Thread: North Dakota COVID Hotspot Growing at Plant Employing Refugees

North Dakota COVID Hotspot Growing at Plant Employing Refugees


04/17/2020 ~ Ann Corcoran

I am not saying the large number of African refugees working at a wind turbine plant brought any virus to North Dakota, but I think you can see the problem brewing in large plants that employ immigrants many of whom do not speak English and live in close-knit immigrant enclaves.











A picture worth a thousand words taken at a public meeting last December as a debate raged in North Dakota about whether the state would ‘welcome’ more refugees.


https://bismarcktribune.com/opinion/editorial/tribune-editorial-resettlement-meeting-could-have-gone-better/article_62c88028-e6b9-512c-875f-6a0d0194f2b2.html


From an AP story posted at the Stamford Advocate:


Testing held near North Dakota plant while virus cases climb

FARGO, N.D. (AP) — Health officials and National Guard members spent Thursday afternoon screening people for the coronavirus after eight positive tests were confirmed among workers at a North Dakota wind turbine plant that employs a large number of immigrants from African countries.


The drive-thru screenings outside the LM Wind Power in Grand Forks took place on a day when state officials reported a record number of new coronavirus cases for the second consecutive day. A total of 52 cases were confirmed in the last two days, including 28 on Thursday.
Cars were lined up in four lanes outside the LM plant, where officials administered 424 tests in five hours to people who may have come in close contact with the infected workers, said John Bernstrom, spokesman for the city of Grand Forks.








Shirley DykshoornShirley Dykshoorn, vice president at Lutheran Social Services in Fargo, the state’s refugee resettlement agency, said many of the employees are immigrants or former refugees who have worked at the plant for some time.


“Most of them have good English skills,” Dykshoorn said. “Maybe not as many in their family understand everything so we’ve tried to support them and help them with what they need going forward.”


Dr. Paul Carson, a public health and infectious disease specialist at North Dakota State University and adviser to the governor’s COVID-19 team, said he’s not surprised to see several cases pop up in a large plant. He said it’s important to aggressively pursue people who came in close contact with those who are infected.


“We’re going to find these little flare-ups and I think we should accept them. What we need to able to do is jump on them and try to prevent them from going any further,” Carson said. “We want to avoid what happened with the meat packing plant down in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.”

I had planned to post Neil Munro’s piece at Breitbart from a few days ago about problems in the meatpacking industry with the spread of the virus. See it here.

Over half of the more than 1,300 cases in South Dakota have been tied to an outbreak at a Smithfield pork processing plant in Sioux Falls.


The plant is one of the largest known clusters of COVID-19 cases in the country. A total of 598 employees have confirmed infections, plus 135 of their close contacts.

More here.


Sigh! Giant global corporations with a voracious appetite for immigrant labor changing the heartland one town at a time.


I’ve been writing about North Dakota for years and it was one of the states I visited during my 2016 road trip through the Midwest and West to see the impact of refugee labor on communities throughout middle America. See my North Dakota archive.


https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org...ying-refugees/

Another problem the swamp has created for this country!

Living in tight quarters, more ghettos, overbreeding in poverty and trash in communities. They destroy our neighborhoods and we are left footing the bill for their free healthcare and treating their many medical conditions including infectious TB.

Many of these "refugees" already have underlying health problems, and come from countries with little to no hygiene practices. Do not wash their hands thoroughly, if at all.

More Meatpackers-Meet-COVID Horror Stories


04/18/2020 ~ Ann Corcoran

You won’t find any sympathy from me about this news.


I have been warning for years (long before a virus marched across the world) that if you like to eat meat—beef, pork, chicken—you need to find a source of locally raised meat.


They are changing America by changing the people!






Of course my major interest has been about how BIG MEAT has a voracious appetite for cheap immigrant/refugee labor that has been supplied to them by the federal government and by the supposed do-gooder ‘religious’ charities that shill for these global giants as they make up the majority of US refugee resettlement contractors…


And, how that ‘need’ for cheap labor is changing the character of middle America.


Below is one of what I am sure will be many stories about immigrant labor and your food supply.


From Iowa Starting Line:


Iowa Plant Workers Describe Inaction, Safety Concerns, Fear

Widespread outbreaks at meat packing plants in the Midwest are quickly becoming the latest crisis in the ongoing pandemic. Hundreds of workers, many of whom are immigrants and refugees, are becoming sick, some have already died, and the resulting plant closures are risking the nation’s food supply chain.


In Iowa, a significant percentage of the state’s new positive COVID-19 cases this week came from a Tyson meat packing plant in Louisa County, a small, rural county in Southeast Iowa. 186 positive cases were recorded from the one plant alone and two people have died, which has driven Louisa County to be one of the nation’s biggest hot spots for the virus, while also impacting surrounding counties.








Iowa Republican Governor Kim Reynolds: But they promised me!


At her Wednesday press conference, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said that plant executives had assured her that sufficient precautions to protect workers had been put into place.


“When I reached out to the CEOs of both the plants, they indicated they had already taken the steps,” Reynolds said of mitigation efforts encouraged by the state. “They’re trying to be very proactive to not only protect their workforce, but to make sure they can, you know, can keep the plant up and going.”
[….]


….while most of the focus has been on Latino workers at these plants, it’s important to note that many meat packing employees are refugees from non-Latin American countries. Large numbers of Burmese refugees, for instance, work at the Columbus Junction and Waterloo plants.


Nearly all the workers disputed the idea that employees were being provided the kind of protections that Reynolds said was happening.

I’ve only snipped a bit of the story, continue reading here.
And, I’ll bet if you check the Iowa hotspots at this interactive map you will find some global meatpacker or other large manufacturing facility that is the source of the local infectious outbreak.










That is Louisa County. See the interactive map here:

https://coronavirus.iowa.gov/

See my BIG MEAT archive by clicking here. I had already been writing about meatpackers within the first year of writing RRW and their refugee labor appetites when I came across this news in 2008 about how Bill Clinton first came up with the idea of supplying his meatpacking buddies with Bosnian refugee laborers—in Iowa!


https://refugeeresettlementwatch.org...orror-stories/

These "meat packing" companies had better be paying 100% of the medical care costs and burials for their CHEAP FOREIGN LABOR!

It is not "cheap" and not one taxpayer dime should pay for these costs.

They also need to pay the costs to deport them all back home. We do not want these people here destroying our communities, our peace, our prosperity, or changing our way of life with their sick twisted views.