Kansas: Refugee office to close in "slaughterhouse" city

02/02/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

From time to time I’ve posted stories on refugee resettlement offices closing due to the fact that fewer refugees (aka paying clients) are now arriving in the US (see post yesterday with latest numbers), but I don’t post all of them.

david Miliband manahattan — Moneybags Miliband (here in Manhattan) makes nearly $700,000 annually as CEO of the IRC, but they can’t afford to keep this Kansas office open. Fine by me, but do any of you humanitarians out there find this a bit disconcerting?

This one caught my eye because I have written many times over the years about Garden City, Kansas and its Tyson Foods plant that has attracted cheap immigrant labor for years.
Rarely do you see such a direct connection drawn between “slaughterhouse” jobs and the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP).
This time it is the giant International Rescue Committee closing its doors in GC, while its CEO (a British national based in Manhattan) pulls down a salary in excess of $600,000 a year (here).
Changing the heartland, one meatpacker at a time should be the USRAP’s motto!
From KCUR 89.3:

A humanitarian [ha!ha!—ed] group that helps refugees settle in western Kansas among plentiful slaughterhouse jobs is shutting down its office in the region amid changing rules that welcome fewer newcomers to the country and the state.

The International Rescue Committee, or IRC, says a falling number of refugees prompted the agency’s plans to shutter its Garden City office at the end of September.

Kansas took in 580 refugees in the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, compared to 914 the year before. IRC officials said they expect the drop-off to look even more dramatic this year.

That trend reflects tightening U.S. State Department guidelines that make it harder for refugees to seek sanctuary in the United States.

In addition, a State Department spokeswoman said that in December the department told resettlement agencies it would withdraw funding from sites that take on fewer than one hundred refugees each year. The federal government gives those local agencies about $2,100 for each refugee.

This next bit was news to me. I had no idea local hospitals were carrying some of the refugee care load jointly with a federal resettlement contractor! Why isn’t Tyson Foods taking care of the needs of its workers?

Many refugees in western Kansas turn to Kearny County Hospital in Lakin, Kansas, for health and social services. The hospital, in turn, depends on the IRC to take care of essential services such as food, housing, education and job placement, said hospital CEO Benjamin Anderson.

Garden City USA: Immigration to the Heartland — Orientation for Somali workers at Garden City Tyson Foods plant.

[….]

Anderson said the IRC plays the primary role for helping refugees in the area, and when the organization’s Garden City office closes, his hospital may have to take over some of its services.

Garden City is home to many refugees, including a large Somali community, which was the target of an alleged bomb plot last year. That incident and it’s upcoming trial in March have brought renewed attention to the city’s wide range of immigrants — a portion of whom are refugees — from Mexico, South America and Africa. In the local school district, for example, English is a second language for nearly half the students.

So who is paying for refugee support services so that Tyson Foods has a ready supply of cheap labor—local taxpayers!
But, don’t get too excited about a possible slowdown of needy people arriving in Garden City because we expect to hear that Tyson Foods will bus in migrants from other places to satisfy their desire for “slaughterhouse” workers.
Hey, I’ve been referring to them in a more sanitized way—meatpackers—I like this more descriptive word—slaughterhouse!
See my previous posts on Garden City, KS by clicking here.

Tennessee town welcomed Tyson Foods plant after residents of Kansas town revolted

01/08/2018 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

For those of you following news about BIG MEAT, here is a story you need to read in its entirety at the Tennessee Star (hat tip: Joanne).
Citizens of small town America are beginning to understand that the arrival of a BIG MEAT plant will change their towns forever, and they don’t like it!

Corker supporting Tyson Foods — Welcoming another Tyson Foods plant to Tennessee are Republicans—Governor Haslam in center and “Little Bob” second from left.

We told you about the town of Humboldt, TN welcoming a new Tyson Foods plant promoted by Tennessee governor Haslam and Senator “Little Bob” Corker here in early December, but this is fascinating news.
And, it is so exciting to see investigative reporting at its finest!
Tennessee Star:

The decision by Tyson Foods to open a meat-packing plant in Humboldt, Tennessee, welcomed recently by Gibson County Mayor Tom Witherspoon, came only after the facility was rejected by citizens in Tonganoxie, Kansas. The “big meat” company would have created approximately the same 1,500 jobs there that it says it will bring to rural Gibson County.

[….]

Reuters reported in November 2017 that the decision by Tyson Foods to switch over to Humboldt came only after “the No Tyson in Tongie” citizen-led opposition defeated a proposed Tyson plant in Tonganoxie, Kansas, a town not much smaller than Humboldt. Several Kansas state legislators also committed to opposing the proposed Tyson plant.

