The Chumph want only immigrants from white countries, like Norway. What he doesn’t quite understand is folks from those countries consider America a shothole since he took over.
Tag Archives: Immigration
That “Immigration” Thing Gets Real
Out here in the country, you get a unique view of what the Chumph’s Storm Troopers have done relative to immigration.
You see…Any crop that can’t be picked by machine is picked by…”illegal” immigrants. Migrant workers.
The above picture is of a local tomato field. It is owned by one of major food producers, Del Monte. This is a large field, I would guess in the 150 acre+ range, normally containing about 3 million tomato plants. The tomatoes grown here go in everything from your spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce, canned tomatoes, and any other product using a tomato puree.
Normally in this part of the world, they plant two crops of tomatoes on these fields, and by July 4th are harvesting the “spring” crop. There was no spring crop this year. What you are looking at is the long rows of plastic mulch protecting the little tomato plants which are spaced every foot or so. Here is another view.
Noooooo tomatoes! You see, special tractors groom the land, pile the dirt into those long straight mounds, and cover the rows for the plants in plastic.
Then crews of several hundred migrant workers use a little tool which punches through the plastic and plants the baby plants one at a time, a foot apart all the way down that long strip of plastic. When the plants get about a foot tall, the crews come back and insert a tomato stake next to each plant and tie the plant to the stake with a twist tie.
Small problem this year…
No migrant workers.
So Delmonte has lost one crop…And is pretty close to losing a second – wiping out the whole year.
This is a Chumph world with no “Mexicans” (Most of the current Migrant workers aren’t from Mexico, they are from further South, places like El Salvador or Guatemala).
It is the same all over, as I see other food producer fields either fallow, or turned over to machine crops like corn or soy.
So when conservative blowhards like Rich Lowery announce – Trump Is Winning the Immigration Debate …
It’s kinda funny. Tell me that again when product shortages drive the cost of a can of diced tomatoes from $0.99 to $4.00. And that bottle of Ragu starts costing $5.00 this fall.
Just a hint, but you may want to stock up now.
In Mexico – “Trump Toilet Paper”
It is the only wipe which leaves you feeling dirtier than you were before using it!
Take a dump on the Trump…Indeed.
Mexican Lawyer Markets Trump-Branded Toilet Paper For A Very Good Cause
A lawyer in central Mexico is taking the fight against President Donald Trump to the toilet.
Antonio Battaglia is reportedly planning to launch a “Trump” branded toilet paper later this year — with 30 percent of the profits going toward financing programs that support migrants and Mexicans deported from the U.S.
A photograph of the prototype packaging shows a cartoon version of Trump giving a thumbs-up, alongside the slogan “softness without borders.”
The image was shared online earlier this week, and is now going viral.
Battaglia told Expansion that he was initially inspired to release a product that made a stand against Trump following the businessman’s “insulting” comments about Mexicans as he announced his candidacy for the presidency in June 2015.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump said. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
“It annoyed me and I started to look for a way to do something that would have an impact,” Battaglia said. “Not in a mocking tone or as revenge, but in a positive way.”
The lawyer said he initially planned to register a clothing or shoe line under the “Trump” name. His family runs a shoe-making business. But he discovered that Mexico’s Institute of Industrial Property had already granted the trademarks to the Trump Organization.
“Then came the idea of producing a toilet paper, a product that was ironic and that would remain in the market for a good time,” said Battaglia, who is investing 400,000 pesos of his own money (about $21,400) into the project.
To his relief, he found the “Trump” trademark for “hygienic paper” had not yet been taken. According to The Associated Press, the Institute approved his trademark application for “Trump” toilet paper in October 2015.
Battaglia hopes to begin selling the paper in September, but says making money from the project is “secondary.” “What I want is that it is useful to help migrants and the deported.”
Sally Yates Smackdown of Smarmy Ted Cruz
Bad news Ted Sleazy – the kind of folks who rise to high positions in the DOJ without political appointments during, at least, Democrat Presidencies tend to be both smart and qualified, and real lawyers. Which is why Sally Yates just had your ass for lunch.
Farmers Get the Shaft Under Chumph’s Immigration
This is a common sight in the fields around where I currently live. Immigrants, mostly undocumented, picking the crops. These guys disappear…Say goodbye to your spaghetti sauce and pizzas. The pick tomatoes green, and then turn the red by gassing them with nitrogen. Otherwise the tomato is so soft it rots before getting to market. Last year, the tomato field was planted with cantaloupes – the same crew (rounded up by an entrepreneurial ex-illegal – now citizen) was out there to pick them.
The Chumph’s Immigrant crackdown is getting ready to cost Americans greatly, and where it hurts – at the grocery store. We have become spoiled since the 50’s days to terrible TV Dinners and certain fruits and vegetables only being available during certain parts of the year. You don’t realize that until you go to a country which doesn’t have the agricultural infrastructure the US has.
A number of crops cannot be picked by machine. Tomatoes are too delicate. Add spinach, kale, cucumbers, lettuce, grapes, oranges, apples, pears, and a host of other fruit and vegetables which have to be picked by hand. Since the 60’s, and almost elusively now those crops are picked by undocumented immigrants.
That may be fine out there in the mid-west, where the principal crops of wheat and corn can be picked by machine. But unless you plan to subsist on a diet of popcorn and wheaties…
If the undocumented disappear, so do the strawberries, blueberries, and and damn near anything except bananas (they are gown in Latin America) to go with your cereal.
What happens to the independent farmer who provides those crops?
