Meatpackers changing small town America (and you have no say in the process)

05/05/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The importation of refugee labor is how it is being done.

Here is one more story about Tyson Foods (or it could be Swift & Co, or perhaps Perdue) attracting refugee laborers to a meatpacking town—this time Columbus Junction, Iowa. Hat tip to one of our friends from Tennessee.

Columbus_junction_iowa — Downtown Columbus Junction, Iowa.

I first really began to understand this driver of the State Department’s Refugee Resettlement program here in 2008 when I read about Bill Clinton importing Bosnian so-called “refugees” for meatpackers in Iowa in the mid-1990s.

You see, readers, the meatpackers had discovered cheap immigrant labor from south of the border, but the enterprise became too risky as the feds began busting them in some highly publicized ICE raids. So, where did they turn…to refugees of course.

Heck they are legal workers and they are basically captive labor—they can’t go home (although some very unhappy ones do find the money to return to their homeland). In addition, you, the taxpayers, help to subsidize them with ‘social services’ while the meatpacker reaps the rewards—quite a business model!

For awhile the meatpacking giants were enthralled with the Somalis, but they came with one serious problem—they are Muslim and they began demanding workplace accommodation for their Islamic religious practices. We have a whole category entitled, Greeley/Swift/Somali controversy with 87 posts in it (here) for your further edification. However, in the story I am about to relate, they wouldn’t have hired Somalis anyway—it’s a pork processing plant.

What to do? What to do? We will tell the State Department to bring us some docile workers like the Christian Chin or Karen, or the Bhutanese/Nepalese who don’t complain so much. And, I’m convinced that somewhere in the bowels of Washington there was such a conversation between big business lobbyists and the federal government.

My scenario is not so farfetched when you see what is going on with the Gang of Eight being driven by Big Business and Grover Norquist, and you know this immigrant legalization push is not about “humanitarianism!”

Here is the AP story at the Tampa Tribune:

COLUMBUS JUNCTION, Iowa (AP) — The first Chin Burmese student arrived at Wilma Sime Roundy Elementary School three years ago, a smiling preschooler whose father often checked on his progress.

The school had long been accustomed to educating the children of the Mexicans, Hondurans and Salvadorans who came to work at the sprawling Tyson Foods pork processing plant that sits outside this town of 2,000. But then, principal Shane Rosenberg recalled, Tyson informed school leaders that a new group of workers was coming – the Chin, a largely Christian ethnic minority who were fleeing their homeland in western Myanmar to avoid persecution.

Readers keep reading through all the paragraphs about how wonderful the newcomers are (and surely many are nice people). Everything is just great don’t ya’ know! Then we get to the problems …

Tyson spokesman: Nah! We don’t favor refugees (tell that to the Hispanics!)

Tyson and other meatpacking companies have increasingly recruited non-Latino workers in recent years, including Burmese, Sudanese and others, said Mark Grey, director of the Iowa Center for Immigrant Leadership and Integration at University of Northern Iowa. Since a 2008 raid of a Postville, Iowa, slaughterhouse, where 389 immigrants were arrested, companies have become more careful to avoid hiring employees who may have entered the country illegally, he said.

Refugees are in the country legally and may apply for citizenship within five years.

Tyson spokesman Gary Mickelson denied the company was favoring refugees over others, saying the industry has long attracted immigrants for entry-level jobs that do not require experience or English skills. The makeup of its workforce shifts as new immigrant groups come to the U.S., he said. [There is also a tax break for hiring certain immigrant workers that no one is willing to talk about!—ed]

A little multi-culti friction has developed:

But in town, both the Chin and Spanish-speaking communities feel that more Chin are being hired at the expense of Latinos, which has caused some friction, said Cristina Ortiz, a doctoral student in anthropology who moved to Columbus Junction four years ago to study the town.

“Latinos and Chin people recognize they both have the same goals in life,” she says. “That is to make their lives better and provide for their families and live a tranquil life. But in a certain sense, they are in competition with each other. They are applying for the same jobs. They have the same skills. And that’s tricky. Obviously there is some tension there.”

Burmese Chin are arriving from other states where it’s tough to get a job (But wait! Isn’t the Gang of Eight telling us we need millions more low-skilled laborers).

In Columbus Junction, Mickelson said, the first five Burmese workers were hired as part of a recruitment effort in Illinois and later encouraged friends and relatives to apply. Burmese started arriving from Indiana, Texas, Florida and other states where they say jobs were harder to come by.

