Tag: meatpackers and labor

Big business drives refugee resettlement in America: Could Chobani Yogurt be behind the drive in Twin Falls?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Chobani
Called the largest yogurt plant in the world, Hamdi Ulukaya opened the Chobani plant in Twin Falls, Idaho in 2012. It is financially involved with the College of Southern Idaho which coincidentally houses the refugee resettlement office there run by the Virginia-based US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a federal resettlement contractor. How many refugee employees does Chobani want in Twin Falls?

 
For years we have chronicled the involvement of BIG business in pushing for cheap immigrant labor.
We’ve told you about meatpacking plants and hotel chains. Large agri-business concerns, including dairy farming conglomerates/egg producers, claim they need immigrant labor.  Most recently someone told me that a Lutheran nursing home chain was hiring refugee labor.  Here is one of many posts we have written on the subject of meatpackers changing small town America.
Indeed, why else would the Chamber of Commerce have played a major role in pushing the ‘Gang of Eight’ amnesty bill a few years ago—cheap labor for their big business members of course!
And, you Lefties wonder why wages are so low!
(Americans would do the work if wages weren’t artificially kept low by a glut of immigrant labor (both legal and illegal)).
I’ve even suggested that the nine major resettlement contractors (which are selecting your towns for resettlement) and the US State Department act as ‘head hunters’ for large corporate interests all the while wearing their humanitarian do-gooder hats!
We know why Democrats want the immigrant influx (voting power), but, why do you think that RINO Republicans, as well as Republican governors, keep their mouths shut about the refugee program even in the face of vocal resistance in communities suffering the financial and cultural impact (and possibly a threat to security) of dozens of nationalities of third worlders in their towns?
Money! Money! Money! (That is why they don’t listen to you!)
Chobani Turk
Is Kurdish-American Hamdi Ulukaya behind the drive to bring Syrian refugees to Twin Falls? Just wondering!

Great business model!

This morning I see news that the Kurdish-American owner of Chobani Yogurt has hired 600 refugees for his New York yogurt plant and that he is spending millions to help refugees.
Spending millions where the refugees live in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq etc. is a wonderful thing and he deserves praise for that, but if he is using his financial power to bring Syrian refugees to small town America we have a right to be informed!
Refugees are here legally and make a better supply of cheap labor because they cannot go home!
Here we learn about Hamdi Ulukaya, CEO of Chobani Greek Yogurt at the New York Daily News:

A Turkish yogurt executive is putting his money where his mouth is, hiring Syrian refugees and donating millions to the cause.

You will need to go to the NY Daily News link to watch the video where they brag about hiring 600 refugees for the New York plant.
By the way, there is a new large meatpacking plant opening soon near Boise, Idaho—are they going to be looking for the cheap refugee labor too?
Since these industries pay low wages, you lucky taxpayers get to supplement the refugee families through the welfare system.  Great business model isn’t it!
See all of our coverage of the conflict on-going in Twin Falls, Idaho, here.  See especially our initial report on the public meeting held earlier this week.
Incidentally, my research of a data base kept by the US State Department indicates that refugee resettlement to Twin Falls was slow up until Obama took office when the numbers going to Magic Valley Idaho ticked upward dramatically (so no wonder citizens began to notice changes in the community).

Iowa: Number of languages/illiterate refugees making fire and rescue work difficult

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 2 Comments

News of the surge of illegal aliens swamping Texas and being driven and flown to other states, has pushed most of our other “refugee” news to the side, but here is one bit of news from a week ago that must be mentioned.

This is a problem we have written about off and on for seven years—by federal executive order (Clinton) local governments/courts are required to have interpreters available for the myriad languages being spoken by immigrants in their communities, but most can’t afford it.

Cough? (Got TB?) COURTNEY COLLINS / Courier Staff Photographer

From WCF Courier (hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’).  By the way, note that here we go again with Catholic Charities and meatpackers needing cheap labor!

WATERLOO | Emergency dispatchers and response teams are struggling with a widening language divide as they attempt to service Waterloo’s growing population of non-English speakers.