One last note…
Black folks don’t pick cotton anymore…
Assimilate or Die…History and the Chumph
Been watching, with interest, a PBS show, “The American Experience: The Great War” describing the events leading to, and America’s entry into WWI. Of particular interest is Woodrow Wilson. who was President at that time, and how he migrated from professing strong anti-war sentiments to becoming near dictator in his pursuit of American involvement in the war.
America in the 1900-1920 era had just expeienced a period of mass immigration. Over 30% of the population was foreign born. Immigrants were so prevalent that language became an issue in the first brigades formed to go fight in WWI, where the soldiers spoke 42 different languages, not including English.
Intensely racist with reputed relations with the KKK, Wilson is reviled for his support of Jim Crow, and re-segregation of the Federal Government. His racism only extended to African-Americans, and when setting up the Military, Asians and Hispanics were considered “white” and were enlisted in white regiments, while black soldiers were enlisted in all-black segregated units of which the Harlem Hellcats are the most famous.
“The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation—until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.” – Woodrow Wilson
Wilson, faced with a large immigrant population did two things. First, the largest immigrant population in America at the time were German-Americans. Wilson ordered a propaganda campaign to erase the German culture in America through mass intimidation and overt anti-ethnicism. German immigrants were harassed, violently attacked, and in several cases lynched. He then launched a campaign to erase the use of the “hyphenated” American (sound familiar?) insisting that ethnic and class divisions would disappear if only “we were all just Americans”.Lastly, he asked Congress to pass two acts, the “Espionage Act”, and the “Sedition Act”, which allowed the government to jail anyone for even minimal objection to the actions of the government. Thousands were jailed for reasons as trite as criticizing the “Draft Act” in a bar. During the 1910-1920 period America became no different than the authoritarian government which would be later formed by the fascists and communists.
“[Reconstruction government was detested] not because the Republican Party was dreaded but because the dominance of an ignorant and inferior race was justly dreaded.” – Woodrow Wilson
The Chumph Borg
“Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.” – Woodrow Wilson
So when you hear the Chumph talk about “Immigrants”…It’s just the same shit, different century. And the place he wants to take the country is right back to the fascism of the early 20th Century. Look at the laws being passed by Republicans to punish peaceful protesters. This crap is right out of the neo-Nazi “Sedition Act” passed by Wilson.
“Now came multitudes of men of the lowest class from the south of Italy, and men of the meaner sort out of Hungary and Poland, men out of the ranks, where there was neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence, and they came in numbers which increased from year to year, as if the countries of the south of Europe were disburdening themselves of the more sordid and hapless elements of their population.” – Woodrow Wilson
Trump wants immigrants to ‘share our values.’ They say assimilation is much more complex
Growing up in La Puente in the 1980s, Alex Espinoza was a typical child of the Reagan era. He collected “Star Wars” action figures and played with Rubik’s Cube.
But Espinoza was Mexican, born in Tijuana and brought to the United States by his mother when he was about 2 years old. He downplayed his Mexican roots to fit in. At the time, it seemed the worst thing in the world for a boy to be labeled as “a TJ” — literally someone from Tijuana, but also shorthand for an unassimilated Mexican.
“I grew up preferring the taste of a Big Mac over a burrito. I grew up preferring the taste of tuna noodle casserole over menudo,” he said. “Until I went to Mexico as a grad student, Mexico was this kind of static in the background.”
Three decades later, President Trump has sparked a new debate over immigration and assimilation that has Espinoza and many others reflecting on what it means to blend into American culture.
While much has been made about Trump’s harsh talk of deporting those here illegally, the president’s comments about the need for immigrants to fully embrace American culture has renewed a long-running debate that dates back generations.
“Not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate,” President Trump said in a campaign-trail speech in which he called for new immigrants to pass an “ideological certification to make sure that those we are admitting to our country share our values and love our people.”
In one Republican debate, Trump declared that “we have a country where, to assimilate, you have to speak English … This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish.”
Though Espinoza and others might disagree with Trump’s policies on immigration, they say discussions about assimilation get to the heart of a balancing act all immigrants face: being American while preserving a strong sense of where they came from.
“Have I been assimilated? I don’t know,” said the 45-year-old director of the graduate creative writing and literary arts program at Cal State Los Angeles. “Some people will probably say yes — look at how I dress and speak and where I’m educated. And some people will say no — he speaks Spanish and has a Mexican passport.”
When he went to Mexico for the first time as an adult, the way he spoke, tripping over some Spanish words, instantly pegged him as American. Espinoza is a permanent legal resident but believes that even if he became a U.S. citizen he would never be considered “fully American” by some people.
“Even if I started right now speaking in a Southern drawl and listening to country music, I’m still going to be Mexican,” he said. “My skin is still going to be a certain shade. Assimilation is not this thing where it’s like, OK, I’m one of you.”
Though people often define assimilation in starkly different ways, a Pew Research Center survey released in February showed that 92% of Americans say it’s at least somewhat important for a person to speak English to be considered “truly American,” with 70% saying it’s “very” important.
More than 80% of the survey’s respondents believed that sharing American culture and traditions is at least somewhat important to national identity.
“We at least have absorbed and believe this national narrative that we are a nation of immigrants,” said Bruce Stokes, director of global economic attitudes at Pew. “But … it’s not so easy once you get into some of the details of diversity. People are saying, ‘This is good for the country, but it’s not good for me,’ and that ‘Diversity is good, but I actually I don’t like the fact that someone speaks Spanish in the store I go to.’”
