Update September 6th: Black unemployment at over 11%, here.
Recently we told you about the busy beaver federal refugee contractors who are working hard to bring MORE cheap immigrant labor to North Carolina while native North Carolinians are going without work at an unprecedented rate.
Iraqi refugees in North Carolina. Doing work Americans won’t do? http://myfox8.com/2014/08/16/fleeing-syria-jobs-help-from-church-community-are-critical-to-stability-here-in-u-s/
See two recent posts here and here about North Carolina.
Then see the proof from the Center for Immigration Studies which analyzed the statistics to confirm what we suspected.
Previously CIS reported on similar numbers for the states of Florida and Tennessee.
Natives accounted for most of the growth in population, but all employment growth went to immigrants
The Gang of Eight immigration bill (S.744) passed by the Senate last June would have roughly doubled the number of new foreign workers allowed into the country, as well as legalized illegal immigrants already here. North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagen (D) voted for it. An analysis of government data by the Center for Immigration Studies shows that, since 2000, all of the net increase in the number of working-age (16 to 65) people holding a job in North Carolina has gone to immigrants (legal and illegal). This is the case even though the native-born accounted for 61 percent of growth in the state’s total working-age population.
Is there any connection between Obama wooing big businesses to get on board with his threat to go-it-alone on immigration and the spate of stories we are seeing about how much businesses love their refugee labor force? I wonder.
First we note this must-read articleat Politico about the Obama Administration working to expand its plans for an executive branch-driven immigration overhaul by sweetening the pot for big businesses looking for tech labor and cheap labor (in the case of refugees it is cheap and captive labor!).
Tamar Jacoby: It’s all about promoting the free flow of labor into the US. https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2013/02/13/washington-lobbyist-for-big-business-the-basic-goal-is-to-promote-the-free-flow-of-labor-into-the-usa/
Public opposition has been building against more immigration generally as the 2014 election season advances in light of the illegal alien invasion on the southern border this summer. However, if Obama can get big business on board, and thus blunt any establishment Republican opposition to changes in immigration policy (law!), it could be a winner for the Dems and for big business this fall.
Representatives from Oracle, Cisco, Fwd.US, Microsoft, Accenture, Compete America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce were among those present at a wide-ranging Aug. 1 session…
Later in the story we hear from Tamar Jacoby that she doesn’t want the needs of employers who want low-skilled laborers left out of the discussion. See also Jacoby with Grover Norquist in 2009 NumbersUSA expose’.
Why so many stories lately about the refugee resettlement contractors*** serving as employment services for businesses?
The contractors previously kept a pretty low profile about their services to businesses large and small (they especially like meatpacking companies and the hotel/service sector).
Just last week the Washington Post wrote glowingly about the role resettlement contractor Church World Service is playing in bringing refugee laborers to North Carolina, here. I wonder do the businesses give CWS a finders-fee for bringing them laborers?
Now here is the Winston-Salem Journaltelling us how much another contractor, World Relief (National Association of Evangelicals) is doing for North Carolina businesses. It is a win-win—contractors get to wear the white hat of humanitarianism while making money! Is World Relief in competition for refugee bodies with CWS?
World Relief’s Andrew Timbie begs US State Department in Washington for more refugees for NC. Remember readers that contractors are paid by the head for everyone they resettle.
KERNERSVILLE — The work here at EFI, which makes architectural glass and aluminum, takes strength and skill. Glass sheets can weigh as much as 155 pounds and the measurements must be exact. On a summer morning, the plant floor is noisy and hot.
In the company’s early years, it had trouble finding and keeping reliable employees. But these days, when Jeanne Clary, the company’s human resources director, has a vacancy she calls the World Relief office in High Point, a local refugee resettlement agency.
“I will almost always call World Relief first,” said Clary.
[….]
Andrew Timbie, the director of the High Point office of World Relief, has spent the summer making a pitch to his national office to send refugees this way. He expects to resettle 450 refugees in the next year, with a handful from Syria. “Generally speaking it’s a very good area for refugee resettlement,” he said. “The weather’s good. It’s warm. There’s a newcomer’s school. There are clinics here. There are lots of jobs for refugees.”
With the federal and state welfare goodies coming their way, businesses don’t have to feel bad about the low wages that are discouraging American workers.
The federal government provides refugees with a stipend that lasts for three months and extended federal benefits for six more months. They are also eligible for state aid, such as food stamps and Medicaid. But Timbie’s first goal is to help refugees find a job. In spite of North Carolina’s unemployment rate of 6.4 percent, Timbie said he can count on a handful of employers other than EFI that are eager to hire refugees, among them Ralph Lauren Corp. and Tyson Foods Inc..
LOL! Tyson Foods is no surprise, they hire refugees and change American small towns throughout the mid West and South. But, see Ralph Lauren goes to North Carolina, here— says they will bring high-skilled jobs. So how do the third-world refugees fit in? Are they going to clean the offices at night?
There is much more in the W-S Journal, so please read it.
