Immigrants say a 'Jesus-centered' chicken factory is forcing them into homelessness

Residents at
LOCAL

Immigrants say a 'Jesus-centered' chicken factory is forcing them into homelessness

BY WILL DORAN

March 23, 2018 04:53 PM

SILER CITY Ana Monter's family brought her to the United States when she was a child, like many other immigrants chasing the American dream. But they were so poor as she was growing up that she started working in a Chatham County chicken factory at age 15 to help support her family. She dropped out of school to work full-time and eventually saved up enough money to start a family and buy a mobile home of her own, just yards away from the factory in Siler City. Now, she's terrified the new owners of that factory — which has received millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded incentives to re-open the plant — are about to condemn her and her children to homelessness.

The company that bought the chicken processing plant in 2016, Mountaire Farms, also recently bought the trailer park where Monter lives. The new owners plan to pave it over as they expand their operations. The expansion means more jobs for people in the area, which was devastated economically when the plant closed down in 2011.

But it also means Monter and around 100 of her neighbors, including many Spanish-speaking immigrants, are facing eviction. "How do you tell your children we're going to lose everything we have?" Monter asked Chatham County leaders at a recent public hearing, weeping as she implored them to help. For now, the company has told the neighbors to be out by May 7. But they're fighting for more time — and more financial help — to find a new place to live. As of Friday morning, negotiations between Mountaire and the neighbors were ongoing.

The neighbors have also asked officials in Chatham County and Siler City to help them out. The two local governments gave Mountaire a combined $2.3 million in tax breaks and other incentives.

Construction of the Mountaire Farms processing plant in Siler City, N.C. The plant has bought the Johnson’s Mobile Home Park next door and plans to expand its operations. Those living in the mobile home park have been given eviction notices.

The state also gave Mountaire $1.6 million.

That state money has since been returned as officials seek an even larger sum, due to the larger number of jobs they're promising to create. However, the grant remains part of an ethics complaint filed against N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore, a Republican from Cleveland County near Charlotte.

Ethics complaint says NC House Speaker Tim Moore profited from his political position

A company Moore co-owns bought the then-abandoned factory in 2013 and sold it to Mountaire in 2016 for nearly five times as much as the 2013 price.

A Washington-based watchdog group, the Campaign for Accountability, said there should be an investigation into whether Moore misused his political power to get that grant approved, and to pressure state regulators to go easy on pollution violations on the site.
Moore has denied doing anything wrong.

What the neighbors want

Many of the factory's neighbors came to a recent Chatham County Commissioners meeting to ask for help. So did their advocates, who include the Chatham County Hispanic Liaison nonprofit as well as former county commissioner Betty Wilson.

Two Mountaire representatives came to the meeting, and the commissioners invited them to speak publicly, too. They declined.

Mark Reif, Mountaire's community relations manager, also declined to be interviewed after the meeting. He later emailed a press release that said the company wants "to arrive at an amicable solution for all parties."

Neighbors are asking for financial compensation, since many of them spent thousands of dollars buying and fixing up their mobile homes that they say are now too old to be accepted at any other local mobile home park.

Diana Hales, the chairwoman of the Chatham County Commissioners, called the ongoing debate unacceptable. "We will definitely work to achieve relief for these families here," she said, noting that the county has some money for emergency housing.

The 28 families involved say they're asking for less than $100,000 in total — and that since Mountaire has received millions of dollars in tax breaks and other publicly funded incentives to re-open the Siler City plant, the company should be able to afford that.

Mirian Herrera, a senior at Jordan Matthews High School, was going to leave the mobile home park soon anyway to head off to Guilford College in the fall. But she's worried about what will happen to her sister and her mother, especially since her father has passed away.

"We hope that you will work with them to help us out," she told the county leaders.
Mountaire says that after buying the mobile home park it gave the residents five months of rent-free living. Residents said rent for the lots was $210 a month, so that comes out to $1,500 per mobile home – which sometimes housed one family, or multiple families.

As part of the ongoing negotiations, Mountaire has also offered to extend the eviction date until July, giving the families a few more months to find a new home, but it's unclear if that will be part of the final agreement.

