They’re still better than you in life. It’s better than being a hypocritical worthless leech.
Inside the Ohio Town Invaded by "Cat-Eating" Haitians
- Thread starter Colonoscopy
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@alaskanseminoleWhat is also amusing to me is the Trump campaign acting like this is some sort of new and unique phenomenon.
Shit, I was writing about the difficulty in assimilating new immigrant labor here TWENTY YEARS AGO!
From the April 24, 2005 Quad City Times:
by Tory Brecht
By any conventional American measure, Eddie Lusenie is not a rich man.
He works long hours hand-grinding metal plates at a Bettendorf steel factory and returns home to the upstairs flat of a small house in Moline where nearly every household item once belonged to someone else.
His wife, Charity, back from a day scrubbing dishes in the kitchen of the Belgian Village, greets him most nights wearily.
Lusenie may perfectly fit the description of "working poor" but he knows better than most how relative a term poor is.
"Real wealth, to me, is to live in good health, no trouble, no disturbances in my life," he said. "When you have peace in your life, that is wealth. I can have money, but not have peace, and that is not wealth. I don't just want to accumulate things to myself, I want to help people."
One learns a little perspective when suddenly in an unfamiliar city in a country only seen on TV, with nothing but two suitcases, a wife and the contact name of a case worker assigned to help build a new life from scratch.
That's where Lusenie was last October, a long six years after fleeing his native Sierra Leone. Several of the years were spent in an excruciating state of inactivity in a refugee camp in neighboring Ghana.
"Living in the camp was very frustrating," he said. "My goal was to come out and better my life. It wasn't until my day of departure that I knew I was coming to Illinois."
His story sounds extreme, but it's quite typical of the nearly 200 refugees- most from Africa recently - whom the always inventive handful of case workers at World Relief help resettle in the Illinois Quad-Cities each year.
"They come here with nothing but a desire for a better life and a safe life," says Vicki Gehrke, World Relief's employment manager, who has the task of finding jobs for newly arrived refugees, most with only a high school or less education and little English. "They don't have any job leads, they don't have any place to live. But a lot of them ask right away, the first day, When can I go to work?' "
They find jobs packaging, grinding metal, cutting tubes, assembling work boots, making mattresses. Some clean hotel rooms, some clean dishes. And many do it with a dedication and enthusiasm unmatched by American peers.
"I've had refugees start with five other people in their group who aren't refugees, and by the time they come to orientation, one person hasn't filed their documents, another comes one hour late and one leaves early," Gehrke said. "Out of five people, three Americans have buzzed out and two weeks later, the fourth quits, and my person is still there because they want to work."
Day by day, hard hour by hard hour, Deng Malual and wife Rosa from Sudan have seen that work pay off in the four years they've been in Moline.
They still live in a cramped apartment in the Springbrook Court public housing project, where 4-month-old baby Ayen's squalls bleed through the walls. But the furniture inside is now theirs -- not the hand-me-downs provided by World Relief -- and Malual has a nice color television and stereo.
"I came from a bad place," he says of war-torn, ethnically and religiously divided Sudan. "All we had was some clothes, no money, nothing. It's like being born, starting from the beginning. I just wanted to start a new life."
He does piecework and machinery operation at Norcross Safety Products in Rock Island. He started out making around $9 an hour and now makes a bit more. Rosa cleaned rooms at the Sheraton Four Points until shortly before the baby came.
The couple -- whose primary language is Arabic -- know they must master English to move up the rungs of the working world. Both have regularly attended English as a Second Language classes at Black Hawk College, though Rosa is on break now to care for Ayen.
The classes make for grueling days, Malual said. The classes meet four times a week from 6 to 8:30 p.m. His workday at Norcross generally runs from 5 a.m. to around 3 p.m.
"If you want something here and you work hard, you can get it," Malual said. "But in Sudan, if you need something and you work hard, you can't get it. They're just going to say 'No, you can't get it.' I plan on living in the United States. This is my home now."
Though Lusenie plans to return to his native Sierra Leone, his views are similar to Malual's.
