Kansas: Refugee office to close in “slaughterhouse”
city
by
Ann Corcoran 2/2/18
From time to time I’ve posted
stories on refugee resettlement offices closing due to the fact that fewer
refugees (aka paying clients) are now arriving in the US (see post yesterday with latest numbers), but I don’t post all of them.
Moneybags Miliband (here in Manhattan)
makes nearly $700,000 annually as CEO of the IRC, but they can’t afford to keep
this Kansas office open. Fine by me, but do any of you humanitarians out
there find this a bit disconcerting?
This one caught my eye because I
have written many times over the years about Garden City, Kansas and its Tyson
Foods plant that has attracted cheap immigrant labor for years.
Rarely do you see such a direct
connection drawn between “slaughterhouse” jobs and the US Refugee Admissions
Program (USRAP).
This time it is the giant International
Rescue Committee
closing its doors in GC, while its
CEO (a British national based in Manhattan) pulls down a salary in excess of
$600,000 a year (here). Changing the heartland, one meatpacker at a time should
be the USRAP’s motto!
A humanitarian [ha!ha!—ed] group that helps refugees settle in western
Kansas among plentiful slaughterhouse jobs is shutting down its office in the
region amid changing rules that welcome fewer newcomers to the country and the
state.
The International Rescue Committee, or IRC, says a falling number of
refugees prompted the agency’s plans to shutter its Garden City office at the
end of September.
Kansas took in 580 refugees in the
12-month period that ended Sept. 30, compared to 914 the year before. IRC
officials said they expect the drop-off to look even more dramatic this year.
That trend reflects tightening U.S.
State Department guidelines that make it harder for refugees to seek sanctuary
in the United States.
In addition, a State Department
spokeswoman said that in December the department told resettlement agencies it
would withdraw funding from sites that take on fewer than one hundred refugees
each year. The federal government gives those local agencies about $2,100 for each
refugee.
This next bit was news to
me. I had no idea local hospitals were carrying some of the refugee care
load jointly with a federal resettlement contractor! Why isn’t Tyson Foods
taking care of the needs of its workers?
Many refugees in western Kansas turn to Kearny County Hospital in
Lakin, Kansas, for health and social services. The hospital, in turn, depends
on the IRC to take care of essential services such as food, housing, education
and job placement, said
hospital CEO Benjamin Anderson.
Orientation for Somali workers at
Garden City Tyson Foods plant requires an interpreter.
Anderson said the IRC plays the primary role for helping refugees in
the area, and when the organization’s Garden City office closes, his
hospital may have to take over some of its services.
Garden City is home to many
refugees, including a large Somali community, which was the target of an
alleged bomb plot last year. That incident and its upcoming trial in March have
brought renewed attention to the city’s wide range of immigrants a portion of
whom are refugees from Mexico, South America and Africa. In the local school district, for
example, English is a second language for nearly half the students.
So who is paying for refugee support services so that Tyson Foods has a
ready supply of cheap labor—local taxpayers!
But, don’t get too excited about a
possible slowdown of needy people arriving in Garden City because we expect to
hear that Tyson Foods will bus in migrants from other places to satisfy their
desire for “slaughterhouse” workers.
Hey, I’ve been referring to them in
a more sanitized way—meatpackers—I like this more descriptive
word—slaughterhouse! See my previous posts on Garden City, KS by clicking here.
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