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!
This story is no surprise and I expect there will be many more like it in the coming days and weeks.
Refugees work at menial labor—cleaning hotel and dorm rooms, working in restaurant kitchens, etc. all no longer essential services—and they are increasingly unemployed (however $$$ is on the way from the feds).
I guess we can say it sure is a good thing that the Trump administration cut the flow of refugees to America starting last October or we would have even more unhappy, struggling people as those described here.
Refugees in Orange County struggle to make ends meet amid COVID-19 economic hardships
All those North Carolinians who have been ‘welcoming’ refugees to the state for the last decade need to get out there now and pay the rent, tutor the kids and feed/clothe the impoverished people they invited to their towns and cities.
Coronavirus has forced many families to alter their ways of life. Although COVID-19 has impacted almost every Orange County resident, a group that has been especially devastated is the local refugee community.
Refugees can already be a vulnerable population without something like the coronavirus, said Flicka Bateman, director of the Refugee Support Center, a volunteer-based organization that helps transition refugees in Orange County to their new lives.
“I know people who’ve been here less than three weeks, I can’t imagine what in the world for them it must be like,” she said. “They’re totally uprooted, they’ve left situations that were full of violence and uncertainty, and then they come here and instead of being able to learn English and get all these services, suddenly they’re told to stay where they are and people will do the best they can remotely. It’s just very tough.”
Orange County has about 1,200 refugees, primarily from Burma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Syria. [It would be many more if Trump had not cut the flow this year—ed]. Bateman said a lot of refugees in the area have lost their jobs or seen reduced hours, especially those who work in restaurants or hotels, or in food service and housekeeping at UNC, where dorms have been closed and dining services have been severely reduced.
Adam Clark, office director of World Relief Durham, a refugee resettlement agency based in Durham that serves refugees across the Triangle area, said programs that help refugees with employment have seen a spike in applications due to a greater amount of people needing sudden job assistance.
He said they’ve seen about 20-30 unemployment applications among refugees just in the last week, and a long list of people are already waiting.
“There are a lot of refugees worried about their rent, obviously the same things that are affecting everyone,” he said. “But I think it just affects them even more because of the sectors they work in.”
Hannah Olmstead, a junior at UNC who is a part-time caseworker at World Relief Durham, said as local school districts transition to online instruction, many refugee parents don’t have the English ability or understanding of American education to homeschool their children.
Kentucky is in the top ten refugee resettlement states in the nation, but between the President’s reduction in the number of refugees that can be admitted and the present suspension of the refugee program due to the Coronavirus crisis, the resettlement agency in Bowling Green, International Center of Kentucky, is not seeing many new arrivals and is now trying to educate their ‘clients’ about the virus and help many with their unemployment problems.
Before I get to the story, I hope all of you are well. I don’t know about you but even with more time, I’m not being as productive blogging here and at ‘Frauds and Crooks’these days as I should be. But, one good thing is that there is more time to communicate with family and with friends, especially elderly friends, in my community.
Pandemic disrupts refugee resettlement by International Center
Before the rise of the coronavirus pandemic, Bowling Green’s refugee resettlement agency planned to welcome 400 arrivals this year.
Albert Mbanfu director of the International Center in Bowling Green will be helping refugee ‘clients’ get their unemployment insurance.
Now, with more than 500,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 reported worldwide, those plans have been thrown into chaos. International Center of Kentucky Executive Director Albert Mbanfu said Thursday that he expects the center will resettle less than half of the refugees it did last year.
“They will be barely trickling in,” Mbanfu said, speaking to a group of community representatives who assist with resettlement efforts.
[….]
Now, Bowling Green’s International Center has largely pivoted to assisting refugees who’ve been laid off work and informing the local community what steps they need to take to protect themselves from COVID-19, the respiratory disease that coronavirus causes.
Through social media and on its website, Mbanfu said, the center has been sharing videos in various languages like Swahili and Arabic to help inform Bowling Green’s refugee community about the virus and its effects.
Leyda Becker, Bowling Green’s international communities liaison, said the city also has resources in multiple languages online at bgky.org/ coronavirus.
Local refugees have also been impacted by business closures spurred by the pandemic. Mbanfu said Trace Die Cast, a top employer for local refugees, has laid off “almost all of our clients.” The employer is filing for unemployment insurance on their behalf, Mbanfu said.