These questions have dominated immigrant communities dating back to the 19th century, when the Italians, Irish, Germans, Chinese and other groups faced questions about whether they were true Americans.
The foreign-born share of the U.S. population has quadrupled in the five decades since the establishment of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which ended a quota system based on national origin that favored white European immigrants. In 1960, 9.7 million foreign-born residents were living in the U.S. In 2014, there were 42.2 million, according to census data and the Pew Research Center.
Kevin Solis, who works for the immigration advocacy group Dream Team LA, said politicians’ statements about assimilation just add fuel to an already sensitive subject.
“When you say, ‘They need to assimilate,’ you’re already beginning with the false notion that they don’t want to, that they’re coming here as an invading force,” he said. “It’s coded in the sense that these are ‘other’ people, foreigners who want to do harm to our nation, and that’s not the case.”
Jim Chang, an information systems specialist from Irvine, recalled meeting with one of his son’s teacher; she kept repeating what he was saying.
“I know he was repeating, you know, saying it more than once because she was worried I didn’t understand,” Chang, 53, said.
Though he spoke English fairly well and understood it even better, Chang said his Korean accent meant he would always stick out.
“It doesn’t matter if you have 12 years or 20 years in the U.S. If they hear us sound a little different, they judge,” he said.
That’s something he said he believes his son, a fifth-grader, shouldn’t have to face. Chang speaks Korean to him, but his son, Jimmy, responds in English.
“I realize that we don’t plan to return to live in Korea. We belong in California now,” Chang said.
But Carmen Fought, a linguistics professor at Pitzer College, said that everyone has an accent regardless of how well they speak English. Whether it’s the Cajun or so-called “Minnesota nice” or “Bronx” or other accent not quite on the radar of American pop culture, everyone in the U.S. speaks with an accent, she said.
Not all accents, however, are perceived as equally American.
“A way of speaking that’s associated with a group that’s stigmatized is also going to be stigmatized,” Fought said. “There’s also going to be racism and prejudice against that way of speaking.”
Karen, a 24-year-old honor student at Cal State Fullerton, is an aspiring certified public accountant. She volunteers for the IRS — where her ability to speak Spanish is a major asset — helping low-income people fill out their taxes.
The night Trump was elected, Karen — a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, recipient who asked that her last name not be used because she fears deportation — suddenly felt as if she stood out even though she was an infant sleeping in the back seat of a car when she was brought to the U.S. illegally from Mexico.
Karen hasn’t been back to Mexico since then but grew up in the overwhelmingly Latino community of Huntington Park, watching Spanish-language television with her grandmother and working in a Mexican restaurant.
Moving to Orange County for college was like moving to a different world, Karen said. At least until Trump’s election, she felt that she was safer as a college student than her parents, who have labor-oriented jobs.
Her younger brother is a DACA recipient also, and she had him move in with her so they could remove their parents’ address from their federal forms.
“Sometimes I feel like I don’t belong anywhere,” she said. “In Mexico, I would be seen very differently because of my accent. It’s like, god, what do I do? If I were to go back, I wouldn’t have anything back there.”
“On the one side, the Hispanics tell you, ‘You’re way too American.’ On the other, you’ll have the Americans telling you you’re too Hispanic. It’s hard to be in the middle.”
“What makes me American? It’s not only the 24 years of my life,” she said. “It’s that this is all I know.”
Auschwitz Survivor Damns Chumph Administration and ICE
Here is a survivor of not only the Auschwitz Death Camp, but Dachau.
Powerful words.
The New Tech Revolution – Politics
Seems a lot of time and energy was spent last election cycle on people who are not working. Not much about the 95% who are. A little known fact due to the antique ways the Government Economists draw up the numbers is the technology related services and non-manufacturing portion of America’s GDP is larger than Manufacturing. The Tech Industry employs over 6.7 million people. The U.S. tech industry is a major driving force in the overall economy, accounting for 7.1 percent of overall GDP and 11.6 percent of total private sector payroll. While roughly 12.3 million are involved in manufacturing, the oversize impact on the percentage of US payroll is driven by higher wages – A U.S. tech industry worker averages an annual wage of $105,400 compared to $51,600 for the average private sector wage. That isn’t readily apparent by looking at the Government numbers because the Tech Industry is split across hardware manufacturing and services.
The US has lost about 5 million manufacturing jobs since 2010, since the Great Recession that number is about 7 million.. The truth is that America has lost some 7 million manufacturing jobs and added some 53 million jobs in services. Further, of those 53 million new jobs some 62% of them were in higher paying occupations than those “high paying good jobs” in manufacturing we lost.
The canard that somehow “regulations”, as well a bringing manufacturing jobs back to America…Is total “Vaporware”. Robots have, and will continue to replace humans, especially in heavy manufacturing – meaning those new “factories” will be empty of people.What the impact of removing those regulations and seriously tilting the landscape in favor of the corporation over the workers will be has yet to be seen.
However, with 6.5 million tech works, and perhaps another 10-15 million jobs dependent on the tech industry. Tech workers are a powerful political force. Life is about to get really tough for those wanting to roll back worker protections, pursue antiquated social agendas, and operating to the benefit if the 1% …
“The Matrix” is organizing into a political leviathan to oppose Trump and his backward thinking political party. This is war.
The Tech Industry Joins the Political Fray
Across the sector, employees are asking their companies and top executives to engage in policy battles in a way that departs from long-standing precedent.
