texas is still the number one destination of new refugees being admitted to the US (even as politicians there SAY they want it stopped), it is because of companies like this one that employs large numbers of immigrant/refugee laborers while changing the social and cultural makeup of American cities.
The article atFood & Environment Reporting Networkbegins with the usual refugee sob story. They must teach that in Journalism 101—soften up readers to the plight of the poor____ (fill in the blank)!
The story is long. It explains in detail the problems with a work force that is uneducated and living in close proximity to each other.
The pandemic is just the latest threat faced by refugee food workers in Texas
Lawi’s dilemma is one that many workers around the world are facing. But former refugees like Lawi can be particularly vulnerable in this pandemic.
Mfaume Lawi (with family) was brought to Texas from the DR Congo by the International Rescue Committee to work for the food processing company.
Many former refugees are from rural parts of their home countries and had limited access to education. They might not read or write in their home languages, which makes it even harder to try to learn to read and write in English; they might only speak their own dialects, and their work experience is often constrained by the opportunities in overcrowded refugee camps where the average wait time to leave is close to 30 years.
A lack of education, work experience, and English language skills have made it especially hard for many former refugees to understand the scope of the pandemic and follow advice on social distancing.
Building ethnic enclaves is part of the problem….
Even without a pandemic, resettlement can present what feel like insurmountable obstacles. But agencies work to keep families and people of similar diaspora together because of their shared language and past, so they can quickly feel like extended family. Still, the fact that the community is often together—living in apartments near each other, spending time in each other’s homes outside of work—can be deadly in a pandemic.
Former refugees make up about 20 percent of the workforce at the AbiMar Foods plant. Because of that high number, the company’s outbreak was also a refugee-community issue. The close-knit nature of the community meant that those early days were especially crucial to stop the spread.
Bottomline, any smart company will be moving to mechanization and America will be left dealing with hundreds of thousands of refugees admitted in recent years who have no skills and little opportunity to gain any.
The Obama Administration told the UN in 2014 that we would be ‘welcoming’ 50,000 from the DR Congo over the subsequent five years.
We have now surpassed that number by at least 10,000. See here in late 2019 we were at 58,999!
As World Refugee Day approaches on June 20th, expect to see more stories like this one about the plight of a growing number of refugees (they are always growing, so nothing new there!) whose movement is blocked not by racist border restrictions, but by the Chinese Virus that has closed borders since late March.
On March 22nd the United Nations, with its branch called the International Organization for Migration that facilitates refugee travel, shut down almost all refugee movement.
Indeed it had to because 150 countries have closed their borders completely or have strict requirements for movement across them.
I had been wondering if the UN is restarting the flow, but apparently not.
The story atStuffis mostly about New Zealand that had just begun in earnest to ‘welcome’ the third world when COVID began its deadly spread.
But, here are a couple of bits that interested me besides learning that the UN continues to be responsible for the moratorium, not Donald Trump as I see most days in the US media.
Scores of refugees in limbo as quota system in holding pattern due to Covid-19
As we approach World Refugee Day on June 20 we have the highest number of refugees worldwide than ever before.
According to the latest UNHCR figures, there are 70.8 million forcibly displaced people, including more than 41 million internally displaced people and 25 million refugees.
Only 1 per cent of those 25 million refugees are resettled. That number is now at zero because of Covid-19.
More than 150 countries have closed their borders or put in border restrictions.
The vast majority of them have no exceptions for people claiming asylum.
They have no exceptions for refugees who need to flee their countries because of persecution, human rights abuses or war to be able to bypass border restrictions connected to Covid-19.
Flow of money is stopping too!
Rarely do we hear about the amount of money that refugees and migrants send HOME from the country where they have migrated to—money lost to the host country’s economy.
Migrant workers would not able to send money home to support their families and communities in their countries. The economic impact on those migrant workers and the decline in their livelihoods is going to have a massive impact on remittances, he adds.
“Latest figures are that remittances will go down $100 billion globally.”
When I saw this headline (below) this morning, I figured this was it—COVID-19 was running like a “wildfire” through the largest refugee camp in the world—Cox’s Bazar—where reports say that a million “vulnerable” Muslim Rohingya live check to jowl in filthy conditions—a prime location for coronavirus “carnage.”
As COVID-19 deaths rise in Cox’s Bazar, is increased testing enough?
Regular readers know that I have been following the dire warnings now for months about the “catastrophe” the international humanitarian community and the mainstream media has been predicting for Cox’s Bazar and other large refugee camps around the world.
Described by the mainstream media as a “tinderbox,” no social distancing is possible at Cox’s Bazar refugee camp for Rohingya Muslims
See my previous post hereabout the first Chinese Virus death in the camp.