No-tyson-in-tongie-by-Doug-Conrad_ — Citizen opposition in Tonganoxie, KS was “staggering”

Citizen opposition in the “Tongie” area was described as “staggering,” Twilight Greenaway reported at Moyers & Company, the website operated by far left journalist Bill Moyers.

That opposition was fueled in part by the secrecy in which the deal was arranged between Tyson executives and local officials until it was finally made public in September, Greenaway reported:

[Read what he said about the secrecy surrounding the plans for the plant, here]

Greenaway’s accounting of the “No Tyson in Tongie” defeat of Tyson Foods acknowledged that the issue of “new comers” arriving for meat-packing jobs also concerned residents. Greenaway notes that “most meat processing plants are now staffed almost entirely by immigrant and refugee populations from places like Somalia, Latin America and South Asia.”

For any of you concerned about your heartland towns and what BIG MEAT will bring, please read the whole story, here.
“The Jungle” here we come!
See my archive entitled ‘meatpackers’ here.
I also have many posts on Tyson Foods. Don’t miss this one where we learned that Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (one of the nine federal contractors supplying cheap labor to meatpackers) has a sweet deal with Tyson.

Garden City, Kansas to become new poster-city for the joys of BIG MEAT-generated multiculturalism

05/21/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If you’ve been reading RRW for a bunch of years, you probably heard about the propaganda film featuring Shelbyville, TN that a left-wing-funded media outfit did back in 2007. The film was a whitewashed look at the turmoil created in the town when Tyson Foods ‘welcomed’ refugee (mostly Somali labor) to Shelbyville.
In the Shelbyville flick a local newspaper reporter who wrote a series of stories about the disruption the Somalis had brought to town was the villain in the film that was ultimately shown around the world about how great it was that the locals finally accepted their African brothers. (Here is one of many posts I wrote about the Shelbyville propaganda film.)
Now, check this out, a new propaganda film (actually two of them) are being filmed this summer in Garden City, Kansas. (That Shelbyville film is too old now, they need something new for the Trump-era.)

Somali workers attend new employee orientation at the Tyson beef meat packing plant outside of Garden City, Kansas. http://100percentfedup.com/how-tyson-foods-is-spreading-islam-in-u-s-forcing-taxpayers-to-pick-up-housing-healthcare-costs-for-refugees-and-destroying-local-towns/

They have villains too! You will see them discussed in the opening paragraphs here at The Garden City Telegram (read about them yourselves).
Just like the Shelbyville film, the Garden City film(s) will be used to shame other towns in to accepting a flood of third world diversity.
What a coincidence…..
Here (below) are a few snips from this latest news. Guess what? It is Tyson Foods that brought the ready supply of cheap refugee labor to Garden City too! What are the odds that this film company will bring up the issue of low wage (cheap!) immigrant labor? Zip! Zero! Nada!
I was going to visit Garden City last summer on my 6000-mile trip to see some of America’s meatpacking towns that have been changed by BIG MEAT, but my local contact (not happy with what has happened to G-C) had a family emergency, so I went to Nebraska instead.
Maybe I should resuscitate my idea about a book that shows how major global corporations, like the meat and poultry industry, are changing America for one reason—Low wage workers means PROFITS for them!
And, then along come these Leftwing film makers to shut up any citizen opposition and help BIG MEAT get its laborers for decades to come! Makes me wonder if Tyson Foods is helping pay for the project! Hmmmm!
The Garden City Telegram:

When Lawrence-based documentary filmmakers Tess Banion and Bob Hurst heard this news [about villains in western Kansas—ed], they decided their next project was going to take place in Garden City.

[….]

Their documentary will be a feature length film, so 90 to 100 minutes, and will try to illustrate how Garden City’s diverse culture works by diving deep into immigrants’ stories. [These leftwingers love their “stories,” we need to get better at telling ours!—ed]

“This is not going to be a journalistic piece,” Hurst said. “It’s more of a portrait. I think it’s more personal and more in depth about the lives of particular individuals who have come to Garden City and have been there for a long time, or new arrivals and what they have gone through personally and what their stories are.”

[….]

Hurst said their goal for their new film is for viewers to reflect on the lives of others, and find that every resident of Garden City is working toward the same goals. [Fascinating admission that they are trying to bend minds—ed]

[….]

To help understand the mindset of long-term Garden City residents, Hurst and Banion have enlisted the help of Nancy Harness, former mayor and longtime resident of Garden City. Harness said she is excited to be a part of the film and hopes that the documentary can serve to be an ambassador for the town.

“I think that the community is unique in how we dealt with the diversity of cultures, and it’s nice to have that be recognized by people from outside the community,” Harness said. “ I think part of my job here is to be an ambassador for Garden City and western Kansas. It’s an intriguing place and interesting community. To be part of the crew to introduce that community to a larger audience is cool.”