'Some dignity and a roof over their heads'

With the current eviction date of May 7 looming on the horizon, some families have already left the park but others are sticking it out, in large part because they say they can't afford to move.

Natalia Lopez is still there. She's a retiree who has lived in Siler City more than 25 years and spent most of that time working at the chicken plant along with her husband, Jose Salvador Lopez Rojas.

Natalia Lopez, age 72, prepares lunch in the kitchen of her home at Johnson’s Mobile Home Park in Siler City, N.C. Lopez and her husband have lived here for more than 25 years.

Like Monter, the couple are scared they're about to become homeless. They're in their 70s, with no income, and Jose has prostate cancer. "The moment we have to leave our trailer, we're going to be crying," Jose said.
"Even though they don't have an obligation, they should do the right thing," Natalia said. "... They should think about how this might leave us on the streets."

Many of the neighbors attend nearby St. Julia Catholic Church. Some of them and their supporters have accused Mountaire, a self-described "Jesus-centered company," of not following through on its stated values.

"Mountaire Farms has not only failed to help the homeless, it has created homelessness," said Jeffrey Starkweather, a longtime Chatham County activist.

Andrea Cruz Altunar, who lives in the mobile home park with her husband and their four children, is 36 and has lived in the U.S. since she was a young adult.

The residents of Johnson’s Mobile Home Park in Siler City, N.C. have been given eviction notices after Mountaire Farms purchased the property for expansion of its new plant under construction next door. Johnson’s is a collection of older mobile homes. Many residents have purchased their homes, and have spent money on renovations.


She said she's sad that she and her husband are about to lose the $8,000 they spent buying and repairing their trailer three years ago, and she's angry at the way Mountaire and the former owner of the mobile home park have treated them. "The company never met with us," she said. "We found out through the internet they bought it. The previous owner, he never told us anything."

At the public hearing, the county commissioners wondered aloud about Mountaire's county-funded tax incentives.
"I do have a question about whether or not the tax incentive — property tax deal — will include the (mobile home park) property," Commissioner Jim Crawford said. "And I'm going to ask that staff look into that question. "
The commissioners also scolded the company for not being a better neighbor during this expansion process.
"Give these people an opportunity to walk away from this travesty with some dignity and a roof over their heads," Commissioner Karen Howard told the company's representatives after they declined to speak.

History of the plant

The chicken processing factory owned by Mountaire isn't the only chicken plant in Chatham County, but it's the largest. When it shut down in 2011 it made a huge dent in the local economy, and officials have been eager to recreate the jobs it once provided. Several companies have tried to get the plant back up and running since 2011, eyeing the promise of tax breaks and other incentives. The latest is Mountaire Farms, which promised to create 700 jobs in 2016 in exchange for nearly $4 million in potential incentives. The company now says it might create 1,300 jobs, bringing the employment levels back to what they were when the Great Recession hit. Here's a timeline of the plant's history.

1960: The chicken plant is built on the outskirts of Siler City. Live chickens are shipped in, and supermarket-ready cuts of meat are sent out.

2000: National KKK leader David Duke holds a rally in Siler City after a local white supremacist asked him to come protest the small town's growing Hispanic population. Many of the immigrants came to find jobs at the local chicken plants, including the former Townsend's plant that Mountaire bought in 2016.

2010: Townsend's Inc. files for bankruptcy and the Siler City plant is bought by a Ukrainian billionaire, Oleg Bakhmatyuk, using a shell company called Omtron.

2011: Omtron shuts down the plant and lays off its nearly 1,200 employees.

2013: A company co-owned by NC House Speaker Tim Moore buys the plant for $85,000.

2014: Carolina Premium Foods attempts to buy the plant from Moore's company, and is given a $750,000 grant paid for by state taxpayers, but the deal falls through.

2016: Mountaire Farms buys the plant from Moore's company for $550,000. A state agency later awards Mountaire Farms $1.6 million in incentives from state taxpayers, and the Siler City and Chatham County governments add $2.3 million.

2017: Mountaire Farms buys the mobile home park next door as part of its expansion plans.

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/loc...206563339.html

Even though illegal immigrants are not mentioned in the article, I think we all know exactly who the "immigrants" are.

