TW: This piece frames a bunch of interesting variables within the context of how Muslim Somali immigrants are being integrated into a small Nebraska city with meatpacking facilities.
1) How reliant American companies are on immigrant labor of all types, when new policies squeezed their supply of Mexican employees the employers turned immediately to other immigrant groups
2) How a policy change relative to one immigrant group, Mexicans, can lead to increased immigration from another, the Somalis who enjoy political refugee status.
3) How when one immigrant group displaces another tensions arise (this has been the case historically everytime a new immigrant group emerges, the Protestants and Catholics did not exactly assimilate in an angst free manner)
4) How each new immigrant group brings new integration challenges, it gets a little tricky at a meatpacking plant when the workers do not want to handle pork for instance.
From Int'l Herald Tribune:
"Scratch beneath Grand Island's surface and there is resentment, discomfort and mistrust everywhere, some residents say - between the white community and the various immigrant communities; between the older immigrant communities, like the Latinos, and the newer ones, namely the Somalis and the Sudanese, another refugee community that has grown here in recent years; and between the Somalis, who are largely Muslim, and the Sudanese, who are largely Christian...In dozens of interviews here, white, Latino and other residents seemed mostly bewildered, if not downright suspicious, of the Somalis, very few of whom speak English."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/10/16/america/letter.php
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