I wonder why a company that makes automotive parts is laying off so many workers?
Mitch McConnell: money is on the way!
A representative from U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office said during the meeting that a $2 trillion stimulus package passed by the Senate and headed for House approval on Friday will offer some relief.
You would never know that if all you ever read is the mainstream media eager to show that Donald Trump’s America is mean while other western countries are ‘welcoming.’
U.S. Was the Number-One Refugee Resettlement Country in the World in 2019
And most likely will be in 2020, as well
New data released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on its 2019 resettlement activities shows that the United States remains the top country for refugee resettlement. Furthermore, just like in previous years, the vast majority of refugees referred by UNHCR for resettlement in third countries in 2019 were not the most vulnerable or in urgent need of relocation. This contradicts the UN refugee agency’s constant claims that resettlement is a “life-saving tool”, a “critical lifeline” for refugees that needs strengthening. This also casts some doubt on UNHCR referral processes.
[….]
The statistical snapshot provided by UNHCR on its 2019 resettlement activities (figures are for the calendar year) has the United States as the top resettlement submission and destination country in 2019 (as it was in 2017 and 2018 under the Trump administration, see here and here):
Now see below which countries actually took in fewer by larger margins than the US.
I chose the data for the Top 25 US cities ‘welcoming’ 100 or more refugees each year between 2015 and 2019. The maps are interactive so when you visit you can click on the city and learn more details.
That smashed together location in Georgia is Atlanta and Clarkston. Clarkston is the number one city in the country on a per capita basis.
Since it is such a muddle there in the Northeast, here is a blow-up of that section of the map:
You might want to go visit and see if your city is in the Top 100.
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And, if the violent attack wasn’t sickening enough, a staff attorney at juvenile court determined that his IQ was so low that he wouldn’t be able to help in his defense. The case was dropped.
‘I’ve been failed by the system’ | Teen walks free after neighbor says he broke her nose, left her in bruises
ST. LOUIS — A St. Louis woman feels like the judicial system failed her, after she said her teenage neighbor attacked her and walked away free.
Alicia Clarke said exactly a week ago she went for a quick run outside her south city home. When she came back, she noticed her shoes had been moved to a different spot and her cell phone was gone.
From there, she used Find My iPhone to search for it. The location said it was on her property grid. She used her work phone to call it.
“I open my back door to call it and I hear it in my neighbor’s backyard behind me,” Clarke said.
Clarke said she hopped the fence to get it and jumped back over to her yard. Another neighbor yelled out to her and said, “Hey, I told him, ‘I know you did this and I’m calling the police!'”
Clarke said that’s when the 6-foot teen jumped the fence and tackled her.
After the initial assault, he came back with a weapon (a screw driver), continue readingto see what happened next.
Clarke thought the fight was over. But when she went to juvenile court a few days later, she learned his case was dismissed.
“The most hurtful thing of all of this, is the dropped charges. That was much more hurtful than the physical assault,” Clarke said.
A juvenile court official said a staff attorney dropped the case before even going to the judge. The courts weren’t able to comment specifically on this incident, since it involves a juvenile. Clarke said she was told her accused attacker was found incompetent to aid in his own defense because he has an IQ of 49.
[….]
Alicia has a broken nose, staples in her head and stitches to the puncture wound under her eye.
Clark’s sister who wants the story told far and wide posted this additional information on her facebook page.
Hassan is a 15 year old refugee from Somalia who lives with his family. He is 6’ and approx 175lbs, much larger than my sister. He has broken into Alicia’s car 3 different times and broken into another neighbors house. The police were involved every single time and reported that nothing could be done since he was a minor. Surely this time would be different, though.
New data released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on its 2019 resettlement activities shows that the United States remains the top country for refugee resettlement. Furthermore, just like in previous years, the vast majority of refugees referred by UNHCR for resettlement in third countries in 2019 were not the most vulnerable or in urgent need of relocation. This contradicts the UN refugee agency’s constant claims that resettlement is a “life-saving tool”, a “critical lifeline” for refugees that needs strengthening. This also casts some doubt on UNHCR referral processes.
Note to PayPal donors! I want to thank all of you who send me donations for my work via PayPal. I very much appreciate your thoughtfulness. However, PayPal is making changes to their terms of service and I’ve decided to opt-out beginning on March 10, 2020.