Media never mentions illegal alien anymore - "immigrants" blurs the line better to the fact they have no right to be here. Some are older, retired but sounds like the place is loaded with illegals living several families to a trailer. This is cesspool mexico style living with animals being slaughtered next door to them. It is appalling this is allowed here. Industries will do anything for profits by cheap labor. More businesses need to be fined and raided.

Quote:

---

Andrea Cruz Altunar, who lives in the mobile home park with her husband and their four children, is 36 and has lived in the U.S. since she was a young adult.

---

4 anchor babies right there.

Quote:

---

Neighbors are asking for financial compensation, since many of them spent thousands of dollars buying and fixing up their mobile homes that they say are now too old to be accepted at any other local mobile home park.

---

[
IN other words they are still a piece of crap plus you probably don't want to spend more monthly for current rental pricing. So now you are trying your best to get rewarded $$, & be placed somewhere w/o any effort on your part other than causing a commotion.

Quote:

---

she and her husband are about to lose the $8,000 they spent buying and repairing their trailer three years ago, and she's angry at the way Mountaire and the former owner of the mobile home park have treated them. "The company never met with us," she said. "We found out through the internet they bought it. The previous owner, he never told us anything."

---

American citizen have eminent domain pulled on them all the time and there is nothing they can do @ it. Why would your cesspool trailer camp deserve anything? Move on go back to the country that you are a citizen of. Sick of their sob stories. Take your anchor babies with you too.

They do not give two squats about all the homeless American's, our health insurance we cannot afford because of THEM breeding like rats and being forced to pay for their illness and medical care out of OUR pockets.

They do not give any thoughts to our citizens who have lost jobs, lost their homes and are bankrupt.

They stuff 20 people in to a single family dwelling and live in filth and garbage, just like where they come from. Then they continue to have several kids, live off the government dole. Uncontrolled breeding will NEVER get you out of poverty.

Now as these illegal aliens age, WE are going to be forced to pay for that too!

Round up the whole family and deport the whole lot of them! Let their country pay for their care.

Tow your junkyard down to Tijuana!

Quote:

---

But it also means Monter and around 100 of her neighbors, including many Spanish-speaking immigrants, are facing eviction.

---

They have not tried to assimilate if they haven't learned English in all the years they have been illegally hiding there.

The 2010 census had the population of Hispanics in Siler City, N.C., at 48.9%. Here's what happened to change Siler City, N.C., into illegal immigrant haven it is today:


The Miami Herald
January 2, 2000


Hispanic wave forever alters small town in North Carolina

BY ANDRES VIGLUCCI
MIAMI HERALD REPORTER


SILER CITY, N.C. -- The outsiders came first in a trickle, then in a flood, speaking a foreign tongue, bringing foreign ways and consuming pungently unfamiliar foods.

When as-yet-uncounted numbers of Mexicans and Central Americans descended on tiny Siler City, they forever altered a sleepy rural burg where the black-and-white population mix had not changed since Reconstruction.

In a scant six years, Hispanic immigrants drawn by jobs at Siler City's busy chicken slaughterhouses and textile mills have swollen its official population of 4,500, probably by several thousand. By conservative estimates, they now make up as much as one-third of Siler City's population, crowding into its aging neighborhoods, filling its schools, and testing townfolks' capacity for tolerance and accommodation.


Not incidentally, the immigrants have also helped fuel an economic boom the likes of which Siler City has not seen since the railroad arrived in the 1880s. The oldtimers, many of whom liked things just fine the way they were before the immigrants came, have yet to recover from the shock.


''You know what they call Siler City now?'' a clerk at a farm-equipment store in town, Joe Langley, inquired good-naturedly of a visitor. ''Little Mexico!'' In sharp contrast is the giddy delight of newcomers who are getting a first taste of American prosperity. After struggling in California, Wilfredo Hernandez came to Siler City with his wife and two young daughters at the urging of a cousin. ''I could never dream of buying my own place in Los Angeles,'' said Hernandez, 35, a native of El Salvador who builds trailer homes by day and on weekends helps his growing Hispanic Baptist congregation erect a sleek new church building. ''After three years here, I saved enough to buy a mobile home . . . I'm
really happy.''

The story of Siler City's transformation is the story of U.S. immigration at the end of the 20th Century, writ small.

