Workforce Language Services

It late September, Workforce Language Services posted a link to a Diversity Spectrum article about the problems Somali immigrants were facing at a meatpacking plant that was raided months ago.  A more recent article from the NY Times posted on the East Africa forum details the mutual lack of cultural understanding that has arisen and the subsequent tension at the plant:

But the dispute peeled back a layer of civility in this southern Nebraska city of 47,000, revealing slow-burning racial and ethnic tensions that have been an unexpected aftermath of the enforcement raids at workplaces by federal immigration authorities.

Grand Island is among a half dozen or so cities where discord has arisen with the arrival of Somali workers, many of whom were recruited by employers from elsewhere in the United States after immigration raids sharply reduced their Latino work forces.

The Somalis are by and large in this country legally as political refugees and therefore are not singled out by immigration authorities.

In some of these places, including Grand Island, this newest wave of immigrant workers has had the effect of unifying the other ethnic populations against the Somalis and has also diverted some of the longstanding hostility toward Latino immigrants among some native-born residents.

“Every wave of immigrants has had to struggle to get assimilated,” said Margaret Hornady, the mayor of Grand Island and a longtime resident of Nebraska. “Right now, it’s so volatile.”

As newer populations move into cities and towns to fill positions that native residents don’t want to fill, it becomes even more critical to provide cultural competency to all stakeholders.  It’s especially troubling that Latinos, who have collectively faced so much intolerance are now perpetuating further intolerance against African Muslims. 

To read the entire article, click here.  And to read another Diversity Spectrum article that describes the increase in Muslim complaints of workplace bias, go here.