The communication barrier creates problems for all parties involved, from the dispatcher deciphering a 911 call to the officer trying to put together an accurate police report to the concerned resident trying to communicate a problem with little to no knowledge of the English language.

Over recent years, Waterloo Police have dealt with a slew of languages including Bosnian, Spanish, Serbian, Croatian, Burmese, French and Vietnamese.

In 2006, Burmese refugees began settling in Waterloo for the employment opportunities at Tyson’s meat plant, and the community has been growing ever since.

Dispatchers at the Black Hawk Consolidated Communications Center receive about a half-dozen calls a day in foreign languages.

But resources for interpretation are slim, a Courier investigation shows.

And as refugees from Burma continue to move to the area at a steady pace, bringing with them five vastly different languages, it has quickly become a complex problem to solve.

Nearly 1,500 Burmese refugees have planted roots in the Waterloo area, according to local estimates. That population is expected to reach 2,000 in the next year. In summer months, about two to four households migrate to the area each week.

Stephen Schmitz, who resettles new refugees through Catholic Charities in Cedar Rapids, estimates that more than half of these incoming refugees are illiterate.

There is more, read it all.   Be sure to check out the comments!

I don’t have time to do all the linking but know that BIG MEAT (and its head hunters at the State Department and contractors like Catholic Charities) is responsible for changing the demographics of many small cities in the Mid West and South.  It is a win-win for them—cheap captive “illiterate” labor (refugees cannot go home) that you subsidize them (housing, food stamps, education).  They get to wear the do-gooder white hat and you pay the price! 

How about if the meatpackers, like Tysons, pay for the extra costs to the community—like interpreters!

About the photo:  We are not suggesting that the woman in the photo was asking refugees if they have TB, but readers should know that Burmese especially have higher rates of TB than some other refugee groups.  See our health issues category for more on TB in the refugee population, but here is one post generally making the point.

Burmese refugees struggling in Iowa

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The thing that amazes me most about articles like this one, about how there aren’t enough ‘resources’ for the large numbers of refugees arriving in ‘welcoming’ cities and states, is that NO ONE ever says, maybe we should slow the flow into the US until such time that we can afford them!

Paw Moo Htoo (Mom in the photo) has been in America seven months….Htoo says her case worker only showed her how to turn on the lights and oven, but said nothing about enrolling her kids in school. So at first, they didn’t go.

 

There is so much in this report from the Des Moines Register by Rehka Basu (Hat tip: ‘pungentpeppers’) that I didn’t know where to begin snipping it.  So please be sure to read the whole article!  Emphasis below is mine:

On the Monday after standard time went into effect, Lee Mo’s children missed school. The Burmese refugee family knew the American ritual of moving clocks forward and back, but they didn’t know on which dates that happened, so the school bus left without them.

Even if she had known the date, Mo couldn’t read a calendar. For much of her five years here, she has had to estimate time based on the position of the sun. She doesn’t know her age. She can’t make a phone call. Like about half of the people in Iowa who speak her native Karenni, she can’t read in any language. Neither she nor her husband went to school.  [We have admitted tens of thousands of Burmese like this family!—ed]

An estimated 6,000 Burmese are in Iowa and some say life was easier in the camp!

Since 2006, refugees from Burma have been turning up in Iowa, becoming its largest incoming refugee group.

There are an estimated 6,000 refugees from Burma who are here, divided about evenly between three main language groups (though there are dozens of less-spoken languages), according to Henny Ohr, executive director of EMBARC, a new Des Moines nonprofit to help them. The Iowa Bureau of Refugee Services counts 1,667 refugees from Burma in Iowa, but that doesn’t include secondary migration from other cities. Yet Ohr says no Karenni speaker in Iowa is fluent in English.

For all of the deprivations in the refugee camps — houses of bamboo and leaves, lit only by candlelight; dug pits for toilets; no electricity or running water; no health care or police to fight crime — Mo says that life was easier. At least she knew how to navigate it.