Harness said she hopes that residents who are hesitant of immigrants watch the film and reflect on why Garden City has welcomed immigrants in the past.

BIG MEAT changed Garden City!

“Part of what happened was that in 1980, we opened the world’s largest beef packing plant,” she said. “They needed 3,000 folks to just keep the plant running. Well, where are those workers going to come from? When the community decided that’s how they wanted to move forward economically, we basically said as a community we will open our doors to new people because that’s the only way this will work. I hope that this film gives the life-long locals who might be hesitant to this immigrant change a moment to stop and think about how the only reason Garden works is that everybody feels some ownership to it.”

Obviously that is not true—that everybody feels some ownership of the meat industry’s need for cheap labor and its role in changing the demographics of American heartland towns.
And, btw, in case you are wondering, the meat industry once paid wages that were very attractive to AMERICAN workers. It is only when they discovered first the illegal aliens willing to work for less, and then ultimately the refugee laborers whose low wages you subsidize with your welfare support, were they able to keep wages low.
Continue reading here.
Here is a lengthy story from the Wichita Eagle in 2010 with more background on Garden City and Tyson Foods.
One of my favorite stories about Garden City (and Harness role) was this one from 2010 where we learned that Somalis in Garden City wanted their own (separate) publicly funded cemetery. No association with infidels even in death!
Another controversy long-time readers might remember is the one about Emporia, Kansas and how the arrival of the Somali labor force there for, yes, another Tyson Foods plant, roiled the town so much so that Tyson closed the plant!
Don’t miss this post: Trump refugee number reduction could hurt BIG MEAT (at Bloomberg no less!).
Here is one of about 20 posts I wrote on the controversy in Emporia. Unfortunately most of the links are now dead, so it’s a good thing I did snip articles throughout the period back in 2008. Some of those Emporia Somalis moved to Garden City.

It is really too bad that there aren’t documentary film makers with some cash to tell the other side of the ‘diversity is beautiful’ story to balance the Garden City films in the works.

Is it time for a modern day version of The Jungle?

Getting new housing in your town? Then you will get refugees!

01/08/2017 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

If Trump doesn’t turn off the spigot, both of refugees and funding/regulations for low income housing (Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing!), then expect refugee contractors to find your town!

Changing the heartland one town at a time!

tysons-map — Tyson Foods is the top employer in Garden City, Kansas and the primary reason Somalis and other refugees move there. If you have a Tyson Foods plant (or any BIG MEAT plant near where you live, you will have refugees too.

Here we have news from Kansas where a federal refugee contractor crows about all the new housing that could be available for refugees in Liberal, Dodge and Garden City, Kansas.
Governor Brownback recently withdrew the state from the Refugee Admissions Program, but that means nothing unless he is willing to sue the federal government on states’ rights grounds.
His withdrawal means that contractors, like the International Rescue Committee, will move in to run the program with Washington. As we said here, Brownback cannot be trusted on this issue!
From KSN.com (Refugees may double for southwest Kansas in 2017):

GARDEN CITY, Kan. (KSNW) — Southwest Kansas welcomed 67 new refugees to the area in 2016, just shy of the 80 the International Rescue Commission [Committee—ed] was authorized to re-settle, but that number could soar this year.

“We do have the capacity to settle 140,” said Amy Longa, who manages the southwest Kansas site of the Commission. “I do not know how many we’ll end up settling by the end of the fiscal year.”

It depends on many factors at play in the international resettlement efforts, but the number of new refugees settling in Dodge, Liberal, and Garden could potentially double this year over last year.

[….]

The housing shortage in the region is an obstacle, but it is being addressed.

“We’re now seeing a little more opportunity with the recent building,” said Carol Davidson with Garden City Community Development, “and we also have plans in the future, this next year 2017, we do have a development that’s going in.”

“19 duplexes, 12 fourplexes, and five 36-unit apartment complexes,” said Cory Hodapp, who owns the company building a new housing complex in Garden City. “We’ll have half of the duplexes and half of the fourplexes complete this year.”

Good news for the IRC and Tyson Foods!

It’s good news for the IRC, which competes with the market to help find homes for refugees.

“What we have been working on the past two years is reaching out to landlords and creating partnerships with landlords to create housing,” said Longa. “Not only in Garden City, but in Dodge and Liberal as well.”

As we have reported on many previous occasions, the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program works closely with large companies like Tyson Foods and others to supply them with cheap immigrant labor. Those laborers are further subsidized by your tax dollars including those used to expand low-income housing.
So, don’t fall for the humanitarian mumbo-jumbo! Refugee resettlement is an industry! Chambers of Commerce want it, housing developers want it, big industries want it for cheap labor, local mosque leaders want it, politicians want it (money!), and the resettlement contractors get jobs and nice salaries all while pretending to wear a white hat of humanitarianism!