Problems at first with drunk driving, public urination, a few suicides, but once the women got there things calmed down. Now it’s just a housing shortage. But, AP wants you to know that Columbus Junction will be just fine.

City officials say some of the first arrivals abused alcohol, which had previously not been as cheap or available to them. Public urination and intoxication and drunken driving were common. But the police chief and other officials warned community leaders about their expectations, and as more women and children arrived, the problems have dissipated.

Two refugees have committed suicide and a third was found drowned in a river near the Tyson plant, said police Chief Donnie Orr. A shortage of mental health and substance abuse treatment is a problem, Ortiz said.

But refugees and city leaders agree the biggest challenge now is finding housing for the newcomers. City officials say there are hardly any available rental apartments, which go for about $450 a month for three bedrooms.

Hey, here is an idea! How about if Tyson Foods build some housing out of their profits and not with taxpayer money. And. while they are at it they could kick in the money for the school system to pay for the ESL teachers.

Recipe to save dying counties: Get a meatpacking plant!

03/14/2013 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And, immigrant workers to go with it!

Honest to goodness, that is part of the prescription offered by AP reporter cum opinion writer, Hope Yen, in a story headlined: ‘Census shows record 1 in 3 US counties now dying.’

And, the only way to save them is to increase the population and pour in the immigrants as the baby boomers start leaving this life. But, she offers not one shred of evidence that pouring in the immigrants brings economic recovery. Frankly, the only economic boost poor and uneducated immigrants might bring a city or county is because with them come FEDERAL WELFARE dollars!

Muslim employees have clashed with the JBS Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colo., over taking breaks to offer prayers, as called for by their religion. Here, some of the employees are seen gathering at Lincoln Park in Greeley. Photo by Sara Loven, Daily Tribune via AP

Longtime readers here know what meatpackers have brought to some towns in the Midwest and South—demands for religious accommodation for Muslims, ethnic squabbles, crime, Section 8 housing, overstressed school systems, food stamp fraud and the list goes on.

So, to Ms Yen and her comrades—population increases will not save a county or city when the population is an economic drain and causes social upheaval—-just ask France (Moroccans), Germany (Turks), Greece (Afghans) and the UK (Pakis) if the immigrant hordes have brought an overall benefit to their economies. Heck, we recently learned that Germany was sending its elderly pensioners to Eastern Europe and Asia for their nursing home care because the Germans couldn’t afford their old people.

Here is the AP story, but first read about how immigration is killing Dekalb County, Georgia (here yesterday). Why do these pro-immigration news(?) reports never bother to mention the downside? And, you might also re-visit Professor Kotkin who also jumps to the conclusion that more diversity brings positive change here.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A record number of U.S. counties – more than 1 in 3 – are now dying off, hit by an aging population and weakened local economies that are spurring young adults to seek jobs and build families elsewhere.

New 2012 census estimates released Thursday highlight the population shifts as the U.S. encounters its most sluggish growth levels since the Great Depression.

The findings also reflect the increasing economic importance of foreign-born residents as the U.S. ponders an overhaul of a major 1965 federal immigration law. Without new immigrants, many metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh and St. Louis would have posted flat or negative population growth in the last year. [Why the assumption that population growth means economic growth, unless we are counting state and federal welfare dollars?—ed]

“Immigrants are innovators, entrepreneurs, they’re making things happen. They create jobs,” said Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, at an immigration conference in his state last week. Saying Michigan should be a top destination for legal immigrants to come and boost Detroit and other struggling areas, Snyder made a special appeal: “Please come here.”

Frankly, Governor Snyder that is gobbledegook! MOST immigrants starting businesses could never get the business off the ground without government support like the micro-loans supported by taxpayer dollars we are distributing like Pez candy! Just look around your own local city—how many immigrant-run restaurants survive more than a year or so? Now, convenience stores might survive a little longer as they are scamming SNAP (food stamp) programs to keep themselves afloat.

Again, this scribe at AP reports as a good thing for (we presume) the economy that the US population is growing thanks to immigrants. But, let me ask, is there some point when population has grown enough? Is it just possible that some towns and counties are going to decline in population? Or, is there no upper limit?

….the U.S. population as a whole continues to grow, boosted by immigration from abroad and relatively higher births among the mostly younger migrants from Mexico, Latin America and Asia.

Quoting a sociology professor at the Univ. of New Hampshire: solve your economic woes with something dramatic—get a meatpacking plant!

Unless something dramatic changes – for instance, new development such as a meatpacking plant to attract young Hispanics – these areas are likely to have more and more natural decrease.”

It’s not the immigrants, it is the federal money!

