Thread: New Jobs for Thousands of Illegals, Yipee!

I am sorry if this has already been posted, didn't find it! This is terrible for Oklahoma, they are building it in a place with low population so they will have an excuse to bring in the illegals!
ttp://okiedoke.com/blog/index.php?p=1898
Feb 21
Will this count as jobs for Oklahomans?

Encouraging commercial development in rural Oklahoma is an important subject at the state Legislature every year. Small towns like Hooker are all but dying.

People started giving up on this place years ago.

The drugstore and five-and-dime closed. The Ford and Chevrolet dealerships left, too, along with the tractor-parts retailers.

Vacant brick storefronts with sheets of yellowed newspaper taped in the windows are reminders of what once was in this town in the Oklahoma Panhandle.

A couple months ago, the lumber store shut down. It was a last gasp.

“It’s a damn shame to see a town like this,” said Earl Meng, a City Council member who has lived here for 60 years.

Obviously, Hooker needs some jobs. And that’s just what they’re going to get.

Specifically, a Smithfield Beef processing plant to be built a few miles east of town, a $200 million project that would create as many as 3,000 jobs and put Hooker back on the map. Construction of the beef plant, the largest built in the United States in two decades, is scheduled to begin by late March.

Hooker residents can probably thank state tax incentives, minimal worker liabilities to employers, and right-to-work for their good fortune.

“It’s a hard and relatively low-paying job, but it’s the only opportunity that exists for many of these workers,” said Cornell University professor Lance Compa, an expert in labor law and international labor rights. “These companies take advantage of these groups; they get super-exploited.”

The good news is that it looks like few Oklahomans will be exploited by Smithfield.

The jobs are dirty, strenuous and sometimes dangerous, and attract a high number of immigrant laborers at plants across the U.S.
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Meat operations in nearby towns have attracted thousands of Mexican and Guatemalan laborers to the area in the past decade. Many already have settled in Hooker.

comments, please leave yours.

So let me get this straight:

1. Oklahoma loses good manufacturing jobs to Mexico for years.
2. Businesses demand, and receive, evermore incentives to create jobs in the state.
3. Many jobs created are ones done largely by immigrants, often illegal.
4. Corporate America says we need more immigrant labor to do jobs Americans won’t do.
5. Those who profit from this scheme extoll the virtues of corporate welfare, cheap immigrant labor, and tax breaks for the wealthy.

I’d say we got what we asked for.

* Editorials

— Mike @ 10:04 AM in 2007 | Link

2 Comments »

1.

As long as the ground beef remains cheap at Wal-Mart…everybody wins.

Comment by Dwight — Feb 21 @ 10:59 am
2.

Thanks for giving this issue some exposure. It seems many short sighted Okies can only envision a future for our state that is based on unsustainable practices and the wholesale mining of our quality of life.

In addition to increasing the amount of illegal workers that will flock to the area, the Hooker facility will bring an environmental scourge on the area that will destroy the area, rather than save it.

Hogs produce three times more excrement than human beings do. The 500,000 pigs at a single Smithfield subsidiary in Utah generate more fecal matter each year than the 1.5 million inhabitants of Manhattan.

The best estimates put Smithfield’s total waste discharge at 26 million tons a year. That would fill four Yankee Stadiums. Even when divided among the many small pig production units that surround the company’s slaughterhouses, that is not a containable amount.

Damn sad, say goodby to that town!!
My father was born in Shulter OK, very small town and I remember going to visit my grandparents as a child in the 1950's,comming from the big city in Cal. it was like going to a different planet, but I loved it!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17315490/site/newsweek/

Vets on the Street
Hundreds of U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are ending up homeless. How could this happen?

WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Sarah Childress
Newsweek
Updated: 12:41 p.m. MT Feb 24, 2007
Feb. 24, 2007 - Kevin Felty came back from Iraq in 2003 with nowhere to stay, and not enough money to rent an apartment. He and his wife of four years moved in with his sister in Florida, but the couple quickly overstayed their welcome. Jobless and wrestling with what he later learned was posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Felty suddenly found himself scrambling to find a place for himself and his wife, who was six-months pregnant. They found their way to a shelter for homeless veterans, which supported his wife during her pregnancy and helped Felty get counseling and find a job. A year later, he's finally thinking his future. "I don't want to say this is exactly where I want to be—it's really not," he says. "But it's what I can get at the moment."
Young, alienated and often living on their own for the first time, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans increasingly are coming home to find that they don't have one. Already, nearly 200,000 veterans—many from the Vietnam War—sleep on the streets every night, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. But young warriors just back from the Mideast—estimated around 500 to 1,000—are beginning to struggle with homelessness too. Drinking or using drugs to cope with PTSD, they can lose their job and the support of family and friends, and start a downward spiral to the streets. Their tough military mentality can make them less likely to seek help. Advocates say it can take five to eight years for a veteran to exhaust their financial resources and housing options, so they expect the number to rise exponentially in a few years. "Rather than wait for the tsunami, we should be doing something now," says Cheryl Beversdorf, president of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.