A 30-year wave of mass immigration, legal and illegal, has brought millions of newcomers to the country, half or more from Latin America and the Caribbean, most of those unskilled workers from Mexico.


In search of jobs and better pay, many are pushing out of saturated Texas and California and into towns in the Old South and the Midwest where immigration was formerly an abstraction. Some now bypass those traditional entry points, lured by word of mouth to places they never heard of.


Almost overnight, Hispanics have become the main source of labor for meatpacking plants in Omaha, Neb., carpet factories in Dalton, Ga., the construction industry in Atlanta, and poultry plants in Delaware and North Carolina, where they also haul in the tobacco harvest -- all jobs native-born Americans seem unwilling to fill, at least at the pay employers seem willing to offer.


Wherever they go, spouses and children in tow, the immigrants' arrival raises anew the familiar debate over their impact on taxes, schools and services. And as they settle in, they inevitably upset oldtimers' fixed notions about America. Nowhere is the trend more dramatically on view than in Siler City, a conservative, tight-knit town long mistrustful of outsiders -- a category that encompasses not just poor, Spanish-speaking immigrants, but also Yankees and suspect liberals from nearby Chapel Hill, home to the University of North Carolina.


Now that immigration has come to Siler City, longtime residents find themselves caught somewhere between welcome and animosity.


''The sentiment is, 'Send 'em home,' '' said Rick Givens, a Siler City businessman and chairman of the Chatham County Commission. ''It's old-school, and it's unfortunate.''


But Givens says his constituents also have a point. Local taxpayers have been
left to absorb a large, unforeseen influx of often-needy people with little outside
help, he said.


Town and county officials have had to hire more police officers, English teachers, and interpreters for its courts and public health clinics. The county clinics must absorb the cost of care for some immigrants, many of them undocumented, who can't pay their bills.


The public outcry prompted Givens last fall to write a letter asking federal
authorities for help in getting undocumented aliens legalized or ''routed back to their homes.''


And the neophyte commissioner promptly got a stinging first lesson in the politics of immigration: He was pilloried by some of Siler City's emerging Hispanic advocates and rebuked by the governor's office for insensitivity.

Givens said he has learned to couch his opinions more diplomatically, but
insists the point of the letter still stands.


''I have eaten a lot of crow. But we're not racists or bigots. We need help,''
Givens said. ''I ran for office to lower my taxes and we ended up passing the biggest tax increase in years.''


But the complaints are tempered by a dawning realization among many that, economically and culturally, immigrants have been a boon to what might otherwise be a dying town.


''They're buying houses like crazy. Business is growing,'' said Holly Kozelsky, 29, who grew up in Siler City and was working as an interpreter when the town's main real-estate agency hired her to sell to Hispanics. ''There is a cultural richness and diversity we didn't have before. Our churches are different, our music is different. It's changed completely.''


Yet even Kozelsky -- who picked up Spanish working at a local Mexican
restaurant and married a Mexican immigrant -- is not without trepidation.
''The cost is that we're losing our sense of place. A lot of the oldtimers are sad and feel intimidated,'' she said. ''We're becoming like any other big place. I prosper from it, but there are parts of it that I hate.''


Just over an hour south of the sprawling Raleigh-Durham metro area and the high-tech Triangle Research Park, Siler City is solidly Bible Belt. It has also been Klan territory.


The town's fortunes have long rested on a marriage of agriculture and industry: feed and cotton mills and, for at least a generation, two plants where locally raised chickens are slaughtered, sliced and packaged, hard labor with high rates of injury.


By the early 1990s, though, the town was in decline and losing people, much of its compact, brick-front downtown boarded up. Since the immigrants' arrival, the shuttered corner pharmacy and soda fountain, where Kozelskly once sipped Cherry Cokes, has become Tienda Gabriel, one of several immigrant-owned downtown stores stocking Latin American foods, Spanish-language videos and Latin-music CDs.


The big commercial action is out on the Highway 64 corridor that bisects Siler City and now functions as its main street. New chain motels and fast-food stores are opening; Wal-Mart has broken ground.


