Check out this map I came across today in my research. It is at the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) website and represents the caseload of refugees getting help from federal programs to find employment in each state. You pay for this! Now look at the employment rates!
Holy cow! Some of these are really low. So much for the idea that refugees quickly become self-sufficient!
If I were ORR I would be embarrassed to publish this information!
If I’m reading this correctly, why are we sending so many refugees to Texas (just as one example) when only 46% are finding employment. And there are states with even much lower rates than that. Geez, look at Florida!
Go here for more info.
Kind of makes you wonder if indeed the Cloward-Piven strategy (use the poor to bring on the revolution) is alive and well under Obama!
Tag: refugee unemployment
Kentucky furniture manufacturer going out of business; immigrants lose jobs
Hurry!!! Tell Senator Rand Paul we need to bring in more foreign workers to add to the unemployed refugee workers in Bowling Green!
Longtime readers of RRW know that Bowling Green is a preferred resettlement site for refugees and has been in the news many times for problems there with the federal refugee contractors, with crime and with its dubious distinction as the home of two Iraqi refugee terrorists (now convicted and in the slammer).
Doors close at Eagle Industries
This is the bad news from the Bowling Green Daily News (hat tip: Robin):
Bosnian, Burmese, Spanish, Vietnamese and English were among the languages spoken Wednesday by the more than 150 former Eagle Industries employees who sought help from the Rapid Response Team.
The Bowling Green furniture maker shut down last month with the intention of reopening with new owners. Instead, the company was forced into receivership and 286 people are without a job. So while employees quickly filed for unemployment benefits, they did not fill out all the paperwork needed for continued unemployment benefits, according to A.J. Tutko of the state’s Office of Employment and Career Services.
“You all thought you were going to be called back,” Tutko said, followed by interpreters in different languages.
Workers need to register for job focus career services, a web-based program that matches a person’s skill set with available jobs.
One man asked Tutko if he knew anything about the fate of Eagle. “No, I don’t,” he said.
Tutko was brought in for the meeting by the Rapid Response Team, which is overseen by the Barren River Area Development District. The team helps workers displaced in massive layoffs or closures. The team had two sessions at the BRADD office Wednesday and was scheduled to have two more today. It wasn’t clear how many workers would show up.
Workers in need of health care are desperate!
Jill Lewis, response team coordinator, started talking to workers about COBRA health insurance and how they could find out about those benefits. But workers, through an interpreter, said Eagle had stopped their health insurance benefits three years ago.
“Then they wouldn’t be eligible for this,” Lewis said.
She suggested that people look toward Fairview Health Center for help and suggested they sign up their children under 19 for Kentucky Children’s Health Insurance Program. It was clear that workers were unaware of that program. Many of the Hispanic women quickly shuffled through their papers looking for information on the program.
Read it all. There were a few other employers at the event looking for a few workers (maybe!).
For more on the mess the US Office of Refugee Resettlement and the US State Department have made of Bowling Green, type ‘Bowling Green’ into our search function and you will find posts spanning nearly 6 years.
After you let Senator Paul know (his staff person responsible for immigration is Brian Darling, 202-224-4343, Brian_Darling@paul.senate.gov), let Senator McConnell know too!
I have a sneaking suspicion that these employers looking for cheap immigrant labor have been enabling McConnell (and vice versa!) for decades. Bowling Green would not have become a federal preferred resettlement community without McConnell’s blessing!
Unemployment rate for legal refugees through the roof; contractors should oppose amnesty for illegals
But, they won’t of course. Most of the federal refugee contractors are out stumping for so-called “comprehensive immigration reform”* which will only mean more destitute immigrants competing with refugees and Americans for jobs.
A NumbersUSA ad circulating this morning (watch it!) in opposition to Lindsey Graham and the ‘gang of eight amnesty plan’ prompted me to look at the shocking unemployment rates for LEGAL immigrant labor—refugees—in the newest stats we have from the FY 2009 Annual Report to Congress on Refugees which I mentioned here and here (food stamp use skyrocketing) yesterday.
The unemployment rate for all refugees (who wish to work and are able to work, some are too old or too sick) for FY 2009 was 50% for those arriving that year! If you argue that things have improved since 2009, then where are the statistics? By not producing the legally required reports for 2010, 2011, and 2012, the ORR forces us to rely on the latest statistics available. By the way, our total number of ‘refugees’ (of all sorts) admitted in FY 2009 was 89,500. And, we are now proposing to legalize 11 million competitors for jobs?
Shocking graphs
Look at the graph on page 95 for example. In 2004, 60% of refugees worked an average of 44 weeks. By 2009, only 32% of refugees were working for (get this!) an average of 14 weeks. What this says to me is that the resettlement contractors were finding refugees any work they could get, even if it lasted only 14 weeks or less, in order to get their employment stats up.
So, tell me why do we need more immigrant labor when these poor LEGAL immigrants aren’t working?
Next time you see your Catholic priest ask him why the Catholic Church is pushing legalization of illegal immigrants while getting paid to resettle tens of thousands of refugees who will find no work and go on welfare.
* Not “comprehensive” reform anyway because it doesn’t consider the Refugee Resettlement Program.