The problem is mainly a lack of resources, advocates say. There are only about 15,000 beds available in VA-funded shelters or hospitals nationwide, and nearly every one is taken. In some smaller cities there simply aren't many places for a homeless veteran to go. And as affordable housing units shrink nationwide, veterans living on a disability check of, say, $700 a month, (which means a 50-percent disability rating from the VA), are hard-pressed to find a place to live. Most shelters require veterans to participate in a rehabilitation program, but a "fair amount" of veterans just go back to the streets once they leave, says Ed Quill, director of external affairs at Volunteers of America, the nonprofit housing group for veterans that helped Felty.


Charles Ommanney / Getty Images for Newsweek
Two homeless vets share their stories in the dorm at New Directions in L.A.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The VA says it's making a concerted effort to reach out to vets before they hit bottom, says Pete Dougherty, the VA's coordinator for homeless programs. Intake counselors are trained to ask questions, especially of newer veterans, to seek out mental health or other problems that could lead to homelessness. "We're much more sensitive than we were 40 years ago for signs of problems," he says. And they have expanded some services. Last week, the VA approved $24 million to boost aid for the homeless, which will allow them to add about 1,000 more beds and increase the number of grants to help the growing population of homeless women veterans and those with mental illnesses.

Much of the work with new veterans is being done one soldier at a time. At New Directions in Los Angeles, a center that rehabilitates homeless veterans, Anthony Belcher, a formerly homeless Vietnam vet who now works at the center, looks out for one particular Iraq veteran who shows up at the center about once a month, filthy, drugged out and tortured by PTSD. "He's a baby," Belcher says. "You can see it in his eyes." So far, the young vet is too wary to accept more than a night's bed or a hot meal. But as Belcher says, at least he has a place to go. That's more than many of the thousands of vets on America’s streets can say tonight.

It escapes me why our government did nothing while thousands of Vietnam Veterans sank into this abyss when they came back.

Our government knew about what they called back then "battle fatigue", and they knew that it took time to show up, yet they did nothing to help those suffering from it.

I worked for The Salvation Army, ARC , where I met my husband, both being employees and he a Vietnam Veteran. While there, we both saw a lot of men coming in, almost all Vietnam Veterans, almost all with drug and alcohol addictions.

People see these men and they mostly sniff their noses and shake their heads, not understanding the amount of damage the mind has taken from battle and truthfully how desperate these men feel about staving off the depression that plagues them, so they use the drugs and alcohol to numb themselves.

Now we have a whole new wave of men, now women too, who will need help, and will our government finally come to the table on this, or will they prefer to help illegal aliens and their children?

God help this country if our government keeps ignoring our own veterans, and the will of the voters, over non-citizens and the almighty dollar from big business.

There are not jobs here waiting for illegals to fill.

They create jobs for themselves by coming here. They do this because they need food, housing, transportation, clothes and other products that sustain life. Therefore, more of the above has to be produced by business to meet their need. If more has to be produced, more workers are needed for production. They create jobs for themselves and business make more money. Businesses are getting richer and those investers are because of the illegal workforce.

It is ludicrous to think that we have unlimited jobs to be filled. With13 million illegals already here, a guest workers program is not needed. Because those that come to do the work in on the farms do not return the next year. They go on to the inner city and take jobs. A circle that goes on year after year.(When two people get married, their needs increase when they have children. They buy more products, business have to produce more and to produce more they need more workers. Simple as that.

The rhetoric that if there were no jobs for them here, they would not come is an excuse to let them come here, which only benefit businesses, which in turn benefit those who have investments in businesses. (Many of those in government)

For instance, the more illegals that come here, the more money businesses make and the more money investors make.
The American taxpayer pay the price. We who live and compete with illegals for housing, jobs, schools and social services. We are the ones who suffer from crimes committed by illegals.


1. No amnesty in any form.
2. No guest workers program with a path to citizenship. Only a temporary guest workers program for farms.
3. Interpret correctly or repeal 14th amendment that give automatic citizenship to children born to illegals.
4. Big fines, jail time or confiscate businesses who hire illegals.


These are the incentive that bring them here. If there were no incentives they would not come and they would leave.There would be no need to spend money to build a fence or to deport them. A huge saving to pass on to the taxpayer.
They would not cross illegally if the incentives were taken away.
The cost of illegal immigration is destroying this country and the way of life for Americans.

If we open the border, do not enforce immigration laws, we will soon be in worst shape economically as Mexico.

Easy, get rid of the incentives, all of them, why is this so difficult for or congress to understand, what crap, you are full of BS congress!!

Originally Posted by Cindy

Vets on the Street
Hundreds of U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are ending up homeless. How could this happen?

THIS sends me right into orbit. HOW could this happen they ask? Because our elected officials are more worried about the rights of illegal aliens, and about offending Mexico or the PC crowd, that they do about our vets. It is disgraceful, despicable!