Tag: South Dakota

South Dakota one of Four States that won’t get Afghan Evacuees (yet!)

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

“We had really significant concerns about our ability to provide the level of support to help make that integration successful.”

(Rebecca Kiesow-Knudsen of Lutheran Social Services South Dakota)

 

Wow! I can’t believe a refugee contractor is actually telling the truth!  No, they don’t have the resources and neither does South Dakota or America for that matter!

I was amazed to see that the AP reporter actually remembered that Noem was one of the virtue-signaling Republican governors who told Donald Trump no thanks in 2019 when he tried to give the governors veto power to stop refugee resettlement in their state.

 

Republican Governor Kristi Noem will get the credit, or the blame, for blocking the Afghans depending on which side of the great divide one resides.

I had a couple of other things I had planned to write about today until I saw this AP story.

Both other possibilities are stories written by John Binder at Breitbart who is really on top of the news about the flood of ‘new American workers and voters’ Biden is pulling in from around the world.

Heck, they won’t have to cheat in elections once they change the electorate!

From AP (where they have gotten something right in their headline—these are mostly not refugees!):

South Dakota is 1 of 4 states not resettling Afghan evacuees

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — South Dakota is one of four states, along with the District of Columbia, that won’t be resettling any of the nearly 37,000 Afghan evacuees who made it to the U.S. during the final days of its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last month.

Lutheran Social Services of South Dakota, which is the state’s refugee resettlement agency, decided not to accept any Afghans after weighing local conditions and its ability to resettle them.

Rebecca Kiesow-Knudsen, the group’s chief operating officer, said Thursday that those arriving from Afghanistan without special immigrant visas are currently not eligible to work or receive federal aid to help them resettle.

“We had really significant concerns about our ability to provide the level of support to help make that integration successful,” she said.

Kiesow-Knudsen said the agency was facing a “rapidly evolving situation” that could change depending on whether Congress decides to provide funding and work eligibility for evacuees who have not been granted refugee status.

How financially burdened will your state be?

The Biden administration this week began telling governors and state refugee coordinators how many Afghan evacuees they would receive.

The numbers ranged from more than 5,200 people who are headed to California to as few as 10 being resettled in Alabama and 10 in Mississippi.

South Dakota, along with Hawaii, West Virginia, Wyoming and the District of Columbia, are not expected to resettle anyone from the first group.  [Really those Libs in DC and in Hawaii should be rewarded with refugees and they almost never get any!—ed]

Republican Gov. Kristi Noem last month expressed reservations about accepting evacuees from Afghanistan. She told KSFY-TV, “We do not want them coming here unless we know they are an ally and a friend, and that they don’t want to destroy this country.”

Noem in 2019 decided to continue allowing refugees to be resettled in the state after former President Donald Trump attempted to allow states to opt out of the program.

Remember this.  In American anyone can move and that includes migrants of all stripes.  Afghans may be placed in most states but they won’t end up there. As tribal people, as soon as they can they will be heading to enclaves where other Afghans have settled because they will want to be with their own kind of people.

LOL! We should take bets on how quickly the Afghans get out of places like Vermont (brrr!) and even places like Minnesota where the territorial Africans (who don’t see the ‘joys of diversity’) will be making it hard on the Afghans.

Check out my archive on South Dakota, another state I visited on my 2016 road trip!

Food Processing Immigrant Labor Force Still Causing Problems Due to Chinese Virus

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Large swaths of the refugee/immigrant labor force that came to America (or who were brought here by the federal government) to provide a ready supply of cheap labor for giant global corporations are still sick or are afraid to return to work in the meatpacking industry.

The Chinese virus has exposed a great vulnerability not just for the companies, but for the future of the country.  Any intelligent company will now begin to see the need to move faster toward automation and then what happens to the literally millions of immigrant workers with no skills and no English to learn new skills.

Reuters this week canvassed some of the BIG MEAT companies and reports that meat production is still not returning to its former capacity.  Workers are sick or scared to return to work.

Notice how they even have to put Trump into this story headline, as if Trump’s order had anything to do with the continued problems of an industry that was not forward thinking.

Meatpacking workers often absent after Trump order to reopen

[Chinese owned] Smithfield Foods Inc [SFII.UL] is missing about a third of its employees at a South Dakota pork plant because they are quarantined or afraid to return to work after a severe coronavirus outbreak, according to the workers’ union.

See my April post about the trouble in Sioux Falls: https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org/2020/04/25/changing-south-dakota-one-slaughterhouse-at-a-time/

Tyson Foods Inc (TSN.N) was forced to briefly close its Storm Lake, Iowa plant – a month after U.S. President Donald Trump’s April 28 order telling meatpackers to stay open – as worker absences hobbled its slaughter operations.

Nationwide, 30% to 50% of meatpacking employees were absent last week, said Mark Lauritsen, a vice president at the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW).

[….]

Infections have risen steadily in rural counties that are home to large meatpacking plants since Trump ordered them to stay open. At least 15 meatpacking counties now report a higher infection rate, on a per capita basis, than New York City, the virus’s epicenter – though that is likely a reflection of the extensive testing of workers and local residents along with elevated infection rates.

More than a dozen meatpacking workers, union leaders and advocates told Reuters that many employees still fear getting sick after losing confidence in management during coronavirus outbreaks in April and May. Absenteeism varies by plant, and exact data is not available, but some workers’ unwillingness to return poses a challenge to an industry still struggling to restore normal meat output.

More here.

Not just meatpacking!

In a report about refugees working in food processing in Abilene, Texas we see the same story.

If you have been wondering why Texas is still the number one destination of new refugees being admitted to the US  (even as politicians there SAY they want it stopped), it is because of companies like this one that employs large numbers of immigrant/refugee laborers while changing the social and cultural makeup of American cities.