Plumes of steam pour night and day into the sky from the poultry plants, which, fed by plentiful labor, have expanded and added work shifts. In the surrounding farmlands, sophisticated automated hatcheries have sprung up to supply the plants. The economic spillover extends to local makers of furniture and mobile homes and even the town's AM radio station, WNCA, whose once-sagging ratings are now buoyed by a nightly Spanish-language show.


Town Manager Joel Brower credits some of the boom to urban sprawl, not
immigration. But like many others, he says the presence of a ready labor pool and immigrants' demand for goods and housing have doubtlessly accelerated the wave of development.


''I hate to think what would happen if the immigrants left tomorrow,'' Brower said. ''Our industry would disappear.''

No one is sure how the immigrants found Siler City.

Most likely, Hispanic field workers who had long been migrating through the South, more or less invisibly, were drawn to the steady jobs at the poultry plants once they gained legal status under a late-'80s amnesty.


At first, the newcomers were mostly young, single men. As they legalized their status, many began sending for their families, and by 1994 the influx was impossible to miss.


Byron Barrera's story is typical. An uncle came to Siler City several years ago for a poultry plant job. Within a short time, Barrera and 16 relatives from Guatemala had joined him, most of them also to work at the chicken plants. ''The base for all this is having someone for support,'' said Barrera, 23. ''My uncle had an apartment, a place where we could stay when we arrived.''

The immigrants find in Siler City plentiful jobs combined with a low cost of living. Starting pay at the chicken plants can exceed $7 an hour with benefits, a windfall for immigrants accustomed to scraping by on less and willing to work double shifts.


Ninett Perez is emblematic of how rapidly some newcomers have adapted. A few years out of Guatemala, Perez, 31, has parlayed a job inspecting textiles at a fabric mill into homeownership, and is now hunting for a bigger house for her and her 9-year-old daughter.


Roberto Vazquez, a Salvadoran generally acknowledged to be the town's first immigrant, preceded the influx by a good 15 years, having wound up in Siler City after running out of money while on his way to Washington, D.C. But he, too, has benefited: He brought his four brothers to live and work in Siler City.


''I have my job, my own home, my children,'' said Vazquez, 48, who has worked at the local Food Lion supermarket for 22 years and preaches at a small Hispanic Christian church. ''I want for nothing, and I live a peaceful life.''


Longtime residents, however, have tended to focus on the less-positive aspects of the influx, especially at first, when the benefits were hard to see. The first source of friction was fundamental: For most Siler City residents, communication with their new neighbors, many of whom spoke little or no English, was impossible. Donna Weaver, a Siler City native, went away to college in 1985, when there were virtually no immigrants in town.


''I came back and they were here,'' said Weaver, who later studied Spanish
and is now an interpreter at a private medical clinic. ''I didn't like it at first. I didn't understand why they were here.''


Police were soon flooded with complaints about immigrants blasting music
late at night and about rowdy, drunk young men. Cops found themselves
grappling with the tendency of some newcomers to drive without licenses
or insurance, sometimes under the effects of alcohol, sometimes with tragic consequences.


Along with the legal immigrants have come the undocumented, prompting a flourishing trade in fraudulent documentation and phony immigration ''experts'' who cheat naive newcomers.


While countless immigrants have bought mobile homes and houses, many newly built, others are stuck in dilapidated housing, crammed into tumbledown frame houses or sagging trailers for which landlords charge exorbitant monthly rents, sometimes $100 a head.


As some locals see it, some immigrants also brought a little too much Los
Angeles to Siler City. A small but visible criminal element has arrived, quickly taking its place in the local drug trade, which predated the Hispanic influx. ''Within the past two or three years, we started getting Hispanics busted with kilos of coke worth a quarter million in their car,'' said Mitch Million, a veteran bilingual teacher who also interprets in local courts. ''That didn't use to happen.'' Open confrontations between longtime residents and immigrants have been rare, however. Locals' resentment has instead played out behind closed doors or in conversations among neighbors, especially when Hispanics began buying houses in town.


''A woman up the block from us sold her house to a Mexican family and the
neighbor chewed her out for it,'' said Donna Weaver, relating a commonplace anecdote.


When she married a Mexican man, Weaver became herself the object of
intolerance. From members of her own family.


''I hung up the phone after an argument with my Dad and I thought, 'My Dad's Archie Bunker,' '' recalled Weaver. ''My husband and I weren't allowed to have Thanksgiving dinner with the family for two years.''