We havemany posts hereon North Carolina. You might wish to review several from 2010 in which contractors (the Lutherans at that time) in North Carolina came under fire for overloading some locations and then not taking proper care of the refugees they resettled.
Recently the Center for Immigration Studies released a report on Tennessee (we reported on it here) about how immigrant employment was responsible for most of the job growth in that state, and then today I see they have another study out, this time on Florida. Here is how a piece by Ryan Lovelace atNational Review Onlinebegins:
A new report from the Center for Immigration Studies finds that the majority of the net increase in employment among Florida’s working age population since the first quarter of 2000 has gone to legal and illegal immigrants. Florida ranked second in the nation in employment growth among 16 to 65 year olds since the first quarter of 2000, CIS says, but still ranks 34th nationwide in labor-force participation of its native-born population in the same age range.
They need to do a study on North Carolina if they haven’t already!
One of the quasi-government/quasi-religious groups, Church World Service, is busy supplying refugee laborers for North Carolina companies and now they are whining again about cuts in taxpayer dollars that allow them, a non-profit ‘church’ group, to bring in workers to compete with native workers.
CWS CEO Rev. John McCullough (left with scarf) and other “faith” leaders pushing for amnesty in Washington. http://www.interfaithimmigration.org/2013/04/12/nationally-renowned-faith-leaders-speak-at-a10-time-is-now-immigrants-rights-rally/
Here is the Washington Post helping Church World Service get its cry heard for more money (from the US Treasury’s money tree), in the wake of the unaccompanied minors’ border invasion:
“We measure our success as a company by the number of rice cookers we have,” Lindsay Hancock, Creative Snacks’ director of business administration, says only half-jokingly. The company has four now.
All 30 full-time employees on the plant floor are refugees. Many came through the Church World Service resettlement agency and its Greensboro employment training program. But that program’s future remains uncertain because, in the world of immigration and refugee policy, it turns out that the Mexican border and all its politics can run right through a North Carolina snack plant full of refugees.
File this under unintended consequences: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement allocates funds to programs for refugees and unaccompanied alien children. Earlier this year, when the number of children fleeing Central America and Mexico for the United States started skyrocketing, the office reallocated more money to help address a mounting crisis at the border. That money — $94 million — came directly out of refugee programs and services. Taking the hit were grants that help refugees with employment, preventative health services and adaption to America and its school system.
Don’t make us choose between refugees and illegal immigrants! WE want money for everybody (our salaries too)!
For state refugee coordinators and immigration advocates, the crisis at the border has meant walking a tightrope: Do not make refugees bear the cost of Congress’s refusal to provide more funding. Do not pit refugees against immigrant children. Do not make us choose one or the other.
State refugee coordinators have been scrambling to figure out how to avoid layoffs and keep their health-care, educational and employment services intact.
Then this (below) is what jumped out at me! “Creative Snacks” DEPENDS on Church World Service to supply it with workers and the owners have NO REAL ANSWER AS TO WHY THEY DON’T HIRE AMERICANS.
I have a few theories and one is that there are tax breaks of some sort for the employers when they hire refugees and what the refugees can’t afford through their salaries comes to them via various social services and training supplied by you! (There are even special savings plans for refugees for such things as cars, homes and education where the government matches their savings.) So, the company can keep salaries low—you take care of everything else. And, most importantly, refugees are basically trapped employees with nowhere else to go.
The WaPo continues (We want to know why is this the responsibility of the US taxpayer?):
“We depend upon Church World Service to help us find people,” Hancock says. “The loss of funding would have an immediate impact on our business.”
Yes, Hancock says, the company could hire the native-born, but Creative Snacks’ owners, Marius and Hilary Andersen, are committed to providing opportunities to refugees, who, by definition, have been wrenched from their homelands and who, in that loss, must place their faith in a new country. [So, they have been wrenched by the UN and Church World Service from their homeland, what does that have to do with answering the question about why the Andersens don’t hire native North Carolinians?—ed]
CWS isn’t as bad as some of their fellow contractors*** in terms of the percentage of federal dollars they gobble up in any given year (most contractors are up in the 90% range). Their 2013 Form 990 says they took in $74,101,599 and that $43,999,257 came from you as government grants. That’s about 59.3 %.
Doing well by doing good!
Their CEO, Rev. John McCullough makes a cool $285,830 in salary from CWS (and related activities). Five other employees are in the 6-figure salary range. Maybe if the shortfall continues they could cut those salaries down a bit and help the refugees more. (just saying!)
You should know that CWS lobbied for so-called Comprehensive Immigration Reform which we all know helped inspire the border surge.
This is a comment we don’t want you to miss from ‘pungentpeppers’ in response to the previous post on the South Carolina cigarette trafficking story.
Jordanian immigrant entrepreneur Kamel Qazah will now cost taxpayers a bundle while behind bars for the next 18 years!
