The dark underbelly of the giant globalist meatpacking industry in the US is being exposed as large numbers of slaughterhouse workers are creating US hotspots for the spread of the Chinese virus.
Neil Munro writing at Breitbarttakes a stab at finding out why the mainstream media, populated by Leftwing ideologues, have for years been on the side of the meat industry (I dubbed it BIG MEAT a number of years ago) as are the refugee resettlement contractors (six of nine are ‘religious’ charities)*** which have been acting as head hunters for globally owned corporations for decades. (See Bill Clinton brings refugee laborers to Iowa linked below.)
Wouldn’t you think the Lefties would be on the side of the struggling worker rather than acting like they are doing migrants and refugees a giant favor by admitting them to America and placing them in dreadful working conditions (now being exposed in the COVID crisis)?
There are many reasons they have turned a blind eye, but I think Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies provides one answer.
NYT Says Immigrants ‘Mourn’ Loss of Deadly, Low-Wage Meatpacking Jobs
Immigrants are “mourning” the loss of low-wage jobs in a Chinese-owned, crowded slaughterhouse run by Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls, SD, according to an article in the New York Times.
Smithfield Foods, Inc., is a meat-processing company based in Smithfield, Virginia, in the United States, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of WH Group of China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithfield_Foods
The main character in the story is an immigrant from Sudan who has worked “11-hour days at Smithfield, six times a week for nearly seven years,” says the April 15 article:
[….]
The Chinese-owned hog disassembly plant has been shut down indefinitely after 600 workers caught the Chinese coronavirus while working alongside each other.
“Why would lefties be supporting this?” asked Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “The immigrants are working for low wages in terrible jobs!” The answer is that progressives prefer to pose as the defenders of migrants against claimed threats from ordinary Americans, he said, not from the real economic exploitation by employers.
[….]
The article ignores the American workers at the Sioux Falls mill and instead lauds migrants and refugees, most of whom are assigned jobs at the slaughterhouse by the government-funded refugee settlement groups that bring them into the United States as refugees.
[….]
Establishment journalists are now eager to downplay the painful impact of cheap migrant labor on Americans, Corcoran said. “The reporters are basically working for these globalist companies, for Brazil’s JBS [USA Holdings] and for China’s Smithfield Foods [in Sioux Falls]. They are carrying the water because they want more immigration. They are willing to overlook these workplace conditions, and that Americans would do these jobs if they paid enough — as they did at one time.”
Worshiping the god of diversity!
Who cares what the working conditions are when the Left is busy changing America by changing the people!
S**** the working conditions, we get diversity!
The reporters’ underlying message is that the migrants’ pain and labor are worth trading to get more diversity, said Krikorian. “These holier-than-thou-types [are] saying ‘We are doing such a good thing by letting them in the country, when it is, in fact, horrible work, but it is all so good in the end because we get diversity.’”
If you bother to read the NYT story Munro dissects, although not explicitly stated, there is an underlying message that these poor migrants are slaving away to provide our hams and bacon in Trump’s mean America.
See my BIG MEAT archive byclicking here. I had already been writing about meatpackers within the first year of writing RRW and their refugee labor appetites when I came across this news in 2008 about how Bill Clinton first came up with the idea of supplying his meatpacking buddies with Bosnian refugee laborers—in Iowa!
And, on the issue of health, maybe one day, it won’t be COVID we are talking about, but some of the other diseases we don’t screen for as migrants enter the US—I can dream!
*** For new readers these (below) are the nine federally-funded refugee contractors that operate as a huge conveyor belt monopolizing all refugee placement in America. Some have received direct funding from meat giants.
And, they do not limit their advocacy toward only legal immigration programs, but are heavily involved in supporting the lawlessness at our borders.
The question isn’t as much about refugees per se, but about who is running federal immigration policy now and into the future?
I continue to argue that these nine contractors are the heart of America’s Open Borders movement and thus there can never be long-lasting reform of US immigration policy when these nine un-elected phony non-profits are paid by the taxpayers to work as community organizers pushing an open borders agenda.
You won’t find any sympathy from me about this news. I have been warning for years (long before a virus marched across the world) that if you like to eat meat—beef, pork, chicken—you need to find a source of locally raised meat.
They are changing America by changing the people!
Of course my major interest has been about how BIG MEAT has a voracious appetite for cheap immigrant/refugee labor that has been supplied to them by the federal government and by the supposed do-gooder ‘religious’ charities that shill for these global giants as they make up the majority of US refugee resettlement contractors…
And, how that ‘need’ for cheap labor is changing the character of middle America.
Below is one of what I am sure will be many stories about immigrant labor and your food supply.