Near the very end of this pro-open borders pitch, comes one line that is really closer to the truth about how some cities are surviving and some aren’t—-those surviving are at the receiving end of a federal money pipeline!

Since 2010, many of the fastest-growing U.S. metro areas have also been those that historically received a lot of federal dollars…

So what happens when the federal flow begins to slow? Get ready for chaos as all the minority and immigrant groups, used to surviving on ‘social welfare’, see the money dry up. This can’t go on forever. We all know that.

About the photo: We reported this news from Colorado back in 2008. LOL! See Greeley 2012 trying to get money out of the meatpackers for the educational costs associated with immigrant kids!

For new readers: If you would like to know more about the multi-culti joys of meatpacking towns, visit our Greeley/Swift/Somali controversy category (86 posts!). Or, for other places in the US where the refugee program via the US State Department supplies meatpacking labor, just type ‘meatpacker’ into our search function.

Greeley, CO school system struggling to educate all of the refugee kids; want meatpacker to help pay for it

12/30/2012 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday, I thought I would check and see what was new in Greeley (Weld County) Colorado after all of the turmoil there in 2008 over a demand by newly arrived Somali workers at meatpacking plants to have special break times during Ramadan. At first Swift caved in to their demands and then all hell broke loose with the other ethnic workers, especially the Hispanics, who protested the special treatment for Muslim workers. The Somalis walked out and many were fired. A lot of the fired Somali workers from Greeley moved on to Cargill at Ft. Morgan (but that is a story for another day).

At the time we created an entire category on the controversy (here it is) and here is just one of many posts summarizing what happened. In a nutshell, the big meatpackers were being raided by the feds looking for illegal workers in the early to mid-2000s. So they went to “legal” refugee labor (thanks to the US State Department) and welcomed the Somalis, thereby causing themselves a different sort of problem. Cities like Greeley and neighboring Ft. Morgan initially swooned over the joys of diversity brought to their cities.

Changing the subject for a bit….

Was the Muslim Brotherhood born in Greeley? Say what!

In an incredible twist of fate, the answer is Yes! in a roundabout way. See this post I wrote about Greeley in 2008 (and btw, the State Department set up a refugee office in 2007 for Greeley and Ft. Morgan in advance of the trouble that began with Swift the following year).

Do you know the name Sayed Qutb considered one of the greatest thinkers in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood? In 1952 he studied at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley and was appalled by the decadence of American society (yes, in 1952!). He was especially offended by dancing he observed at a church function and saw what we now commonly call Shariah Law—a complete government/religious system—as the solution.

After returning to Egypt he joined the fledgeling (at that time) Muslim Brotherhood and wrote some of its earlier treatises that Islamists still look to today for guidance. He became one of its preeminent leaders and was executed by Nasser along with other Muslim Brotherhood leaders in 1966. Think about it, his early work has led to al-Qaeda and to the now Muslim Brotherhood controlled Egypt.

But I digressed! Back to Greeley 2012.

Wouldn’t Qutb be astounded to see Muslims gaining a foothold in Greeley!

I haven’t visited the Greeley/Ft. Morgan topic for awhile, so just checking around I found this article from a few days ago about how the school system in one portion of Weld County can’t handle the costs of all the refugee students they must educate.

This is not the only place where a school system is struggling with large numbers of third worlders who don’t speak English. I recently let two previous stories pass me by (didn’t post them) on the same subject—school system problems—one was from Burlington, VT, the other was from a Texas city, can’t remember which city.

Here is the story from Northern Colorado Business Report (emphasis is mine):

The county wants Swift (a Brazilian company), the “source of its problems,” to help pay for their schools! And, why not? I’ve argued for years that these meatpackers get the cheap “legal” immigrant labor and then social services, schools (and police) in the surrounding community get the extra costs dumped on them!

GREELEY – Born in a Kenyan refugee camp, Asha Abdi spoke no English when she arrived to the U.S. more than five years ago. Today, she’s fluent, thanks to her own desire to learn and the work of her teachers at Weld County’s School District 6. [Abdi’s is the inevitable appealing face of the refugee that most mainstream articles begin with—ed!]

A senior at Greeley West High School, Abdi is a Somali and, although she is thousands of miles from her homeland, she is far from alone. The 17-year-old is one of 434 refugee students who attend schools in the district. Her two sisters and a brother are among them, part of an immigrant population that includes thousands more students who speak dozens of different languages. More than a quarter of District 6 students are learning English as a second language.