However expansive its ambitions to change the world might be, the tech industry is not known as a hotbed of activism. Historically, tech employees went to work, got the job done, and didn’t talk much about politics.
But in the wake of Donald’s Trump’s election, political talk is nearly everywhere—at company-wide meetings, in discussions among coworkers in the cafeterias, and in employee resource-group meet-ups. For obvious reasons: Many of the policies and views of the Trump administration are anathema to most of the tech industry. In particular, the sector is heavily populated by immigrants—many founders and senior leaders are immigrants, and 60 percent of STEM employees in Silicon Valley are foreign-born (for comparison, only 17 percent of the overall American labor force is foreign-born)—and Trump’s immigration policies (both proposed and enacted) constitute a clear threat to both the industry’s profits and its meritocratic ideology. His brand of politics—“closed borders,” “alternative facts”—is at odds with the primacy the industry places on data, openness, and the free flow of talent around the globe.
Trump’s victory in November stunned many tech employees. Barrie Segal, a senior program manager at the database company MongoDB, said, “There was a lot of confusion and sadness. People were openly weeping in the office. I’ve never seen that before at work.” As one senior manager at a major tech company described it, “It was like a bomb dropped and people died.” (Despite the outpouring of anti-Trump sentiment in the industry, many people I spoke with and the companies they work for asked not to be identified on the record, citing sensitive political times. Such concerns indicate that there are limits to just how public and forthcoming the industry will be with its activism.)
In response, an uptick in activism is evident throughout the industry: Attendance at meetings of advocacy groups like the Tech Workers Coalition have spiked. New organizations like Tech Solidarity have emerged. Last week, at a rally held by a new group called Tech Stands Up, around 1,000 people showed up over the course of the afternoon in downtown Palo Alto to show their support.
Back in late January, in the days after Trump’s first executive order on immigration barring refugees and stopping all entry of citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries, more than 2,000 at eight Google offices walked out to protest the order. There was thunderous applause when Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, and its co-founder, Sergey Brin, spoke at the walkout. “It was a powerful moment,” said one senior manager at Google who attended. “I’ve never been to anything like that at work before. The walkout was definitely in support of what the leadership is doing. But not so subtly, it was also a challenge not to compromise.” Noting that the leadership team at Google would be exposing the company to risk by actively opposing Trump, the manager said that employees have been given assurances that executives are “using [their] influence behind the scenes” to stand up for what they believe is right. “But there was an unstated message at the walkout,” the manager said. “‘Don’t fuck this up.’”
“Workplace politicking of this kind is highly unusual,” says Sarah Soule, a professor of organizational behavior at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University (and a colleague of mine). “Typically, workplace activism is focused on issues internal to the firm. Workers go on strike because they are unhappy with pay or working conditions. They push companies to offer domestic-partner benefits or improve their environmental practices. The goal is to get the company itself to change its practices in some way.”
What is happening right now in tech is different: Rather than advocating for internal policies, employees are putting pressure on their companies to become vocal opponents of the Trump administration—by having CEOs make public statements, by turning down certain government contracts, by signing on to legal briefs contesting Trump’s policies. Of the 127 companies that signed onto the amicus brief filed in support of Washington state’s legal challenge to the immigration executive order, the majority are tech companies.
Coworker.org, a digital platform designed to give workers more of a voice at their companies through online petitions and internal social networks, has seen a substantial increase in engagement since election day. “For the past few years, most of the campaigns have been in the retail and service sectors among front-line workers like baristas and bank tellers,” says Michelle Miller, a co-founder of Coworker.org. “But since the election, a greater variety of industries are reaching out to us. We could double our staff and put one person just on tech and we still would not be able to meet the demand.”
Not only is this form of workplace activism rare, but this kind of rapid political mobilization is also rare. It usually takes place only under certain circumstances, like when people feel that their way of life is under threat. Such was the case after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979. Prior to the accident, environmental activism in the surrounding area was minimal. But afterward, many of the middle-class residents living nearby, who had no previous history of political protest, came out en masse.
Called “suddenly imposed grievances” or “moral shocks” by researchers, events like Three Mile Island and the 2016 presidential election are galvanizing political forces because they generate intense concern, and people who become the most politicized are those most outraged and directly threatened by the grievance. Since tech is uniquely under threat both ideologically and economically, it is exactly the industry one might expect to take on a new activist vigor. This also sheds light on the lack of response in other industries. Notably, no old-school car companies, finance or insurance companies, food conglomerates, or large retailers signed onto the amicus brief or saw employees at corporate go off the job in protest—perhaps because under Trump they are less at risk.
For many in tech, this is the first time they’ve taken part in political activism in their lives. Aaron Martin-Colby, a Comcast engineer who helped to organize the walkout there, said, “I’ve never done something like this before. I’ve been reluctant to invest anything emotional into politics because of the gridlock. But Trump has the power to do a great deal of unjust harm. I’ve realized it’s important that I make noise.”
Taking their activism a step further, other companies are putting their own proprietary tools to work in opposing Trump. After the executive order on immigration, the social-gathering platform Meetup decided to hold a “resist-a-thon.” The company’s business operations stopped for two days and during that time employees launched over 1,000 “#Resist” Meetup groups in 1,000 cities. To lower the barrier to entry, they made joining these groups free and enabled anyone in the group to schedule an event. They promoted these groups to their 30 million members and partnered with organizations like Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union to distribute ideas for promoting activism, such as hosting an emergency meetup to talk about how to protect Planned Parenthood or meetups to provide training on how to organize. The “#Resist” Meetup groups launched on February 6. Within a week, they had 50,000 members. As of last week, they had over 120,000 members involved, 6,500 related events scheduled, and more than 45,000 people who had RSVP’d….Read the rest here…
The Real Reason White Folks in the Red Zone are Losing Their Jobs to Immigrants…Drugs
The meme is thousands unemployed by factory closings. Jobs taken by profiteering companies moving work overseas.