Iowa Plant Workers Describe Inaction, Safety Concerns, Fear
Widespread outbreaks at meat packing plants in the Midwest are quickly becoming the latest crisis in the ongoing pandemic. Hundreds of workers, many of whom are immigrants and refugees, are becoming sick, some have already died, and the resulting plant closures are risking the nation’s food supply chain.
In Iowa, a significant percentage of the state’s new positive COVID-19 cases this week came from a Tyson meat packing plant in Louisa County, a small, rural county in Southeast Iowa. 186 positive cases were recorded from the one plant alone and two people have died, which has driven Louisa County to be one of the nation’s biggest hot spots for the virus, while also impacting surrounding counties.
Iowa Republican Governor Kim Reynolds: But they promised me!
At her Wednesday press conference, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said that plant executives had assured her that sufficient precautions to protect workers had been put into place.
“When I reached out to the CEOs of both the plants, they indicated they had already taken the steps,” Reynolds said of mitigation efforts encouraged by the state. “They’re trying to be very proactive to not only protect their workforce, but to make sure they can, you know, can keep the plant up and going.”
[….]
….while most of the focus has been on Latino workers at these plants, it’s important to note that many meat packing employees are refugees from non-Latin American countries. Large numbers of Burmese refugees, for instance, work at the Columbus Junction and Waterloo plants.
Nearly all the workers disputed the idea that employees were being provided the kind of protections that Reynolds said was happening.
And, I’ll bet if you check the Iowa hotspots at this interactive map you will find some global meatpacker or other large manufacturing facility that is the source of the local infectious outbreak.
See my BIG MEAT archive by clicking here. I had already been writing about meatpackers within the first year of writing RRW and their refugee labor appetites when I came across this news in 2008 about how Bill Clinton first came up with the idea of supplying his meatpacking buddies with Bosnian refugee laborers—in Iowa!
I am not saying the large number of African refugees working at a wind turbine plant brought any virus to North Dakota, but I think you can see the problem brewing in large plants that employ immigrants many of whom do not speak English and live in close-knit immigrant enclaves.
Testing held near North Dakota plant while virus cases climb
FARGO, N.D. (AP) — Health officials and National Guard members spent Thursday afternoon screening people for the coronavirus after eight positive tests were confirmed among workers at a North Dakota wind turbine plant that employs a large number of immigrants from African countries.
The drive-thru screenings outside the LM Wind Power in Grand Forks took place on a day when state officials reported a record number of new coronavirus cases for the second consecutive day. A total of 52 cases were confirmed in the last two days, including 28 on Thursday.
Cars were lined up in four lanes outside the LM plant, where officials administered 424 tests in five hours to people who may have come in close contact with the infected workers, said John Bernstrom, spokesman for the city of Grand Forks.
Shirley Dykshoorn
Shirley Dykshoorn, vice president at Lutheran Social Services in Fargo, the state’s refugee resettlement agency, said many of the employees are immigrants or former refugees who have worked at the plant for some time.
“Most of them have good English skills,” Dykshoorn said. “Maybe not as many in their family understand everything so we’ve tried to support them and help them with what they need going forward.”
Dr. Paul Carson, a public health and infectious disease specialist at North Dakota State University and adviser to the governor’s COVID-19 team, said he’s not surprised to see several cases pop up in a large plant. He said it’s important to aggressively pursue people who came in close contact with those who are infected.
“We’re going to find these little flare-ups and I think we should accept them. What we need to able to do is jump on them and try to prevent them from going any further,” Carson said. “We want to avoid what happened with the meat packing plant down in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.”
I had planned to post Neil Munro’s piece at Breitbartfrom a few days ago about problems in the meatpacking industry with the spread of the virus. See it here.
Over half of the more than 1,300 cases in South Dakota have been tied to an outbreak at a Smithfield pork processing plant in Sioux Falls.
The plant is one of the largest known clusters of COVID-19 cases in the country. A total of 598 employees have confirmed infections, plus 135 of their close contacts.
Sigh! Giant global corporations with a voracious appetite for immigrant labor changing the heartland one town at a time.
I’ve been writing about North Dakota for years and it was one of the states I visited during my 2016 road trip through the Midwest and West to see the impact of refugee labor on communities throughout middle America. See my North Dakota archive.
Doing so will benefit our “collective public health” says Colorado Democrat Michael Bennet.
Editor: I don’t know if anyone noticed, but sorry I haven’t been posting. It wasn’t for lack of wanting to, but a big storm took out our TV and internet for a couple of days. LOL! I have to admit, I wasn’t sure if I wanted it back on! Amazing how many projects around the farm could get done with most access to the world cut off!
And, there really isn’t a whole lot of refugee news happening. There are a lot of stories about how refugees in America are suffering due to the stay at home orders, but I’m sure that you don’t want to hear too many of those. I’m going to put up a bunch of short pieces to get caught up.