Now here is the story about how the deaths have been rising (remember the first case of Covid was reported a month ago)—rising to two!
MANILA — Bangladesh has reported a second death due to COVID-19 in the Rohingya refugee community in Cox’s Bazar on Tuesday along with five new positive cases.
[….]
Bangladesh has put areas of Cox’s Bazar on lockdown over the weekend. Cases in the district have gone over 1,000, according to the latest government data. However, only a small percentage comes from the refugee community in Cox’s Bazar, where 35 cases have been reported to date since the first one was confirmed last May 14.
So much for modeling out of Johns Hopkins!
An earlier modeling analysis by Johns Hopkins University in March projected that a single case there could lead to an estimated 119-504 cases under a low- to high-transmission scenario in the first 30 days.
“The numbers are not rising as we had feared. However, all the conditions are present for an extremely serious situation for one of the most marginalized people groups in the world,” Matt Ellingson, director of relief and humanitarian affairs at Food for the Hungry, told Devex last week.
We will be watching and reporting on this important test area for the value (or lack of value) of social distancing.
The best way to see my previous posts on the virus at Cox’s Bazar is to see my Rohingya Reports categorywhere I have archived all of my posts for the last dozen years about Rohingya refugees.
When I first started writing RRW now almost 13 years ago, I originally (naively) assumed, as so many newbies do to the issue of refugee resettlement, that we actually admitted refugees for a few years, helped them get educated while protecting them from some threat in Africa (or wherever) and that they then went home.
I quickly learned how wrong I was and that refugees admitted to the US under the US Refugee Admissions Program were here to stay.
However, now, in light of the rage being demonstrated against America, by not just African-Americans, but by unhappy refugees and unhappy and angry so-called ‘Dreamers’ from south of the border (see my post just now at ‘Frauds and Crooks’), maybe the idea of just going home and fixing one’s own native land is an excellent idea whose time has come.
The leadership of the African country of Ghana has launched a ‘Come Home’ movement that should be appealing to many who say white America is a racist land!
And, I am not trying to be funny or provocative here.
This is an idea that should be widely promoted. For those who find America an unhappy place, please take your skills, your talents, your education and your industry and return to your native country (or the country of your heritage) and work to make it better.
Ghana Invites African Americans to ‘Come Home’ in Wake of U.S. Protests
Ghana, considered a gateway of the brutal slave trade to the United States that began more than 400 years ago, is urging “unwanted” Americans of African heritage to resettle within its borders in the wake of the police killing of Minnesota resident George Floyd.
During a memorial and wreath-laying ceremony in honor of Floyd last Friday, Ghana’s Minister of Tourism, Arts, and Culture Barbara Oteng-Gyasi invited African Americans to “re-settle in Ghana if they feel unwanted” in the United States, the Independent Ghana news outlet reported.
[….]
We continue to open our arms and invite all our brothers and sisters home. Ghana is your home. Africa is your home. We have our arms wide open ready to welcome you home. Please take advantage, come home build a life in Ghana, you do not have to stay where you are not wanted forever, you have a choice and Africa is waiting for you.
Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo. Of course he is referring to American born African Americans, but surely some of the unhappy Somalis raised in America would be welcome too!
[….]
Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo officially launched the “Year of Return, Ghana 2019” in Washington, DC, in September 2018, the United Nations noted.
“We know of the extraordinary achievements and contributions they [Africans in the diaspora] made to the lives of the Americans, and it is important that this symbolic year — 400 years later — we commemorate their existence and their sacrifices,” the Ghanaian president declared.
The Ghanaian government launched the 2019 effort to mark 400 years since the first documented slave ship left Africa to the U.S. state of Virginia.
In the months ahead, help me follow this story and see just how many unhappy in America, go home to Africa., or, go home to any other country they came from.
Too bad there is no political will to organize a “go home” movement.
Thanks to reader David for sending this short interview with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society’s Mark Hetfield.
Longtime readers know that Hetfield has been a leading opponent of any refugee program reform efforts the President has proposed both through political agitation and legal action his federally-funded organization has taken.
I always laugh when I hear their line that goes like this about the millions admitted to the US: “not a single one has committed a lethal act of terror.”
He leaves out the dozens who have tried to commit terror acts and failed or who were caught before they could act and the untold numbers that have murdered or raped someone after being admitted.
Reader Michelle had this to say about the clip:
Maybe not an act of terror but in my own town, a refugee slaughtered 3 young children with a machete. And this is only one town. There are lots more. IF that isn’t terror, what is it? I can’t stand these holier than thou officials. He seems to have forgotten all of those that were caught getting ready to act and lots more that have done worse like rape etc.
For more on HIASsee my extensive archive by clicking here.