In the “old days” resettlement contractors used private money and volunteer help to go beyond what their government dole paid for, today they don’t!

Refugee resettlement core services from the U.S. State Department were always limited to 90 days, and there is a one-time per capita grant of $1,800, of which $700 can go to agency staff for management, says John Wilken, chief of the Bureau of Refugee Services in the Iowa Department of Human Services. But in the past, income-eligible single people or couples without young children could also get cash assistance and medical care for five years. That was cut back to eight months.

“In the old days, agencies doing resettlement often went beyond 90 days, I presume because they had private dollars or volunteers,” said Wilken. “As the landscape has changed and resettlement has become more costly, resettlement agencies have had to limit their services to exactly what they’re getting paid for.”

Take note Wyoming, state taxpayers help foot the bill.

Low-income refugees with children get welfare benefits under Iowa’s Family Investment Program, with a lifetime cap of five years. The Bureau of Refugee Services uses federal funds for refugees here less than two years to pay for employment-related services primarily. The bulk of that $550,000 last year paid for bureau staff, job transportation and telephone interpretation services. Language instruction was limited to “self-learning” on computers using Rosetta Stone programs. The bureau has no Karenni-speaking employees.

There are other federal grants, including some to prepare elderly refugees for citizenship, or targeted to Des Moines Public School children, and partnerships with Lutheran Services of Iowa, Catholic Charities and the Des Moines chapter of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. But as Wilken says, “All of us would say there’s a pretty substantial gap in comprehensive case management.”

Secondary migrants arriving for meatpacking jobs!  (Immigrant cheap labor!)  Meatpackers make money, while taxpayers subsidize the lives of these legal laborers.

And when families are resettled in Iowa from other states — for meatpacking jobs or because relatives are here — the 90 days of assistance won’t follow them, and the Bureau of Refugee Services won’t help. Wilken said it didn’t compete for such funds; the Committee for Refugees and Immigrants administers them. Yet secondary migrants are the biggest group of refugees from Burma.

Just a reminder, Bill Clinton began the flow of refugees to Iowa for his meatpacking buddies, here.

Ohr calls it a crisis.

It is a crisis alright, but one not to be solved by throwing more taxpayer dollars to contractors!  Let’s bring fewer refugees!

 

Recipe to save dying counties: Get a meatpacking plant!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

And,  immigrant workers to go with it!

Honest to goodness, that is part of the prescription offered by AP reporter cum opinion writer, Hope Yen, in a story headlined: ‘Census shows record 1 in 3 US counties now dying.’

And, the only way to save them is to increase the population and pour in the immigrants as the baby boomers start leaving this life.   But, she offers not one shred of evidence that pouring in the immigrants brings economic recovery.  Frankly, the only economic boost poor and uneducated immigrants might bring a city or county is because with them come FEDERAL WELFARE dollars!

Muslim employees have clashed with the JBS Swift & Co. meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colo., over taking breaks to offer prayers, as called for by their religion. Here, some of the employees are seen gathering at Lincoln Park in Greeley. Photo by Sara Loven, Daily Tribune via AP

Longtime readers here know what meatpackers have brought to some towns in the Midwest and South—demands for religious accommodation for Muslims, ethnic squabbles, crime, Section 8 housing, overstressed school systems, food stamp fraud and the list goes on.

So, to Ms Yen and her comrades—population increases will not save a county or city when the population is an economic drain and causes social upheaval—-just ask France (Moroccans), Germany (Turks), Greece (Afghans) and the UK (Pakis) if the immigrant hordes have brought an overall benefit to their economies.   Heck, we recently learned that Germany was sending its elderly pensioners to Eastern Europe and Asia for their nursing home care because the Germans couldn’t afford their old people.

Here is the AP story, but first read about how immigration is killing Dekalb County, Georgia (here yesterday).  Why do these pro-immigration news(?) reports never bother to mention the downside?   And, you might also re-visit Professor Kotkin who also jumps to the conclusion that more diversity brings positive change here.