Nor have relations been cordial between newcomers and Siler City's black
community, once about a quarter of the town's population. Many blacks regard the immigrants as competitors for housing, jobs and limited social services and medical care once focused mainly on blacks.


''We were already down, and now we're even further behind,'' said the Rev. Barry Gray, pastor of the 300-member First Missionary Baptist Church of Siler City. ''Latinos have rented and are steadily buying a lot of property. They have cash money, they have good credit, they're a good liability. People cater to them. But it has made housing skyrocket.''


Racial tensions flared briefly when muggers, some of them black, began targeting immigrants, who, lacking bank accounts, were known to carry around wads of cash. When a Hispanic man shot and killed a black man in an argument, anonymous threats were phoned to people with Spanish surnames picked out of the phone book.


Those tensions have since abated, though, and blacks and Hispanics recently found themselves allied in attacking one of the touchiest flash points over immigration in Siler City -- apparent white flight from the town's only public grade school.


In just three years, Hispanic kids have overtaken white children as the largest group in Siler City Elementary, where swelling enrollment has forced administrators to install trailers and shift fifth graders to a new middle school. Hispanics now make up a full third of the 670-student school's enrollment, in part because some white parents have pulled their children out, said Paul Joyce, assistant superintendent of county schools.


The bright, immaculate school would be the envy of many communities, but some white parents complain that teachers spend too much time helping students who are not proficient in English at the expense of their children.


At a fall meeting, school board members became the target of angry complaints from both black and Hispanic parents, who blamed them for doing nothing to stop white children from transferring across district lines.


''The school board was letting it happen,'' said T.C. Yarborough, a detective in the county sheriff's department and president of the school PTA, who is white and suggests that concern over their children's education is not the only motive for the transfers. ''I heard from other parents, 'My child is the only white child in the classroom.' ''


The school controversy is only the latest example of how the town's institutions, treading their way gingerly between longtime residents' sensibilities and immigrants' needs, have struggled to respond.


The town produced a well-intentioned Spanish-language video and brochure designed to instruct newcomers on how to be American, but that implied instead that Hispanic men abuse alcohol and beat their spouses. Rueful town officials blamed a poor translation.


Immigrants and advocates have complained of harassment by police, who set up driver's license checkpoints at the entrance to trailer parks where they live, by the Catholic Church after Mass, and by the poultry plants at shift change. The town has also been reluctant to crack down on exploitative landlords, advocates say. In the absence of decisive official action, churches and private groups have formed the backbone of Siler City's efforts to absorb the newcomers, with varying degrees of success.


Most of the mainline churches have adopted Spanish-speaking congregations, helping them become independent once they are ready to stand alone. The churches have been one of the few bridges connecting newcomers and oldtimers. After years within the fold of Loves Creek Baptist Church, the Rev. Israel Tapia's 60-member congregation is constructing a new church, with help from non-Hispanic members who pitched in with labor and donations.


The local United Way hired Ilana Dubester, a Spanish-speaking Brazilian
immigrant, to run a service and advocacy group. Now independent, Hispanic Liaison counsels immigrants on everything from obtaining driver's licenses to home buying.


But it's all patchwork, and insufficient, said Bill Lail, director of the Family
Resource Center, a nonprofit spinoff of the county health department that provides counseling, child care and immigration services to immigrants.


The bottom line, residents and newcomers said, is that Siler City is for now three separate communities whose members rarely mix outside work.
But there is also reason for hope: At Siler City elementary, most of the
immigrants' children pick up English with ease, administrators say. After
Commissioner Givens issued his letter of complaint, he and other local leaders tapped Pastor Tapia to organize a forthcoming trip to Mexico, where they hope to get a feel for where the newcomers are coming from.


''By sheer numbers, it seems inevitable that something has to give. It's already giving, in a way,'' said Dubester. ''Both sides are learning how to live with each other.''


The clearest evidence may rest in one oldtimer's change of heart -- Donna
Weaver's father. ''He's coming around,'' she said. ''He just called to ask what my husband wanted for Christmas.''