Like Asha and her siblings, many are the children of parents drawn to Weld County by jobs at one of Northern Colorado’s largest employers, JBS USA in Greeley.

Their swelling ranks have helped to create one of the more diverse student bodies in Colorado. But there’s a high cost associated with educating these children, an expense that is fast becoming an unmanageable burden for District 6, leaving it with fewer dollars for other programs.

[….]

Faced with shrinking funding from the state and federal government, District 6 is now looking for help from the very source of its problem: JBS itself.

Then get this! They want to make you think that all these refugees just showed up in Weld and Morgan counties spontaneously in 2008! In 2007, in one of the first posts I ever wrote at RRW, I told you that the State Department was opening a refugee resettlement office for Greeley and Ft. Morgan, here (unfortunately the link at the Greeley Tribune is now gone!). This infusion of refugee labor was planned in advance!

Families like Abdi’s have been coming here since the spring of 2008, when 10 students from Somali families who got jobs at JBS enrolled in the school district. Today, the District 6 student population comprises 20 nationalities, including children from Myanmar, Guatemala, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Indonesia.

So JBS Swift has to pay-up, after all they are responsible (along with the US State Department and the Refugee contractors who are the head-hunters for Swift?). But, then that is us—the US taxpayer!—we have helped make this happen through our silence!

Nancy Matchett, an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Northern Colorado and director of the Institute of Professional Ethics, thinks District 6 has a good case to make. [Does Nancy know about Qutb and his ‘education’ at UNC?—ed]

“They have a kind of duty of charity to give to the school districts,” she said of JBS. “They are primarily responsible for this large influx (of refugees) that places a burden on the local school system. We don’t have a political system that is set up in such a way to absorb those costs.”

But there is a benefit to us! We get DIVERSITY! So much CULTURE! Heck, we get to learn about the massacres of villagers in the third world! That is worth something, isn’t it?

District 6 educators say they appreciate the global perspective that the refugee students bring into their classrooms.[LOL! just broke the BS meter—ed]

“They add so much culture to our community and to our district,” said Kathi VanSoest, the district’s executive director of student support services. “It’s been a great experience while also being a very impactful experience.”

[…..]

They also tell of atrocities, including the massacre of fellow villagers. “They’ve seen some things that you don’t know how they’re OK,” Hoff said.

There is much more, read it all.

So where does Abdi, the star of this story, plan to go to college? The University of Northern Colorado of course. Ain’t it grand!

Is something going on in Grand Island, Nebraska?

12/21/2012 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Grand Island is another of those American meatpacking towns (like Garden City, KS which I just wrote about this week) being transformed through the Refugee Resettlement program as it imports workers for those giant corporations, some of which, like Swift and Company, are no longer American companies. Swift is owned by a larger Brazilian company, here.

I see this morning that many readers are reading this post from 2010. It’s about the Grand Island police chief at the time saying that it was “chaotic anarchy” there among the myriad ethnic groups imported for their labor. Surprise! they weren’t melting in the magic American melting pot.

Readers I see every day in my statistics which posts readers are gravitating to, that old Grand Island post is bringing people in today making me wonder if there are new problems in Grand Island. From time to time, you might find it interesting to review the list of TOP POSTS in the right hand sidebar to see what fellow readers are interested in.

If anyone sees anything breaking on Grand Island, please send it my way. Also, type ‘Grand Island’ into our search function for lots more posts on that town. There was quite a controversy there in 2008 when the Somalis tried to get the Mayor fired from her job because she made politically-incorrect comments to the New York Times.

Oh boy, here we go again “meatpacker” sob stories; demands for “rights”

11/30/2012 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

It’s been awhile since we’ve had a story about meatpackers and their immigrant labor. Heck, a few years ago we set up whole categories on the controversy. We had stories from Emporia, KS, Greeley, CO, Shelbyville, TN, Ft. Morgan, CO and Grand Island, NE.* Most of those involved Somali refugees demanding their rights to worship their religion on the job (and some stories about other immigrant groups angry at the company for bending to Somali demands).

The long and short of these stories is that the “international” meatpacking companies (some are not even owned by Americans) figured out that they could use cheap immigrant labor and keep wages low. I’ve been told by Americans who worked in meatpacking decades ago that wages were very good at Midwest meatpacking companies, BEFORE the illegal aliens were hired. (This article I’m about to report tells us that too.)

Then the giant corporations realized that they couldn’t function with immigration raids of their plants where the feds were looking for the illegals, so BINGO! they hit on the refugee population—not only were they in abundant supply, they worked cheap and were captive (most refugees can’t get back home even when they want to).