“Immigrants open businesses and revitalize communities,” politicians say. Nasser Alquza boasted that he owned 30 businesses! He and his nephew Kamel Qazah (same family name, just spelled differently) ran a pizza parlor, a Subway franchise, a car lot, two gas stations, etc. Ideal, upstanding immigrants – or thieving, economic terrorists?
The nephew Qazah bragged to undercover agents that he could “sell anything.” That ranged from stolen electronics to Christmas decorations pilfered from a hijacked Wal-Mart truck. Uncle Alquza told investigators that he, too, sold a diversified portfolio of stolen merchandise – from baby formula to Advil to condoms. He also confided that he could launder hundreds of thousands of dollars overseas each month through various accounts. The secret to his success: Keep changing your operation, he told agents, and you’ll never get caught. And they weren’t alone – they ran their scheme in cooperation with a large network of family, friends and associates in the immigrant community.
Is that what America needs?! Immigrant “entrepreneurs” who steal merchandise, sell it, skip paying taxes, and ship the money overseas?!
Our legitimate business owners are burdened by taxes – but at least they have the satisfaction of knowing that the money they send to their to local governments pays for police protection, schools, road repair, local parks, trash collection, and to help fellow citizens who have hit on hard times. But our decent business owners just cannot compete against people who couldn’t give a hoot about the local community, and instead just milk whatever money they can get out of the American cash cow – ignoring all rules and obligations – and then launder their ill-gotten stolen money abroad to the Middle East.
Stop this harmful, “immigrant business” foreign aid program! Our towns and cities cannot afford it anymore!
Readers: I had forgotten we had this category “Comments worth noting.” I’ll keep an eye out for other good comments like this one and try to publish them more prominently going forward.
What does this have to do with refugees? Hopefully not much, but a note of warning to the Bhutanese refugees rumored to be trafficking cigarettes, you will likely be caught one day.
Convenience store fraud is not limited to food stamp fraud (a side interest here at RRW). In addition to SNAP trafficking there is gambling, illegal drug sales, cigarette smuggling and even gun sales going on behind those shoddy facades at the local mom and pop stores.
I sound like a broken record, but someone really needs to create an entire blog about immigrant criminals in America!
Nasser Alquza, former President Central Mosque of Charleston, to do time in the big house!
Here is one account from 2012 of the bust of the ring headed by Jordanian immigrant Nasser Alquza. From The Post and Courier (Hat tip: the ever-vigilant ‘pungentpeppers’):
A Mount Pleasant man fronted cash in a multimillion-dollar cigarette trafficking and money laundering scheme that crossed state borders and hid cash within South Carolina businesses, according to federal court documents unsealed last week.
Nasser Alquza, 56, was president of the Central Mosque of Charleston until after his arrest Nov. 30.
Investigators nabbed Alquza and 10 other men in a 26-count indictment filed in North Carolina, accusing them of crimes ranging from conspiracy to receiving stolen property.
Court records say the men bought nearly 7,000 cases of “stolen” cigarettes, each containing 60 cartons, from undercover officers in exchange for about $7.5 million.
Federal agents searched Alquza’s home, a three-story yellow house on Oakhurst Drive in the upscale Rivertowne community in Mount Pleasant, shortly after 7 a.m. on Nov. 30. They left with computers, cameras, money, check books, receipts, business records, passports and identification documents.
Officials asked a judge to seal the court records as the investigation continued, but the documents became public last week.
And in a recent update of the story, this time at the Lake Wylie Pilot, we learn of the convictions in the case where “business ties” extended to the perps’ native Jordan. Don’t you wonder which of our LEGAL immigration programs let Alquza and his crew into America?
Key figures in a $20 million cigarette-smuggling ring across the Carolinas, which involved the undercover sale of almost a half million cartons of smokes, received federal prison sentences of up to 18 years this week in Charlotte.
In all, “Operation Burn Notice” led to the arrests of 12 people on cigarette-trafficking and money-laundering charges – all connected to the flow of illegal merchandise between Charlotte, Greensboro and Columbia.
[….]
Undercover agents from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police and other law enforcement groups eventually focused on the uncle-nephew team of Nasser Kamal Alquza of Mount Pleasant, S.C., and Kama Zaki Qazah of Columbia.
Together, the men owned businesses ranging from convenience stores to used-car lots to Subway franchises. They also maintained extensive business ties throughout South Carolina and their native Jordan.
[….]
Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Frank Whitney sentenced the 35-year-old Qazah to 18 years in prison followed by two years of supervised release.Whitney also ordered him to forfeit any property associated with his crimes. [Two years of supervised release? How about deportation!—ed]
That last hit could be substantial. When authorities searched Qazah’s house after his arrest, they came across a cardboard box in his garage. It held $1,299,990 in cash.
According to this report, uncle Nasser Alquza will be sentenced sometime this week.
Just like the stories of refugee criminals we have reported lately here in Utah, and here in Colorado, this story will not reach the national mainstream media, so it’s up to you, bloggers, on-line publishers and readers on the web, to get this news out!
For our complete archive on food stamp fraud, click here.