Copyright 1999 Miami Herald

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/...h-carolina.htm

They will breed us out of house and home, financially drain our resources and use up our precious land, water, social resources, medical facilities and bring more division, crime, gangs, murder, rape and drugs.

They bring their culture with them. They stuff 20 people into a home, destroy neighborhoods, have litters of kids, throw their garbage everywhere. They play their boom boom music, have large family parties, graffiti, every city will look like Tijuana. They drive drunk, will not get car insurance. They know every way to game the system to get free stuff...by breeding.

These young American's think there are no jobs now, cannot afford a home, traffic is horrible, costs are high...wait 10-20 years down the road when you are older. YOU will regret not marching for the wall, not marching for a 10 year moratorium on ALL immigration and not marching to save your future for a prosperous and peaceful life. This continues...it will not end well. You can blame yourselves, just look at Europe...that is your future.

Not to mention the strain of the millions of Work Visa's bringing more foreigners here taking jobs, crowding our cities and roads. Taking housing and opportunities from all of us. They pay no taxes into the system.

All us old people who served, fought for our country, worked hard and built this country will be long gone...you will be on your own.

Keep up with your Liberal, NWO, Democrat, open borders agenda and you will be in the living hell of Venezuela on US soil, only it will be on a much larger scale if we do not knock this off and knock it off fast.

Chapel Hill, Siler City to build stronger ties with immigrants

BY TAMMY GRUBB
tgrubb@newsobserver.com

• 
  

April 03, 2017 08:46 AM
Updated April 03, 2017 04:48 PM

CHAPEL HILL A UNC initiative aims to build stronger communities by helping immigrants and refugees feel more at home in Chapel Hill and Siler City.

The towns were chosen last week for the competitive Building Integrated Communities (BIC) initiative – unc.live/2mumbym – sponsored by UNC’s Latino Migration Project.

The initiative encourages refugees and immigrants to get involved in local government and their communities by connecting residents with needed resources, and promoting cross-cultural understanding.

The Latino Migration Project established the initiative in 2010 with a $117,396 grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation. Previously chosen communities include Greenville, High Point, Sanford and Winston-Salem, all of which developed action plans, new resident advisory boards and other services through the project.

Chapel Hill and Siler City town staffs will begin working with BIC staff this spring. The project does not provide financial support.

Chapel Hill officials noted between 50 and 80 refugees have moved to Orange County in each of the last seven years. Most are from Burma (Myanmar), although the number from the Democratic Republic of the Congo has increased, they said.

U.S. Census data shows Chapel Hill had 6,085 immigrants and refugees in 2015, up 10 percent from 2010. Nearly 14 percent were Asian-born.

Siler City, on the other hand, had a large number of Hispanics – 45.5 percent of the town’s 8,193 residents in 2015, Census data shows. That number reflected fewer Hispanic residents and a smaller share of the town’s population than in 2010, when Hispanics were 54.2 percent of the population.

Immigrant debate

The announcement comes as the status of immigrants and refugees – and so-called “sanctuary cities” – are being debated at the state and national levels. While some conservative groups have identified Chapel Hill and Siler City as “sanctuary cities,” neither town’s policies violate state or federal laws.

The BIC initiative also “does not endorse or oppose any state or federal policies,” said Hannah Gill, director of UNC’s Latino Migration Project.

“The BIC initiative works with local governments to improve local relationships and economic development for all of their residents,” she said.

“BIC partnerships do not in any way indicate local lawmakers’ relationships to statewide or national immigration policy.”

The city of Winston-Salem, for instance, worked with BIC staff over the last two years on programs that help immigrants get information in their native languages and connect with local agencies working on issues, such as fair and affordable housing, education, health care and transportation.

Winston-Salem also sought to increase the role of immigrants and refugees in the larger community by addressing public misconceptions, stereotypes and fear, particularly about Hispanic immigrants.

2020 plan

Chapel Hill Town Manager Roger Stancil said the BIC project aligns closely with Chapel Hill’s 2020 plan for the future and focus on collaboration and innovation.

The town will provide more information soon about how the community can get involved, he said. Sarah Vinas, the town’s assistant director of housing and community, noted that will start with an in-depth study of local needs.

