12/02/2008
Poor Pennsylvania. Obviously it isn’t diverse enough to satisfy the multi-culti social engineers in Washington and the Refugee Industrial Complex.
In 1992, the Gautams moved into a one-room, dirt-floored hut in a camp about 25 miles from the Nepalese city of Damak. They often had to wait in line for hours to fill two cans with water. They shared a latrine with another family and bathed in a river.
But now they are in their new apartment in the Pittsburgh suburb of Castle Shannon. They have suddenly had to adapt to running water, indoor toilets, carpeting, closets, a refrigerator, electric sweepers and clock radios — because, as their caseworker explains, promptness is important in America.
"I've never seen a house like this," Gautam said when caseworker Molly Ferra took them through the three-bedroom unit, showing them the small kitchen already furnished with bags of rice, tea, hot pepper sauce and a box of pots and pans.
She explained the use of the refrigerator and freezer to Gautam, the only member of the family who speaks English. "Very cold," Gautam noted of the freezer.
Although life in the United States is far easier, some of the refugees do not want to leave the camps.
"Most of us want to return to Bhutan because we love our country and our roots," D.P. Kafle, a resident of one of the camps, said in an interview in Nepal. "We are patriotic Bhutanese and there is no way we will go anywhere else."
However, Larry Yungk, a senior resettlement officer with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said 55,000 refugees from Bhutan have already signed up for relocation.
Norm-Anne Rothermel, Pennsylvania’s refugee coordinator in the Department of Public Welfare, said most cities are eager to take in the ethnic Nepalese.
"Refugees are excellent workers," she said. "They do not want government assistance … all they want is a fresh start, so it’s a win-win situation when it comes to refugees." [Refugees from Bhutan settle in Pittsburgh, By Ramit Plushnick-Masti, Associated Press, November 30, 2008]
This is the new pitch: with so much outrage from the little citizens about illegal immigrants, refugees are now positioned as an exploitable cheap labor source, er willing workers.
Many of the refugees themselves would rather remain in their home cultures, like the "patriotic Bhutanese" fellow quoted above. People like him would be a perfect fit for microlending, a program of economic self-improvement where small loans are used to create simple businesses.
The Bhutanese being imported to Pittsburgh are backward people in terms of being familiar with first-world technology. All the better for resettlement workers — the more instruction the refugees need about how to work light switches and navigate escalators, the more assured caseworkers are of keeping their jobs. Those employees want a supply of preliterate tribal people flown in by the tens of thousands every year.
However, the interests of the American people are quite different.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.