Posted on 08/04/2008 4:30:22 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
An estimated 750 to 1,000 Somali refugees are living in Emporia, a magnet because of jobs at the Tyson Foods meatpacking plant. Many have latent tuberculosis.
H/T to Texas Fred and his comment thread.
EMPORIA — When hundreds of Somali refugees began showing up to work at the meatpacking plant, nurses Lori Torres and Renee Hively were among the first to get to know the exotic, new arrivals."We got notified a day in advance that 70 Somalis were being transferred from a (Tyson Foods) plant in Nebraska," Hively recalled. "That 70 soon grew into 400, seemingly overnight."...Torres is the case manager for about 160 Somalis in Emporia who have been diagnosed with latent tuberculosis....
Section 212(a)(1) of the Immigration and Nationality Act states that aliens with specific health-related conditions are ineligible to receive visas and ineligible for admission into the United States. The Attorney General may waive application of this inadmissibility on health-related grounds if an application for waiver is filed and approved by the consular office considering the application for a visa. The Division of Migration and Quarantine, NCID uses this application primarily to collect information to establish and maintain records of waiver applicants in order to notify the Immigration and Naturalization Service when terms, conditions and controls imposed by waiver are not met. NCID is requesting the extension of this data for 3 years. There total estimated annualize burden is 167 hours.More from the Topeka Capital-Journal:
...each of the department's [Tyson's] nurses divided the case management responsibilities, but with the surge it was decided Torres would take them all, in essence creating a full-time tuberculosis nurse position. They also persuaded the clinic's managers to hire a full-time Somali translator. [Your package of chicken fingers just went up a quarter.}Here's the EXOTIC word again:
The Somalis are the most recent and perhaps most exotic wave for this city of about 25,000 people. Not everyone in Emporia has been welcoming. There have been incidents of vandalism and an armed robbery attempt at the Ayan Restaurant, a Somali-owned eatery that also serves as an informal community center for the refugees.If you haven't caught the latest news, Tyson contractually, with its Union, canceled Labor Day - no joking here - at their Shelbyville, TN plant and replaced it with a Muslim holiday sometime each Fall.
An article posted Nov. 3 on the Emporia Gazette Web site about a state grant to Catholic Community Services to help the Somalis settling in Emporia drew scores of angry, anonymous reader reactions, including this one:
"Emporia is going to be its own 3rd world country before long because of all the damn, bleeding hearts."
"They came post 9/11. They're black and they're Muslim," Hively said, describing some of the hostility demonstrated toward the Somalis. "Emporia didn't have many black people before. This is a small town."
I remember reading about this when it happened last year. I believe I read about it here, at FR.
TB has been a concern to folks in Shelbyville but to my knowlege, no one at the Tyson plant has been diagnosed with it yet. Under the circumstances, it could be only a matter of time though.
I remember when one had to have a health card from the state’s health dept. in order to work around food, whether in a processing plant or in a restaurant, or ANYwhere food was handled. TB was one of the things they checked for. Why this isn’t still done is beyond me.
If that was a question, the answer would undoubtedly be yes...
the infowarrior
Great, I like your idea about cutting immigration to 250k. That is the exact number, though arbitrary, that I thought best. Of course, That was only after a complete moratorium on the first year of a five year plan that would increase by 50k increments until the sixth year when it would stay at 250k.
I am not buying anything Tyson makes. I don’t think I ever was into their food. I don’t care for chicken anyway. But now I am going to look into what other products they have to be on the safe side.
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