As far as I’ve been able to figure out, the Administration has not fully re-opened refugee resettlement nor made a statement that I know of. However, this news from Colorado would indicate that reopening has not occurred.
Bennet objects to Trump’s coronavirus border policy
U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet said America should help refugees and asylum seekers not turn them away at the border, the plan imposed last month by President Trump.
The administration suspended refugee resettlement programs and began denying asylum seekers entry to the country under the president’s emergency powers for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Friday Bennet sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Department of Homeland Security Acting Secretary Chad Wolf urging the administration not to use the global crisis “for anti-migrant or anti-refugee policies, or use it as an excuse to shut the door on those fleeing war or persecution.”
“COVID-19 is certain to have tragic consequences to refugees around the world. Refugees living in crowded and unsanitary conditions are especially at risk of exposure to COVID-19 without access to clean water and food,” the letter states.
As I said a few days ago, the warningsabout refugee camp carnage have not yet materialized.
“An extended ban on resettlement programs will endanger the lives of even more refugees, further jeopardizing our collective public health.”
….but it isn’t for lack of searching for it by the mainstream media.
For weeks I have been scouring news stories daily looking for the widespread arrival of COVID-19 in refugee camps around the world where people are living packed together and soap is a scarce commodity.
Several times I’ve wanted to just post the breathless headlines that scream a human tragedy is on the way. “Catastrophe” and “carnage” are the words that appear in many of the articles I’ve read.
But, so far (and I emphasize ‘so far’) the places where you would think the virus should have spread like wildfire are pretty much untouched.
However, this morning I found this headline at US News and figured it was time to report on the refugee ‘catastrophe’ about to explode (or maybe not):
Coronavirus Cases Rise in Refugee Camps
AS THE NUMBER OF coronavirus cases in refugee camps starts to rise around the world, experts are sounding the alarm over the vulnerabilities of displaced people during the pandemic.
There is a paragraph here taking a whack at the US and ICE, then this….
Meanwhile, confirmed coronavirus cases are turning up in refugee camps. In Greece, authorities announced on April 2 that a migrant camp had been quarantined after 23 asylum seekers tested positive for the coronavirus – the first such facility in the country to be hit since the outbreak, according to Reuters.
Bangladesh imposed a lockdown on March 24 after the first case of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, was reported in the refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Reuters reported. The camps at Cox’s Bazar house more than 1 million Rohingya.
A combination of population density, a lack of information and access to basic human services make refugees particularly vulnerable to the spread of the coronavirus, according to Refugees International.
In a country where soap and water is in short supply, as of today the whole country of Bangladesh has only 482 cases.
Chris Boian, a senior communications officer with the U.N. Refugee Agency, the UNHCR, says that there have been “relatively low numbers of suspected or confirmed cases among refugees” overall.
Never letting a good crisis go to waste, here comes the New Yorker yesterday with an interview with ‘moneybags’ Miliband about the International Rescue Committee’s report on the crisis they are sure will unfoldin refugee camps worldwide.
On April 1st, the I.R.C. released a report on how the coronavirus pandemic could affect refugees. Focussing on displaced populations in Syria, Greece, and Bangladesh, the I.R.C. found that refugees will likely face extreme risk when the virus begins to spread. “The rapid spread of covid-19 on the Diamond Princess”—the cruise ship that was quarantined in the port of Yokohama, Japan—“showed how the virus thrives in confined spaces,” Marcus Skinner, a senior policy adviser at I.R.C., wrote, but the conditions of millions of displaced people “are far more cramped and poorly serviced, and the risks are far deadlier.”
I recently spoke by phone with David Miliband, the president and C.E.O. of the I.R.C. He was formerly a Labour Member of Parliament and the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed what can be done to prevent vulnerable populations from contracting the coronavirus, how the I.R.C. is protecting its own staff, and why a pandemic makes international coöperation all the more necessary.
Of course their plan offers no real solutions. They say they are fighting “disinformation” and promoting government health services and are happy to report that private donations haven’t dried up.
They also want governments to keep their borders open, blah, blah, blah.
There is no way to promote social distancing in refugee camps, but Miliband does offer up a suggestion that more soap is needed because we all need to know this.
Miliband:
Everyone needs to know Anthony Fauci washes his hands fifty times a day and, if possible, know that their local trusted people are doing the same.
It is along articlethat you might want to save for future reference.
Only time will tell if the ‘carnage’ arrives in refugee camps like this million-plus Rohingya camp at Cox’s Bazar, but I find it interesting that it has been three weeks since the first case was reported there and there has not been any widespread infection where I expect there is no social distancing and little hand washing happening.
Chris Boian, a senior communications officer with the U.N. Refugee Agency, the UNHCR, says that there have been 