But why is it the companies which stay are having such a hard time finding workers?
The heroin/meth epidemic in rural America is doing more damage than just the never-ending overdoses…It is stealing people’s ability to work. Factory work can be dangerous, with moving machinery and heavy items being trasnsported from place to place. The transportation industry also uses rigorous drug testing because of the danger to the public of an impaired, bus, train, or tractor-trailer driver to the safety of the public. While off-work Marijuana use seems not to be a problem, a remarkably high percentage of at-fault accidents involve operators/drivers who are impaired by drug use.
I have heard this before from a friend who works for the FBI, where they had thousands of jobs open, and not enough people who could pass the background investigation and drug tests to get the security clearances needed.
Suburban kids are most likely drug users
As more Americans fail drug tests, employers turn to refugees
Inside a factory near this lakeside city, a man holding a blowtorch is putting the finishing touches on a plastic rain barrel that will soon make its way to a home and garden section somewhere in America.
He is Talib Alzamel, a 45-year-old Syrian refugee who arrived here last summer with his wife and five children. He can’t speak much English, but neither can most of the 40 refugees who work at Sterling Technologies, a plastic molding company based near the shores of Lake Erie. They earn $8-14 an hour.The refugees at Sterling come from all over the world, from Syria to Sudan, Chad to Bhutan. And they’ve all passed the company’s standard drug test.“In our lives, we don’t have drugs,” said Alzamel, who was hired within three months after arriving in Pennsylvania. “We don’t even know what they look like or how to use them.”But for an increasing number of American-born workers, passing drug tests is a big problem.The percentage of American workers testing positive for illegal drugs has climbed steadily over the last three years to its highest level in a decade, according to Quest Diagnostics, which performed more than 10 million employment drug screenings last year. The increase has been fueled in part by rural America’s heroin epidemic and the legalization of recreational marijuana in states like Colorado.With roughly half of US employers screening for drugs, failed tests have real consequences for the economy. More than 9% of employees tested positive for one or more drugs in oral fluid screenings in 2015, the most recent year for which data was available. And the problem is even worse at places like Sterling Technologies.“Twenty percent of the people are failing,” said Cary Quigley, the company’s president. “We’re seeing positive tests anywhere from marijuana through amphetamines, right all the way through crystal meth and heroin.”Which is why refugees like Alzamel, despite some language barriers, are quickly snapping up jobs.“The big factories … they have a problem with the drugs, so like every time they fire someone, they replace him with the refugee, to be honest,” said Bassam Dabbah, who works at a US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants field office in Erie. “The only barrier is the language, but they are picking it up very quick.”The status of refugees in the US has been under scrutiny since President Donald Trump’s executive orders limiting the number of immigrants to the country. On March 6, Trump signed a new order that bans immigration from six Muslim-majority nations and reinstates a temporary blanket ban on all refugees.But because of the increase in positive drug tests, the refugees who have reached America in recent years are finding a more welcoming hiring climate, at least for menial manufacturing jobs.Nearly 6,000 refugees have settled in the last five years in Louisville, Kentucky, helping companies hire workers for jobs that had gone unfilled. Methamphetamine use is so high in Louisville that the number of people testing positive for meth in workplace drug tests is 47% higher than the national average, according to Quest Diagnostics.Inside the White Castle food processing plant, where they make 50,000 hamburgers per hour, “it’s become like the United Nations,” says Jamie Richardson, a company vice president.
Antigona Mehani, employment services manager at Kentucky Refugee Ministries, says she can usually find a refugee a job within three days.Employers tell her, “send us as many as you can,” she said. “I hear this every single day.”CNN’s reporting discovered a similar dynamic in many parts of the country, from Columbus, Ohio, to Albany, New York, to a company in Indiana that supplies parts for Ford cars.
While many employers insist that drug testing keeps the workplace safe and ensures a productive and stable work environment, there is no conclusive evidence that it’s necessary for all jobs or that it lowers risks or reduces drug use.And workers flunking drug tests is not a new problem, said Calvina L. Fay, executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation.
But it’s a problem that is getting worse, she said. Fay said employers are especially concerned about the increasing failure rates in “safety sensitive” workplaces, where a lapse by a employee under the influence of drugs could cost lives. “They’re frustrated for a number of reasons. In some cases they are having trouble hiring drug-free workers,” Fay said. “They can’t drug-test people every day, so there will be people who slip through the cracks.”In Colorado, where marijuana is legal, some businesses have told Fay, “they see employees smoking pot on their lunch break and then going back to work.”One oil and trucking company in Colorado did random drug screening last year and flunked 80% of their employees, mostly for marijuana, Fay said. Colorado’s Supreme Court has ruled that companies may fire employees who smoke pot, even if legally.“They had to replace everyone,” she said. “The employer was glad he found the problem because his employees do extremely dangerous work. He was shocked and disturbed.”…
Chumph’s Racism Destroying Agriculture
So…What happens if the Chumph gets his wish to deport all illegal aliens in this country…
The Agricultural industry in the US collapses.
