Somali refugees have been in Arizona for more than 5 years, but their English language skills are lacking it seems according to data collected on the distribution of Coronavirus informational videos.
Videos in Somali are the most watched of ten videos produced by refugee advocates to teach them how to avoid spreading the virus.
Produced In 10 Languages For Arizona Refugees, COVID-19 Safety Videos Reach 70,000
The official language of the African nation Burundi is named Kirundi. Julie Ngiriye speaks it and other languages, which is why the social worker and care coordinator helped make an informational video about the coronavirus for Burundian refugees living in Arizona and beyond.
“I know the struggles they go through for having going through the same struggles myself,” she said.
In the video, Ngiriye explained how to wash your hands. She also talked about social distancing, not sharing plates or food utensils, and sneezing into your elbow. The goal, she said, is to inform.
“How it is really pandemic, not a simple disease,” she said.
The video is one of 10 produced in different languages. They feature Ngiriye, staff called cultural health navigators, and a doctor at Valleywise Health’s Pediatric Refugee Clinic.
“It is actually the best medium to be able to reach the majority of them in the community,” Ngiriye said, and noted that many refugees don’t read or write.
The doctor said shared apartments, jobs with no sick leave, and limited child care options make refugees especially vulnerable to COVID-19. As the coronavirus started to sweep through Arizona, state officials and Valleywise Health joined forces to make safety videos in languages like Swahili, Karen and Arabic.
In less than a month, the 10 videos have been watched on YouTube about 70,000 times. The video done in Somali has the most views. A local leader said it’s because most of the Somali community has been here for years. Making sure newer arrivals also get the message is the hard part.
This is just a quick update on the post I wrote, here a week agoabout Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods’ role in creating a massive Chinese virus hot spot in South Dakota.
Apparently the company is blaming the workers’ community culture and the workers point a finger at the company’s management of the plant. Thanks to reader John for bringing my attention to the story.
Smithfield Foods Is Blaming “Living Circumstances In Certain Cultures” For One Of America’s Largest COVID-19 Clusters
Was there any way to prevent the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant in South Dakota from becoming one of the country’s largest known coronavirus clusters, with more than 700 workers infected? It’s hard to know “what could have been done differently,” a Smithfield spokesperson said, given what she referred to as the plant’s “large immigrant population.”
“Living circumstances in certain cultures are different than they are with your traditional American family,” she explained.
The spokesperson and a second corporate representative pointed to an April 13 Fox News interview in which the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, said that “99%” of the spread of infections “wasn’t happening inside the facility” but inside workers’ homes, “because a lot of these folks who work at this plant live in the same community, the same buildings, sometimes in the same apartments.”
But internal company communications and interviews with nearly a dozen workers and their relatives point to a series of management missteps and half measures that contributed significantly to the spread of the virus. A BuzzFeed News investigation has uncovered new information showing the company did little to inform or protect employees during the critical two weeks after the first case at the plant surfaced. Then, with confirmed cases rising quickly, Smithfield introduced new safety protocols but applied them unevenly across the plant’s departments, leaving hundreds of workers exposed.
In late March, as word of the first confirmed case leaked, workers began seeing flyers on notice boards and doors. “If you are at work and feeling sick,” the flyers stated, “tell your Supervisor and go directly home.” But the directive was posted only in English, three employees said, even though many of the plant’s 3,700 workers have limited comprehension of English. Safety notices at the plant are usually translated into as many as five languages.
It is a long story, if you are interested in the gory details, continue here.
Someone could write a very useful book, a new version of The Jungle,by focusing on one plant like Smithfield Foods in Sioux Falls, SD.
Giant global corporations are changing the American heartland with the continued pressure on government to import (for them!) cheap foreign labor.
An author could hit all the key elements of greed, politicians and fake ‘religious’ charities as enablers, the suffering of American workers, the changing culture of middle America and the federal government’s complicity in the whole mess.
The opening chapter would detail the spread of the Chinese virus through the plant and the impact it is having on Sioux Falls.
In their usual knee-jerk response, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service came right out of the box on Monday (before anything is even on paper) to blast the President over a reportedly non-existent ban on immigration to America during the Chinese virus crisis.
Never mind that the President’s draft plan is pablum (see my commentsat Frauds and Crooksearlier). You would think by now the President should know that walking down the middle on an issue of great importance—in my view the most important issue for the future of America—he would understand that the middle of the road means you are road kill (targeted for death from both sides).
He is getting it from the Right and from the Left on the immigration ban issue.
[By the way, if you think this group is financially suffering during the Trump years, you are wrong. The ‘religious’ charity which is 85-90% federally funded is doing just fine. See here. It is insane that you pay their salaries as they denigrate the President and us!]