“That’s one of the things that we’re most excited about, because a lot of the data that we have readily available from the Census and other national data sources don’t necessarily give us a good sense of immigrants and refugees that may come in and out of the community, particularly the refugee population,” Vinas said.

Immediate changes could include providing information in multiple languages and an interpreter at town meetings, she said.

Success will be measured by how the initiative benefits all residents, Gill said.

“BIC will collaborate with Chapel Hill partners to create an evaluation plan that measures progress on the implementation of specific strategies by the town of Chapel Hill once they are created,” Gill said.

http://www.heraldsun.com/news/local/...142451394.html

They will not be so "excited" when they turn your city into the very cesspool they created themselves and fled.

Why did they not stay and clean up their own country? They created it...the destroyed it...now they will do the same here.

Too easy to flee, not fight, and take from others.

A fact is a fact Jack.

UPDATE:

Chicken factory makes a deal with neighbors facing eviction, possible homelessness

BY WILL DORAN
wdoran@newsobserver.com

March 27, 2018 10:09 AM
Updated March 27, 2018 09:15 PM

SILER CITY The owners of a chicken plant in Siler City reached a deal Monday night with the residents of a nearby mobile home park who are facing eviction as part of the plant's expansion plans.

Around 100 people live in the trailer park next to the factory now owned by Mountaire Farms, which a decade ago was one of the area's largest employers before the previous owners shut it down in 2011.

Immigrants say a 'Jesus-centered' chicken factory is forcing them into homelessness

Mountaire Farms plans to bring more than 1,000 jobs back to Chatham County, and it has received millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded incentives to do so. But some of the politicians who had approved the money were angered to hear complaints from neighbors of the plant.

Facing growing public scrutiny, the company has reached a deal to pay the neighbors $8,300 per lot — some of which are home to one family, others to multiple families — and to extend the date they need to be gone from May 7 until July 31.

The company had previously agreed to let the families live there rent-free until moving out, and that continues to be part of the deal.

“It takes courage for immigrant families to stand up and fight for their rights. This was the first time that these residents had spoken with the press or their elected officials," Emilio Vicente, who works for the Chatham County Hispanic Liaison and helped organize the neighbors' push, said in a news release announcing the deal.

The company's expansion plans included buying the trailer park next door to the factory, off of U.S. 64, where about 30 families lived.

After getting their eviction notices, the families realized the mobile homes they owned there were too old to be accepted at any other local mobile home parks.

Many of them had put a large chunk of their savings into buying and fixing up their homes, and they worried that they would now be forced into homelessness without financial aid.

The residents of the mobile home park are largely Spanish-speaking immigrants and their children. Some have been in the mobile home park only a few years; others have lived there for decades. Many of them moved to the area to find work at the local chicken factories, before finding themselves fighting the same company where they may soon be applying for jobs.

"Even though they don't have an obligation, they should do the right thing," Natalia Lopez, a 72-year-old longtime resident of the park, said in an interview last week, before the families and company struck the deal. "... They should think about how this might leave us on the streets."

At a recent Chatham County Board of Commissioners meeting, the commissioners — who gave $1.6 million to Mountaire in 2016 — criticized the company for its handling of the situation.

"Give these people an opportunity to walk away from this travesty with some dignity and a roof over their heads," commissioner Karen Howard told two Mountaire representatives who attended the public hearing.

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/loc...206952179.html

Put the money in ESCROW

Send in ICE to determine who is here illegally.

When they buy their own ticket to self deport...then release the money to them when they land in their own country.

US taxpayers should not have to pay their way back home!

THEN FINE THE CHICKEN PLANT FOR HIRING ILLEGAL ALIENS!!!!

Quote:

---

The residents of the mobile home park are largely Spanish-speaking immigrants and their children. Some have been in the mobile home park only a few years; others have lived there for decades. Many of them moved to the area to find work at the local chicken factories, before finding themselves fighting the same company where they may soon be applying for jobs.

---

Hmm, so these illegal aliens who worked for the original poultry plant before it closed will be seeking employment at the new plant? Folks, even though the articles, not even once, mentions the fact that these people are illegals is being very dishonest with the public. Unfortunately this is happening a lot in the media today. More and more media outlets are absolutely refusing to identify illegal aliens for what they are. This is a very deceptive and dishonest practice that drives me crazy!