 WASHINGTON (AP) — A record number of U.S. counties – more than 1 in 3 – are now dying off, hit by an aging population and weakened local economies that are spurring young adults to seek jobs and build families elsewhere.

New 2012 census estimates released Thursday highlight the population shifts as the U.S. encounters its most sluggish growth levels since the Great Depression.

The findings also reflect the increasing economic importance of foreign-born residents as the U.S. ponders an overhaul of a major 1965 federal immigration law. Without new immigrants, many metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh and St. Louis would have posted flat or negative population growth in the last year.  [Why the assumption that population growth means economic growth, unless we are counting state and federal welfare dollars?—ed]

“Immigrants are innovators, entrepreneurs, they’re making things happen. They create jobs,” said Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, at an immigration conference in his state last week. Saying Michigan should be a top destination for legal immigrants to come and boost Detroit and other struggling areas, Snyder made a special appeal: “Please come here.”

Frankly, Governor Snyder that is gobbledegook!  MOST immigrants starting businesses could never get the business off the ground without government support like the micro-loans supported by taxpayer dollars we are distributing like Pez candy!   Just look around your own local city—how many immigrant-run restaurants survive more than a year or so?  Now, convenience stores might survive a little longer as they are scamming SNAP (food stamp) programs to keep themselves afloat.

Again, this scribe at AP reports as a good thing for (we presume) the economy that the US population is growing thanks to immigrants.  But, let me ask, is there some point when population has grown enough?  Is it just possible that some towns and counties are going to decline in population?  Or, is there no upper limit?

….the U.S. population as a whole continues to grow, boosted by immigration from abroad and relatively higher births among the mostly younger migrants from Mexico, Latin America and Asia.

Quoting a sociology professor at the Univ. of New Hampshire:  solve your economic woes with something dramatic—get a meatpacking plant!

Unless something dramatic changes – for instance, new development such as a meatpacking plant to attract young Hispanics – these areas are likely to have more and more natural decrease.”

It’s not the immigrants, it is the federal money!

Near the very end of this pro-open borders pitch, comes one line that is really closer to the truth about how some cities are surviving and some aren’t—-those surviving are at the receiving end of a federal money pipeline!

Since 2010, many of the fastest-growing U.S. metro areas have also been those that historically received a lot of federal dollars…

So what happens when the federal flow begins to slow?  Get ready for chaos as all the minority and immigrant groups, used to surviving on ‘social welfare’, see the money dry up.  This can’t go on forever.  We all know that.

About the photo:  We reported this news from Colorado back in 2008.   LOL!  See Greeley 2012 trying to get money out of the meatpackers for the educational costs associated with immigrant kids!

For new readers:  If you would like to know more about the multi-culti joys of meatpacking towns, visit our Greeley/Swift/Somali controversy category (86 posts!).    Or, for other places in the US where the refugee program via the US State Department supplies meatpacking labor, just type ‘meatpacker’ into our search function.

Is something going on in Grand Island, Nebraska?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Grand Island is another of those American meatpacking towns (like Garden City, KS which I just wrote about this week) being transformed through the Refugee Resettlement program as it imports workers for those giant corporations, some of which, like Swift and Company, are no longer American companies.  Swift is owned by a larger Brazilian company, here.

I see this morning that many readers are reading this post from 2010.  It’s about the Grand Island police chief at the time saying that it was “chaotic anarchy” there among the myriad ethnic groups imported for their labor.  Surprise! they weren’t melting in the magic American melting pot.

Readers I see every day in my statistics which posts readers are gravitating to, that old Grand Island post is bringing people in today making me wonder if there are new problems in Grand Island.  From time to time, you might find it interesting to review the list of TOP POSTS in the right hand sidebar to see what fellow readers are interested in.

If anyone sees anything breaking on Grand Island, please send it my way.   Also, type ‘Grand Island’ into our search function for lots more posts on that town.  There was quite a controversy there in 2008 when the Somalis tried to get the Mayor fired from her job because she made politically-incorrect comments to the New York Times.