Bill Clinton’s Bosnians!

Bill Clinton was among the first (that we know of!) to bring large numbers of refugees for his corporate buddies in Iowa. I told you about that here in 2008. And, I continue to maintain that the US State Department is working as the head-hunter for large corporate interests and supplying them with cheap subsidized labor. I say “subsidized” because some of these companies are getting tax breaks for hiring poor people—and the refugee employees are getting welfare on the side. It is a very sweet deal for these companies! And, it’s doubly good for the Hard Leftwing Socialists because they get the third world population pouring into the US.

But, it’s not just the Lefties who want cheap labor for their Corporate friends, see Mark Krikorian at NRO on Republicans looking for cheap immigrant labor as well. The difference is that the Republicans only want the cheap labor while the Leftists get a twofer—cheap labor and they get to change the US population (and they can demand “rights” for the downtrodden as this article tells us).

I almost forgot—and the Islamists get the Hijra.

Now to the latest story on the poor and suffering meatpacker immigrant labor force from the Daily Planet (the reporter is Somali).

First the requisite sob story (LOL! is this basic Leftwing media reporter training—sob story right up front!).

Mohamud Kahin left his war-ravaged country five years ago, promised his siblings in Somalia they would never have to go to bed unfed and rolled up his sleeves for a new life in the United States.

Kahin arrived in Minneapolis in 2007. He has never been to school, and English remains a forever-foreign language to him.

It’s almost impossible to find a job around the Twin Cities, his relatives in Minneapolis told him when he first arrived. They gave him the most common advice given to a new adult immigrant with no English: go to the meat processing companies.

And Kahin did.

In 2008, he moved to Postville, Iowa, joining hundreds of Somali immigrants with similar stories. The 26-year-old Kahin got his share of large knives and cleavers on the fast-moving animal slaughtering and processing lines of Agri Star Meat & Poultry LLC — formally Agriprocessors. It’s the largest producer of kosher meat in the country and the biggest employer in Postville.

Kahin worked more than 40 hours a week as a meat packer in both frigid and oven-like conditions.

“My feet got really swollen,” Kahin said of the first few weeks of the job, speaking in Somali. “There were blisters on the bottom on my heel. The pain was constant.”

He had to stick with the job so he could send $500 a month to his family in Kismayo — it was a way to keep the promise he had made to his siblings: they would never go to bed hungry.

And, we sure don’t want those Al-Shabaab Jihadists going to bed hungry either. Remember, the US government stopped this money transfer awhile back because some was surely going to the Jihadists.

In the early 1980s [at the same time the Refugee Resettlement Act passed Congress and was signed by Jimmy Carter—ed] meatpackers left US cities and moved to the countryside—surely because property taxes in the cities drove them out and they discovered cheap immigrant labor.

According to the report, 20 to 50 percent of workers at meat processing industries are immigrants and refugees from Africa, Central America, and Mexico.

More than 30 years ago, meatpacking and processing industries were located in the heart of Midwestern cities, including St. Paul, Chicago and Kansas City. New immigrant workers [there weren’t many then, it was mostly American labor—ed] and many Americans in the industries enjoyed “comparable salaries to middle-class workers in the auto and steel industries,” according to the report.

In the early 1980s, however, these jobs were relocated to rural parts of the Midwest and South because “of a much broader reorganization of the industry,” the report said. And a sharp decline in wages has followed. [So tell me why a move to the country would necessarily reduce wages?—ed]

Today, new immigrant communities, documented or undocumented, are finding themselves in rural areas in search of meatpacking job opportunities.

Poor discriminated-against Muslim workers! Can’t speak English, can’t take prayer breaks—boo-hoo!

Many meatpacking immigrant workers are undocumented or don’t speak enough English. Most don’t know their rights as employees or are afraid to complain. Consequently, they fall victims to supervisors.

“Abuse was often based on race, ethnicity, and immigration status,” the report said. “Undocumented immigrants were insulted and singled out for the worst jobs because they were unlikely to complain.”

Two years ago, JBS Swift was alleged to be a hostile work place for the Somali and Muslim workers because of their race, immigration status and religion, according to a 2010 news release from The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

If you have the energy, check out our 83 previous POSTS (Greeley/Swift/Somali controversy category) on what really happened with those Somali demands and turmoil created in those midwestern meatpacking plants a couple of years ago. By the way, JBS Swift is a Brazilian Company and we get to help support their immigrant labor force through our social services! Cool huh!

*Type each of those city names into our search function for more fun with refugee meatpacker stories.