The article at Food & Environment Reporting Network begins with the usual refugee sob story. They must teach that in Journalism 101—soften up readers to the plight of the poor____ (fill in the blank)!

The story is long. It explains in detail the problems with a work force that is uneducated and living in close proximity to each other.

The pandemic is just the latest threat faced by refugee food workers in Texas

 

Lawi’s  dilemma is one that many workers around the world are facing. But former refugees like Lawi can be particularly vulnerable in this pandemic.

Mfaume Lawi (with family) was brought to Texas from the DR Congo by the International Rescue Committee to work for the food processing company.

Many former refugees are from rural parts of their home countries and had limited access to education. They might not read or write in their home languages, which makes it even harder to try to learn to read and write in English; they might only speak their own dialects, and their work experience is often constrained by the opportunities in overcrowded refugee camps where the average wait time to leave is close to 30 years.

A lack of education, work experience, and English language skills have made it especially hard for many former refugees to understand the scope of the pandemic and follow advice on social distancing.

 

Building ethnic enclaves is part of the problem….

Even without a pandemic, resettlement can present what feel like insurmountable obstacles. But agencies work to keep families and people of similar diaspora together because of their shared language and past, so they can quickly feel like extended family. Still, the fact that the community is often together—living in apartments near each other, spending time in each other’s homes outside of work—can be deadly in a pandemic.

Former refugees make up about 20 percent of the workforce at the AbiMar Foods plant. Because of that high number, the company’s outbreak was also a refugee-community issue. The close-knit nature of the community meant that those early days were especially crucial to stop the spread.

You can read it all yourself.

Bottomline, any smart company will be moving to mechanization and America will be left dealing with hundreds of thousands of refugees admitted in recent years who have no skills and little opportunity to gain any.

The Obama Administration told the UN in 2014 that we would be ‘welcoming’ 50,000 from the DR Congo over the subsequent five years. 

We have now surpassed that number by at least 10,000.  See here in late 2019 we were at 58,999!

Changing South Dakota One Slaughterhouse at a Time

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 1 Comment

This is just a quick update on the post I wrote, here a week ago about 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.

Buzzfeed News:

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.

Why Do Reporters on the Left Support BIG MEAT Jobs for Immigrants?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ 3 Comments

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 Breitbart takes 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.

Here is Munro at Breitbart:

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.’”

There is much more here.

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 by clicking 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.

South Dakota: Meet Taneeza Islam, your friendly Muslim (activist) next door!

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I wish I was tech-savvy and knew how to design a Bull S*** meter for stories like this one.
Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)/Muslim Brotherhood activist to speak in Huron, South Dakota on Sunday (April 15th) to assure all of you that there is nothing to fear from migration of Muslim political activists to the Great Plains!
She believes in meeting those who belong to “vilified” groups, she says.
That is so funny because, by intimidating the speaking venues, she actually shut down events in South Dakota a few months ago where speakers who disagree with her political views were scheduled to speak.  Wasn’t she vilifying them with her actions?
It would serve her right if the tables were turned on her and she was silenced! (But, we don’t do that because we believe in free speech!).
See my Taneeza Islam archive here.
From the Huron Plainsman 
(Sub-headline should read CAIR political activist to speak to ‘Connecting Cultures’)

‘Discussion on Diversity’ focused on Muslims

People are encouraged to attend a free “Discussion on Diversity” featuring Taneeza Islam of Sioux Falls at 1 p.m. Sunday, April 15, at Top Floor Events.

Screenshot (374)

A second-generation Muslim who was born in Michigan, Islam will talk about the Islam religion, as well as immigrants and refugees.

An RSVP-only lunch will be served during the event for a small fee (notice luncheon time change). Beverages and brownies will be available for everyone during the event.

Please RSVP lunch reservations to Amy L. Bennett at jampyview@yahoo.com and provide your name and the number of guests.

“We’re not trying to change beliefs, we’re trying to add value to our own,” said Amy Bennett, a member of Connecting Cultures in Huron, who was instrumental in organizing this program, along with Rhonda Kludt, Kim Rieger and Fern Marie Mattke, who helped secure a Thrivent Action Team Grant.

“Being Muslim in our nation can be very tenuous and painful for some,” said Bennett, who is Jewish. “How can we fulfill their lives without treating them like that? We want to respect someone else’s place or opinion. I’m willing to listen to your story and how it impacts you and understand how you feel that way.”

Bennett said she noticed a site for Taneeza Islam one day when she was looking at Facebook, and explored her further on YouTube.

“Her video was welcoming and approachable — with such a hot topic,” Bennett said. “We shouldn’t be afraid to have hard conversations.

What we should be afraid of is when we don’t have any conversations.”

Tell that to Ms. Islam!
At this point the Huron Plainsman gives a recitation of highlights from Ms. Islam’s bio, but fails to mention that she was CAIR Minnesota’s Civil Rights Director stirring up trouble for a St. Cloud high school in 2010, see here (among other things!).
In Islam’s own words:

“I believe the best way to overcome intolerance and hate is to actually meet a person from the group that is being vilified,” she said.

“I am the norm of what American Muslims are really like.”

LOL! But, that is precisely what we fear the most—that you, Ms. Islam, are the norm!
I’m guessing, but I think CAIR/Muslim Brotherhood wanted an Islamic political activist in South Dakota when they saw the opposition growing to more refugee resettlement there and Taneeza Islam is it.
Maybe someone should contact Ms. Bennett, since she wants to hear different viewpoints, and ask her to hold another luncheon for the opposing view on Muslim migration, CAIR, and sharia law in America! Wouldn’t that be the fair thing to do?
My very large South Dakota archive is here.