We have many previous posts going back several years on Garden City, click here. And, see Garden City’s wikipedia page where someone had to be sure that the recent arrest of three Kansans who allegedly planned to blow up one of the Somali apartment complexes has been added to the page.
There is another article about Kansas and refugees, here, in recent days. You might want to have a look at.

When governors withdraw their state from the Refugee Admissions Program, that is not the end of it!

11/20/2016 ~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

When governors withdraw their state from the Refugee Admissions Program, that is not the end of it!
When governors withdraw their state from the Refugee Admissions Program, that is not the end of it!
When governors withdraw their state from the Refugee Admissions Program, that is not the end of it!
When governors withdraw their state from the Refugee Admissions Program, that is not the end of it!
When governors withdraw their state from the Refugee Admissions Program, that is not the end of it!
When governors withdraw their state from the Refugee Admissions Program, that is not the end of it!
When governors withdraw their state from the Refugee Admissions Program, that is not the end of it!

What am I doing you ask? An expert on communication once told me that people have to hear the same message seven times before they get it. I want readers to get this point!

governor-paul-lepage — Come on Governor LePage—do it! Sue!

Once a governor withdraws his/her state from the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program (RAP), a Constitutionally unsupportable program created out of whole cloth known as the Wilson-Fish program gives the director of the ORR the (supposed) authority to designate a NON-GOVERNMENTAL organization to run the program in the state.
Please visit the Office of Refugee Resettlement website, here, to learn more about it (see a list of all states that are W-F now).

Knowledge is power:

Then, see Michael Patrick Leahy’s (Breitbart) clear description of the history of the law/regulation known as the Wilson-Fish Alternative program by clicking here. (That article, written almost a year ago, is available by googling. Are lawyers for governors withdrawing from the program so incompetent that they can’t find that information?)
As governors withdraw there may be a brief period of disruption to the flow of refugees to the state (the new withdrawals are New Jersey, Kansas, Texas and now Maine), but the resettlement proceeds and services are supplied when a federally-funded non-profit resettlement contractor takes over.
Think about it! The federal government and an unelected, unaccountable to any voters, non-profit group will be deciding how to spend local and state taxpayer dollars in this case, Maine!

gov-abbott — Texas Governor Greg Abbott—do it! Once Texas is designated a W-F state, file the Tenth Amendment case!

I continue to be stunned by how little lawyers for these governors know about the RAP and are apparently in the dark about what they are doing…..
Unless of course they do know and by withdrawing they are getting the monkey (you) off their backs, fooling those of you who want it stopped, and thus allowing the program to proceed claiming they can do nothing.
However, they can do something…..
If a governor withdraws, he must follow-up with a state’s rights lawsuit!
The state of Tennessee is proceeding to challenge the Constitutionality of the Wilson-Fish program, see here. The real test for the governors who withdraw is if they will join the lawsuit!

Under present administration of the program, Maine resettlement will continue as the federal government will (illegally we believe) assign a replacement agency to administer it!

Now, here is the AP story about what the Governor of Maine has just done and what the feds will do in response (I bet Catholic Charities is chuckling behind closed doors!). Will Governor LePage sue?

sam-brownback — Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has a mixed record on refugees. Test: Will he join the Tennessee lawsuit?

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) – Refugees will continue entering Maine despite Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s announcement that the state will no longer participate in a federally funded resettlement program.

So far this year, about 607 refugees were resettled in Maine, and more will arrive next year. Over the past decade, the state has worked with Catholic Charities of Maine to settle more than 3,400 refugees.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said its Office of Refugee Resettlement is working to appoint an interim agency that will administer earmarked federal funds, though a timeline is still uncertain.

That agency will likely be Catholic Charities. The federal government will later accept competitive bids for an agency that will take federal funds directly for refugee resettlement. [This whole process is built on no legal authority!—ed]

[….]

LePage wrote a Nov. 4 letter to Democratic President Barack Obama saying he no longer wants Maine associated with the federal refugee resettlement program, and he has also opposed the settlement of Syrian refugees in Maine “until adequate vetting procedures can be established.”

[….]

The governor said Maine communities are being burdened by this “unchecked influx of refugees” and “especially prevalent” welfare fraud within the refugee community. He did not provide data for such assertions.

[….]

Maine joins three other states – New Jersey, Kansas and Texas – that have recently opted out the federally funded refugee assistance program.

If you live in one of the so-called Wilson-Fish states you should be urging your governors to join the Tennessee case!

Endnote: I saw Kansas Governor Brownback’s name on a list of people Trump is interviewing. I sure hope it isn’t for any position relating to immigration/refugees. See here in 2014 we reported that he signed on to a letter with Grover Norquist and other RINOs, including Jeb Bush, which urged the Republican Party to embrace more refugee resettlement. Human Rights First loved it!