Posted on 01/04/2018 9:07:45 AM PST by jacknhoo
Refugees, which is it: Meatpacker laborers or helping the “oppressed?”
Posted by Ann Corcoran on January 4, 2018
Ali Noorani of the National Immigration Forum tries both arguments in USA Today.
Ali Noorani on twitter: @anoorani https://twitter.com/anoorani?lang=en
I wasn’t planning to post on one more hysterical story about Trump refugee numbers being low and thus decimating the refugee contractor industry, but I can’t resist mentioning one little bit of the story entitled:
Refugee admissions to U.S. plummet in 2017 Before I get to Noorani, Mark Krikorian summed it up with this:
“Elections have consequences,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower levels of legal and illegal immigration. “This is what he said he’s going to do, and he’s doing it.”
Readers, for years and years, refugee advocates pretended they have nothing to do with the global meatpacking industry and its ‘need’ for cheap migrant labor, but now even savvy DC operatives like Noorani trot out the argument feigning concern for Midwestern economies.
Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which has advocated for a higher refugee cap, said many Midwestern cities depend on refugees to work in the meat-packing and poultry plants that sustain their struggling economies.
Okay and if that establishment Rightwing argument doesn’t float your boat, he moves on to moral duties, historic roles and oppressed people so he can hit the Leftwingers too:
As more migrants are fleeing their homelands, Noorani said now is the worst possible time for the U.S. to retreat from its historic role as a “moral beacon” for the oppressed.
“There are ways to help refugees get to places of safety and begin a new life that serves the American interest,” Noorani said. “Past administrations have been able to do that. This administration is not that so interested.”
American interest? Or global meatpackers’ interest (subsidized by US taxpayers)?
Dakota Provisions Photo credit: Me
This “new life to serve American interests” was on full display in a Washington Post story "U.S. companies see opportunity in exodus from storm-ravaged Puerto Rico" (hat tip: Melanie) the other day about a South Dakota turkey plant and how it gets its migrant laborers (this time plane loads from Puerto Rico to join the refugee labor force, but they have to pay back their airfare out of their paychecks!).
It made me sick, especially because I traveled to Huron in the summer of 2016 to see how that plant, Dakota Provisions, was changing (forever) the city of Huron.
Is this what Noorani thinks “serves the American interest?” Grover’s interests maybe?
If I ever stop writing this blog, I’m writing a modern day “The Jungle.” It is long overdue! I can happily skip eating turkey!
They are not refugees they are colonialists.
Well, I guess the meat-packers need to raise wages and hire Americans. We call that “lowering unemployment” and look! The evil corporations will have to pay for it! Yay!
people will pay in higher cost at store, not the companies.
As all of us know, there is NO universal human right to live in the United States.
“people will pay in higher cost at store, not the companies.”
Whatever the increased consumer costs may be, they are much less and much preferable to the enormous overall costs of illegal aliens.
“people will pay in higher cost at store, not the companies.”
“Whatever the increased consumer costs may be, they are much less and much preferable to the enormous overall costs of illegal aliens”
...only if the government spends wisely and exercises strenuous fiscal responsibility in all things there unto pertaining. A long row to hoe. We are not even close. A top down overhaul is long overdue. We are still at the baby step stage.... no, we haven’t even advanced past crawling. But it is refreshing to see a pile-on
diminishing somewhat.
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