Despite incessant whining by the white right snowflakes of flyover country…There just aren’t going to be any white folks out there picking cotton as long as they can get a welfare check, Even if you raise the pay to be competitive with other work.
Tell me again “who” is exactly unwilling to work for a living?
Wages rise on California farms. Americans still don’t want the job
Trump’s immigration crackdown is supposed to help U.S. citizens. For California farmers, it’s worsening a desperate labor shortage.
Arnulfo Solorio’s desperate mission to recruit farmworkers for the Napa Valley took him far from the pastoral vineyards to a raggedy parking lot in Stockton, in the heart of the Central Valley.
Carrying a fat stack of business cards for his company, Silverado Farming, Solorio approached one prospect, a man with only his bottom set of teeth. He told Solorio that farm work in Stockton pays $11 to $12 an hour. Solorio countered: “Look, we are paying $14.50 now, but we are going up to $16.” The man nodded skeptically.
Solorio moved on to two men huddled nearby, and returned quickly. “They were drug addicts,” he said. “And, they didn’t have a car.”
Before the day was through, Solorio would make the same pitch to dozens of men and women, approaching a taco truck, a restaurant and a homeless encampment. Time was short: He needed to find 100 workers to fill his ranks by April 1, when grapevines begin to grow and need constant attention.
Solorio is one of a growing number of agricultural businessmen who say they face an urgent shortage of workers. The flow of labor began drying up when President Obama tightened the border. Now President Trump is promising to deport more people, raid more companies and build a wall on the southern border.
That has made California farms a proving ground for the Trump team’s theory that by cutting off the flow of immigrants they will free up more jobs for American-born workers and push up their wages.
So far, the results aren’t encouraging for farmers or domestic workers.
Farmers are being forced to make difficult choices about whether to abandon some of the state’s hallmark fruits and vegetables, move operations abroad, import workers under a special visa or replace them altogether with machines.
Growers who can afford it have already begun raising worker pay well beyond minimum wage. Wages for crop production in California increased by 13% from 2010 to 2015, twice as fast as average pay in the state, according to a Los Angeles Times analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Today, farmworkers in the state earn about $30,000 a year if they work full time — about half the overall average pay in California. Most work fewer hours.
Some farmers are even giving laborers benefits normally reserved for white-collar professionals, like 401(k) plans, health insurance, subsidized housing and profit-sharing bonuses. Full-timers at Silverado Farming, for example, get most of those sweeteners, plus 10 paid vacation days, eight paid holidays, and can earn their hourly rate to take English classes.
But the raises and new perks have not tempted native-born Americans to leave their day jobs for the fields. Nine in 10 agriculture workers in California are still foreign born, and more than half are undocumented, according to a federal survey.
Instead, companies growing high-value crops, like Cabernet Sauvignon grapes in Napa, are luring employees from fields in places like Stockton that produce cheaper wine grapes or less profitable fruits and vegetables.
Growers who can’t raise wages are losing their employees and dealing with it by mechanizing, downsizing or switching to less labor-intensive crops.
Jeff Klein is doing all of the above. Last year Klein, a fourth-generation Stockton farmer, ran a mental ledger, trying to sort out the pros and cons of persevering in the wine business or quitting. He couldn’t make the math work.
Wineries pay Klein a tiny fraction of what they pony up for the same grape variety grown in Napa, and the rising cost of labor meant he was losing money on his vineyards. So in October, Klein decided to rip out 113,000 Chardonnay grapevines that once blanketed land his family has owned for decades. Now they lay heaped into hundreds of piles, waiting to be taken to the dump.
“I try to make any decision I make not emotional. When you’re running a business, it has to be a financial decision,” he says, sifting through the mangled metal posts.
Five years ago, Klein had a crew of 100 workers pruning, tying and suckering his grapevines. Wineries paid $700 for a ton of grapes, and Klein could make a solid profit paying $8 an hour, the minimum wage.
Last year he could barely get together 45 laborers, and his grapes sold for only $350 per ton. Klein knew his vines were done for when California passed laws raising the minimum wage to $15 by 2023 and requiring overtime for field laborers.
“There’s not enough guys, and everybody is fighting for everybody else’s guys,” he says. “In Napa and Sonoma, they’re getting $2,000 a ton [for grapes]. So, those guys can afford to pay $15. For me, I’m just trying to break even.”
Although Trump earned Klein’s vote, he worries that recent executive orders ratcheting up deportation plans and calling for a wall are putting a chokehold on an already tight pool of workers.
“That’s killing our labor force,” says the 35-year-old grower.
Already, fewer Mexicans had been willing to risk border crossings as security and deportations escalated under the Obama Administration. At the same time, Mexico’s own economy was mushrooming, offering decent jobs for people who stayed behind.
With the grapevines he has left, Klein is doing what he can to pare his crews. Last year, he bought a leaf puller for $50,000, which turns the delicate process of culling grapevine canopies into an exercise in brute force. The puller hooks onto a tractor and, like an oddly shaped vacuum cleaner, sucks leaves from grapevines.
He used to spend $100 an acre culling the canopies, which allows the right amount of sunlight to hit the grapes and turn them into sugar balls. Now, he says, “It will cost me 20 bucks, and I can get rid of some labor.”
Klein says he’ll spend the next five years replacing his 1,000 acres of grapevines with almond and olive trees, which require a fraction of the human contact to grow.
About 80 miles west in Napa, growers aren’t facing quite the same challenge. Cabernet Sauvignon grapes in Napa go for nearly $6,900 per ton, 10 times more than in San Joaquin County.