"You have to work to make ends meet," he said. "Although it's difficult, you have to work to pay the bills and do other things. The wealth I see here, the difference between the poor and the rich, is not that much. The average man here can afford a car. In Africa, if you have a car, you are rich. One of my goals is to go to college. If I go back to my country later, I want to be able to help."
Ann Grove, executive director of World Relief, appreciates Lusenie's heart and drive. However, she sees a bit different picture when it comes to distribution of wealth in America than he does.
"It seems to me that the gap between the haves and have-nots in America is growing more extreme," she said. "Unless the people who have are intentional about learning what it's like to live on the other side, it's not going to change. If people understand that refugees have already had to do incredible things just to get here or to keep their children alive, it's hard not to respect them."
Gehrke, who not only helps find jobs, but coaches, trains and encourages the fragile new arrivals, is often stunned at their resiliency. Their gratitude for basics and appreciation for just a sliver of opportunity touch her.
"What is the American dream?" she said. "For our families, it's safety. One man, we asked him how he likes his apartment. He said, 'It's great. I haven't heard any gunshots.' For them, it's being safe, being able to eat and being able to go to work each day."
Just kidding!!!!
Friday night Hitman! Slamming some Busch Lattes at the Dam Bar?
It seems to me that Hawkeye Hitman, Rico and scruffy all love talking about the infestation of cat and dog and duck and goose eaters in Ohio, rather than the garbage dump performance that Bonespurs showed up with at the debate. You know the one where KH kicked his shit all over the stage. and he went running off immediately after, crying how he was set up, he didn'treally mean what he said... you know, another stolen election type excuse for getting thumped AGAIN. I don't blame them from trying to change that putrid narrative.
Why do we subject this wonderful immigrants to the local racists. Why aren’t they in the upper scale liberal neighborhoods where they will be welcomed?
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I am curious how all these Haitians ended up in this small Ohio town to begin with?
Did the local government want to promote diversity in Springfield and recruited these Haitians by promising them free housing and endless welfare? Was this all part of the insidious Biden/Harris plan to turn Ohio blue? Or were a bunch of workers needed to keep a factory running and Haitian immigrants were the only viable option?
What other possible explanations are there? Maybe since Bob Barker passed there is no one to carry the message about controlling the pet population and the only viable solution was to recruit Haitians to do the job?
Someone needs to figure this shit out.
I just find it absolutely hilarious how liberals are so repulsed at these locals yet clapped when the locals in Martha’s Vineyard was like “ oh hell no” and bussed the illegals out almost immediately.
My only sympathy for poor white trash in this country is that they often don’t know any better. I grew up in a very small town, so you know all walks of life, and in small town Iowa in the nineties, whiskey tango abound—it is probably double the problem now. All these people know at this point is social dysfunction. Nearly all their opinions are ignorant. Sub 100 IQs. It ain’t pretty.
I'll never understand the mental gymnastics many people perform (not necessarily you) on this issue. Basically they'll look at the black urban cultural decay with empathy -- if only they had jobs. While you get this attitude towards poor "white trash."
They're drug users with lousy work ethics
It's largely the same thing with the same attitudes. Cultural decay with (decades now) of momentum.
Yes, poor blacks used to face a lot of racism. But that doesn't say anything about what we need to do going forward or where they're at now.
It's mostly just empathy + political alignment. And it's funny.
I'd be interested too.
I'm guessing that when you bring asylum seekers into the US you try to point them towards resources, ways to get jobs. At least I hope we would. So I wouldn't be surprised if some agency somewhere pointed to the new jobs in Springfield. I don't understand all the communication channels at work here, but they have to exist.
Does that explain everything? Probably not.
You also had, I'm sure, a community that wants to stick together. Hattians moving to Springfield makes Springfield a much attractive location for those that aren't here. Probably get lots of people to a household. Immigrants traditionally cluster, for obvious reasons.
I think the government has a role in facilitating a smooth integration here. So maybe they dropped the ball in that way. But I doubt it was anything like Springfield = free housing, now go.
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