Lutheran Group Has Condemned Trump’s Plan to Suspend Immigration During the Pandemic
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah is a former staffer of Michelle Obama
One group pushing back is the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which called on the White House to continue to welcome asylum seekers and refugees during the pandemic. “America has always been able to respond to crises while upholding its obligations to the most vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers,” wrote LIRS President Krish O’Mara Vignarajah. “How can we shut our borders at the same time as our leaders openly encourage protests and the reopening of businesses like gyms and bowling alleys? To imply that immigrants are a threat to the vibrance and prosperity of America’s workforce is a xenophobic talking point — proven false time and time again.”
Ho hum, what else would you expect. Free speech, right!
She can blast the Prez all she wants on her private dime. The maddening thing is that you, the taxpayers of America, pay her salary. Three years ago Trump should have figured out how to shut down their funding.
By the way, I expect some of you are reading this now and saying—well who the heck are you going to vote for other than Trump?
Of course there is no question I still support the President, but Trump and all politicians need to know that in order to have an energizedbase they need to take strong positions—no one is going to go out and knock themselves out campaigning for middle-of-the-roaders.
That was last week’s news in the Denver Post. The Brazilian-owned plant was forced to close as 277 employees tested positive for the Chinese virus.
According to the Post, the closure was necessary earlier this month to avoid overwhelming local health care services.
State and local health officials in a Friday letter warned JBS CEO Andre Nogueira of the virus’ rapid spread among employees, particularly those who work the first shift at the plant, and said continued exponential spread would “quickly overwhelm” medical resources in Greeley and the surrounding communities.
The JBS slaughter house at Greeley, Colorado has played a large role over the years on the pages of RRW.
JBS US headquarters are in Greeley. This is a photo I took when I traveled through the Midwest and West in 2016 mostly to have a look at a few meatpacking towns.
In fact, it is through the controversy surrounding refugee (mostly Somali) workers there in 2008 that I became interested in the concept of foreign-owned meatpackers (I call BIG MEAT) encouraging the admission of cheap legal immigrant labor—refugees—which then changes the character of American towns.
Not to mention the fact that US taxpayers subsidize those low wage workers.
I had devoted an entire category I labeled Greeley, Swift, Somali controversy.See it here.Posts go back to 2008!
But problems for the beef giant are bigger than a few facility closings…..
We can thank the COVID-19 situation for helping to expose the globalist fat cats that own these plants—like the Brazilian brothers featured in the New York Poston Saturday. Hat tip: Judy.
And, don’t miss my post about Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods and how the leftwing media (and refugee contractors!) have for years supported the movement of migrants to the US to work these kinds of jobs.
Corrupt billionaire brothers’ meat plants are riddled with coronavirus
The world’s largest meat-processing giant was forced to shut down some of its US plants as more than 100 of its workers tested positive for COVID-19 last week, but the pandemic may be the least of its problems.
The Brazilian billionaire brothers — one of whom owned a Manhattan penthouse — controlling the massive meat producer JBS, which slaughters 13 million animals a day and has revenues of $50 billion a year, have been linked to high-level government corruption that has rocked the South American country.
The Batistas’ company is also being probed in America now for bribery, and has been accused of price-gouging during the COVID-19 crisis. The New York attorney general, meanwhile, has been asked to look at the company as “an imminent threat” before it goes public on Wall Street.
[….]
After admitting to bribing nearly 2,000 elected officials in Brazil in order to secure government funding to fuel their company’s US expansiona few years ago, Joesley and Wesley Batista were slapped with more than $3.2 billion in fines in 2017, the highest in the country’s history.
Now JBS’ parent company, J&F Investimentos, is reportedly the subject of US Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission investigations for alleged bribery here. Last year, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) urged the federal government to investigate the beef conglomerate and its alleged dealings with the Venezuelan government after the company developed business ties with the administration of President Nicolas Maduro. The US has levied sanctions against the Venezuelan leader.
Last week, US legislators, including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), renewed calls for the federal government to investigate alleged price-fixing by JBS and other big beef producers during the pandemic. According to Grassley, big meat processors are using the pandemic to “gouge” US cattle producers.
[….]
Last week, JBS, which sells beef and chicken under its Pilgrim’s Pride and Swift labels, said it was closing a packing plant in Greeley, Colorado, where four workers died from the coronavirus, including longtime plant employee Saul Sanchez, 78. Sanchez, a father of six, had worked for more than 30 years at the plant. A daughter, Beatriz Rangel, said Sanchez was willing to work at the plant even during the outbreak because he trusted his employer.
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.