Here in Virginia, this is one of my neighbor’s Tomato Fields. This one is run by a major company, and the crop can wind up in anything from your Marinara and Spaghetti Sauces under a major label, to canned tomatoes, depending on what they plant. There are about 300,000 to 3 million plants out there on this field (of which the photo is only of a small part). All of these tomatoes are picked by hand by immigrant labor. Teams of hundreds go out to pick the crop, twice, before the plants are killed, and a second crop is planted. Typically they get two crops a year in Spring to fall. If the Chumph deports these workers…There ain’t gonna be any Mamma Ragu anymore.
Trump Speech… Listening to Adolph Hitler
I now know what it must have been like in 1933 for a German to stand in the crowd and listen to Adolph Hitler.
An appeal to the German people to stand against those who were criminals in their country (Jews) by cherry picking several Jewish people who were criminals and using them to stereotype the entire Jewish population.
What I find funny, is the low brow clowns in the media being sucked in to this sort of racism.
Van…I thought you were smarter than that.
You can wrap that shit in a flag…And it still stinks.
Immigrants as Entreprenuers
A few year back a study for Forbes showed that nearly 30% of new incorporation of companies in America were by black folks. Black folks, faced with persistent job discrimination, created businesses in reaction to discrimination.
It seems we have some competition… Immigrants.
What do Immigrants do for America? They follow the American Dream, no matter how difficult the path.
Outperforming the lazy, dumb-ass white Trumpazoids every step of the way despite their endemic racism.
Study Shows Immigrants Are Twice as Likely to Become Entrepreneurs
Research shows that the economy benefits, in a big way, from immigration.
If you’re searching for examples of big, revolutionary businesses that were started by immigrants, you don’t have to look very far. Andy Gove, one of the founders of Intel (and one of Steve Jobs’ biggest influences) fled Hungary and taught himself English while working in a restaurant and attending college.
Jobs himself was the son of a Syrian immigrant.
In fact, 40% of the Fortune 500 was founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants. But the examples of immigrant entrepreneurs aren’t just restricted to huge, household name companies. According to research conducted by The Kauffman Foundation:
- Immigrants started 28.5% of all new businesses in 2014.
- Between 2006-2012 immigrants founded one quarter of the engineering and technology companies in the United States.
- In 2012 immigrant founded engineering and technology firms employed approximately 560,000 workers and generated $63 billion in sales.
- Immigrants have seen their rate of business generation rise by more than 50% since the start of the new millennium, while native-born citizens have seen their rate of new-business generation decline by 10%.
- Immigrants are now more than twice as likely to start a business than native-born citizens.
So why are immigrants starting more businesses?
Economists theorize that many immigrants are prevented from accessing other paths to upward mobility. In other words, all those studies that show applicants are less likely to get hired with an ethnic sounding name might force new immigrants into creating their own business, rather than trying (and often failing) to find a decent paying job working for someone else.
Additionally, immigrants often live in underserved communities. If you live in an underserved market, you can spot the goods and services community members don’t have access to and fulfill that need.
Like my new friend, Ajay.
Ajay immigrated to America from India about 15 years ago, where he began working as a computer engineer for Enterprise Rental Car.
But he also saw an unserved need in his immigrant network: cricket.
His friends who grew up playing cricket had nowhere for their sons and daughters to play, so Ajay founded the American Cricket Academy and Club–which has grown from six to more than 150 members in about a year.
Ajay’s cricket academy might not be the next Intel, but that’s growth a lot of new entrepreneurs would love to experience.
Of course, immigration has many facets.
But most economists–including the ones at the Wharton School, alma mater of Donald Trump–conclude that immigration (both legal and illegal) is a net positive to the economy.
Economic studies are one way to measure the impact of immigration.
Personally, I like to measure it another way. I like to look at my son–the great-grandson of a Mexican immigrant–while he plays cricket with his friends, nearly all of whom are second-generation Indian immigrants.
When I watch my son play cricket with his friends, I come to the same conclusion the economists at Wharton do:
Our new immigrant friends are enriching our lives and making our economy better–and I’ll be really thankful when my son gets that cricket scholarship.
The Welfare State
Yet Another Trumpazoid Pays for Voting for Trump
Had a conversation with a Trump voter the other day who has suddenly recognized that by voting Republican and for Trump – he fucked himself, and his son.
He has a severely disabled son, who has Cerebral Palsy and requires constant medical care.Under Obamacare the monthly premium for his son, now 30 years old, was $54 a month. In any of the “private” plans being fronted by the Republicans…that will rise to $5400 a month, which he can’t afford.So his severely disabled so in SOL.
Next is the story of a very stupid Arab…
This Trump voter is stunned to find her Syrian relatives deported
Syrian American Sarmad Assali, a Donald Trump supporter, isn’t saying she has buyer’s remorse over who she backed for the White House.
But she’s frustrated and angry.
Like many in Allentown, Pennsylvania’s Syrian Orthodox Christian neighborhood, Assali voted for the Republican candidate last November.
This weekend, she watched two of her brothers-in-law, their wives and children get deported back to Damascus from Philadelphia International Airport even though they had US visas.
“It was a shock,” she says. “If [Trump] had an issue with them entering the United States, we should have been told about it. It should have been discussed. We should be able to get some legal help in there. … The way they were returned in a two-hour period, it was just devastating.”
Assali says her relatives are now back home in Damascus. But she speculates that if the families had not been quickly hustled back on a flight to Doha, she might have been able to find them legal assistance that would have won them entry rights.
