And, you know if COVID was rampaging like “wildfire” through CROWDED camps housing millions of “vulnerable” refugees the “carnage” would make headlines worldwide today!
Try as I might, I could find no new stories about my personal petri dish—the huge camp at Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh where we are told a million Muslim Rohingya live cheek by jowl in huts with no way to social distance.
I’ve been following the dire warnings on the expected crisis in the camps for months.
The first death at Cox’s Bazar was reported on June 3, here. That is over two weeks ago. We know of one more, so where is the carnage?
Here is a short video from the UN High Commissioner on Refugees and the World Health Organizationapparently in time for World Refugee Day today!
The UNHCR says this (not exactly what the Leftwing media is going to trumpet):
We have not seen, or not seen yet I should say, major outbreaks where we feared the most in large concentrations, in refugee camps.
Watch it:
But, see here that the international humanitarian industry has moved on to link the Chinese virus to hunger and is warning of a double whammy of starvation and death by COVID.
Here is one thing they say you can do!
Write to Congress and tell them to send more of your tax dollars (borrowed from China) to feed the world.
You can save lives by being an advocate for the hungry, especially the refugees. Bread for the World encourages citizens to write letters to Congress urging them to make global food aid a priority in the budget.
I will be watching and continue to report when (if!) the virus crisis does impact the world’s migrant populations—a real test of the value, or lack of value, of social distancing, or mask-wearing for that matter!
You may remember that in mid-March the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and its partner the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the entity that processes refugee travel, announced that due to the Chinese Virus crisis refugees would not be traveling to a new country. This was to protect the refugees from picking up the virus.
Joint Statement: UN refugee chief Grandi and IOM’s Vitorino announce resumption of resettlement travel for refugees
The temporary hold on resettlement travel, which was necessitated by disruptions and restrictions to international air travel caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, delayed the departures of some 10,000 refugees to resettlement countries. Throughout this period, UNHCR, IOM and partners continued to process and counsel refugees and resettled scores of emergency and urgent cases.
If you see a bag like this at your local airport, know that a new refugee is arriving (that is, assuming you are traveling at all!).
In addition, numerous resettlement countries established or expanded their capacities to apply flexible processing modalities, to adapt and ensure the continuity of their resettlement programs in unpredictable circumstances.
Although many travel restrictions still remain in place, as these begin to lift in many resettlement countries more refugee departures can be anticipated. UNHCR and IOM will continue to work with our government partners and other stakeholders around the world to move towards a return to normal operations as swiftly as the situation allows in each country.”
There was no moratorium!
During the supposed halt in refugee travel, the US admitted 523 (emergency) refugees that were distributed to 33 states.
Using data from the Refugee Processing Center, here is where the 523 who came in during the height of the virus crisis in the US, from March 17th, when the spigot was supposedly closed, to today.
Top ten states ‘welcoming’ refugees are: Texas (always number one!), Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New York, California, Georgia, Idaho/Utah (tied for tenth place).
The primary sending countries were the DR Congo (as usual), Burma, Pakistan, El Salvador, Iran and Syria.
I was very surprised to see that 194 of the 523 emergency refugees we admitted are Muslims (37%) of some stripe, included are 13 Somalis. 45 of 65 from Burma are Rohingya Muslims. No Christians from Syria out of 23 arrivals were among them, and only 4 of 17 from Iraq are Christians. So much for saving the Christians of Syria and Iraq!
I will be watching and let you know when I see the floodgates fully open!
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.
And, you know if COVID was rampaging like “wildfire” through CROWDED camps housing millions of “vulnerable” refugees the “carnage” would make headlines worldwide today!
Using data from the Refugee Processing Center, here is where the 523 who came in during the height of the virus crisis in the US, from March 17th, when the spigot was supposedly closed, to today.
