Many of the latest U.S. arrivals replaced Hispanics detained in raids
Somalis, often in the U.S. legally as political refugees, have replaced many Latino workers. In Grand Island, Neb., Hispanics aren't happy with the changes in their workplace. One worker said the Somalis "act like the United States owes them."
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GRAND ISLAND, NEB. — Like many workers at the meatpacking plant here, Raul Garcia, a Mexican-American, has watched with some discomfort as hundreds of Somali immigrants have moved to town in the past couple of years, many of them to fill jobs once held by Latino workers taken away in immigration raids.
Garcia has been particularly troubled by the Somalis' demand that they be allowed special breaks for prayers that are obligatory for devout Muslims. The breaks, he said, would inconvenience everyone else.
"The Latino is very humble," said Garcia, 73, who has worked at the plant, owned by JBS USA Inc., since 1994. "But they are arrogant," he said of the Somalis. "They act like the United States owes them."
Garcia was among more than 1,000 Latino and other workers who protested a decision in September by the plant's management to cut their workday — and their pay — by 15 minutes to give scores of Somali workers time for evening prayers.
Political refugees
After several days of strikes and disruptions, the plant's management abandoned the plan. But the dispute peeled back a layer of civility in this Nebraska city of 47,000, revealing slow-burning racial and ethnic tensions in 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 U.S. after immigration raids decimated their Latino work forces. The Somalis are mostly in this country legally as political refugees.
Need replacement workers
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 long-standing hostility toward Latino immigrants among residents.
"Every wave of immigrants has had to struggle to get assimilated," said Margaret Hornady, the mayor of Grand Island.
The federal immigration crackdown has hit meat- and poultry-packing plants particularly hard, with more than 2,000 immigrant workers in at least nine locations detained since 2006 in major raids, most on immigration violations.
Struggling to fill the grueling low-wage jobs that attract few American workers, the plants have placed advertisements in immigrant newspapers in immigrant neighborhoods.
Some companies, like Swift & Co., which owned the plant in Grand Island until being bought up by the Brazilian conglomerate JBS last year, have made a particular pitch for Somalis because of their legal status. Tens of thousands of Somali refugees fleeing civil war have settled in the U.S. since the 1990s.
But the companies found that in trying to solve one problem they have created another.
Religious factors
In early September, about 220 Somali Muslims walked off the job at a JBS meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colo., saying the company had prevented them from observing their prayer schedule. (More than 100 of the workers were later fired.)
Days later, a poultry company in Minnesota agreed to allow Muslim workers prayer breaks and the right to refuse handling pork products, settling a lawsuit filed by nine Somali workers.
In August, the management of a Tyson chicken plant in Shelbyville, Tenn., designated a Muslim holy day as a paid holiday, acceding to a demand by Somali workers. The plant had originally agreed to substitute the Muslim holy day for Labor Day but reinstated Labor Day after a barrage of criticism from non-Muslims.
A look at discrimination
Nationwide, employment discrimination complaints by Muslim workers have more than doubled in the past decade, to 607 in fiscal year 2007, from 285 in fiscal year 1998, according to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which has sent representatives to Grand Island to interview Somali workers.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids employers to discriminate based on religion and says that employers must "reasonably accommodate" religious practices. But the act offers some exceptions, including instances when adjustments would cause "undue hardship" on the company's business.
The new tensions here extend well beyond the walls of the plant. Scratch beneath Grand Island's surface and there is resentment, discomfort and mistrust everywhere, some residents say — between the whites and the various immigrants; between the older immigrant communities, like the Latinos, and the newer ones, namely the Somalis and the Sudanese, another refugee community that has grown in recent years; and between the Somalis, who are largely Muslim, and the Sudanese, who are largely Christian.
Hornady suggested that she had been having difficulty adjusting to Somalis. She said the sight of Somali women, many of whom wear Muslim headdresses, was "startling."
"I'm sorry, but after 9/11, it gives some of us a turn," she said.
The Somalis say they feel aggrieved and not welcome.
Barrett Stinson AP
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