“They weren’t even allowed to make a phone call and let us know what is going on,” she says. “They had to beg the employees to call us, to let us know that they were being returned.”
Assali’s family members were sent back after President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday night banning immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim nations — Iraq, Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia. The ban may be lifted in 120 days or may remain fully or partially in force.
Assali was surprised her relatives’ US visas didn’t ensure their entry.
“This was our rights, our constitution lists that, so I don’t know how it can be taken away from us,” she says. “The safety of America is number one, but we should consider what we’re doing before we throw it out there at people.”
Asked if she’s still a Trump supporter, Assali doesn’t take the question head-on.
“I am a supporter of the constitution of the United States, and the freedom that we have here,” she says. “I don’t know what [Trump’s] going to do next or if I support what he’s gonna do. I can’t tell at this point.”
Uber No More – Nationwide Boycott of Chumph Supporting Companies is Growing Fast
Rage against the Chump is rising very fast. The next major March Against Trump is planned for April. Here is hoping they put at least 3 million people in DC. At the rate things are going, if there is a march in June, it may draw 10 million. Breaking down the doors of the White House and Capitol buildings and hauling the right-wing miscreants to hang from the light poles going down Constitution Avenue…
About the only thing that is certain is that if the Republican scum in Congress continues to bloc investigations in to the Chumph’s dirty dealings and Treason (as in Charge Him, Try Him, Convict Him, and Hang Him) – the shit is going to hit the fan. Consider it a re-education as to whom politicians really are supposed to work for.
#DeleteUber’s Creator: Resist Trump or ‘Pay a Price’
Silicon Valley companies like Uber don’t want to take a stand on Trump, but users won’t let them stay neutral. Now, protesters and even some forward-looking CEOs are saying the same thing: Resist or face deletion.
On Saturday night, as protesters swamped airports nationwide demanding foreigners be released from indefinite detention due to Donald Trump’s Muslim ban, Dan O’Sullivan inadvertently created a playbook for getting corporations to stop playing nice with Donald Trump.
O’Sullivan was the first to tweet the hashtag #DeleteUber, although he insists he didn’t invent the idea for an Uber boycott and doesn’t take credit for the phenomenon the hashtag became. His initial string of #DeleteUber tweets, all replies to Uber’s surge pricing announcement, have over 7,000 retweets.
“Let this be a warning: if you are a corporation who thinks you will ride out Trump, and quietly make money at his side, you will be made to pay a price,” O’Sullivan told The Daily Beast.
#DeleteUber wound up becoming the No. 1 trend in the country on Saturday night after the company turned off surge pricing to and from JFK International Airport, where thousands were protesting the Muslim ban. Earlier in the night, the New York City Taxi Workers Alliance announced its members would partially strike in solidarity with the refugees and affected immigrants by not offering services to or from the airport.Protesters on Twitter alleged that Uber was promoting scab work, highlighting Uber’s stance that drivers aren’t considered employees to begin with, but only independent contractors. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick had also been announced as part of Trump’s business advisory board in December.
Kalanick and Uber released several statements attempting to quell the furor, repeatedly insisting they disagree with Trump’s executive order and that they would pay out to drivers stuck in other countries due to the hastily implemented order, but it was too late.
Thousands were already tweeting the hashtag #DeleteUber along with screenshots of the account deletion page.
Direct competitor Lyft capitalized, handing out a $1 million donation to the ACLU, whose lawsuit granted a temporary stay to visa holders held in unlawful detention by Customs and Border Patrol.
“Deleting an Uber account, or tweeting a bunch about it, is quite literally the least anyone can do to register how disgusted one is by Uber’s exploitative labor practices and collaboration with Trump,” said O’Sullivan.
O’Sullivan wants Kalanick to resign from Trump’s board, and predicts this kind of boycott will keep happening to companies who don’t actively defy Trump’s policies that exploit and target their employees.
“The popularity of #deleteUber only exists because decent people around the country and world—including the unionized cab drivers Uber hates and targets—took to the streets, occupying airports in defense of refugees, immigrants, and Muslims,” said O’Sullivan.
“Trump is losing and is going to keep losing. Anyone who sticks with him will lose, too.”
Other tech CEOs had had enough, and finally used their apps to deliver calls to action. Dots CEO Paul Murphy was furiously texting with the co-creator of his big name mobile gaming company.
Murphy had a user base of millions of people he could deploy to fund efforts to stop Trump’s discriminatory immigration ban, and he was a little fed up with leaders in his industry who refused to stand up for their employees—immigrant or otherwise.“I’m still a little bit underwhelmed from the larger tech companies’ responses,” he told The Daily Beast. “I suggested we take over the game—to use that—since we have this big audience.”
So when users opened any of Dots’ mobile games on Saturday night or Sunday morning, they saw this message: “We believe America should be a welcoming place, particularly for those most in need, wherever they come from and whatever their religion.” It then linked out to an ACLU donation page.
When Murphy talked to The Daily Beast on Sunday, he said 4 million people had already seen the message.
“In my mind it’d be much more powerful for these platforms to be proactive—to interrupt people consuming services and remind them that these are products that are built from Americans, but also immigrants or people from outside the country,” said Murphy.
For some tech companies like Uber, however, being proactive in resisting the administration’s more racist and discriminatory policies isn’t just a “powerful” move. It’s a necessary move, if they don’t want a boycott that could directly impact their bottom line literally overnight.
Btx3's Blog 