By Bill Kurtz
Catholic Herald

Center helps newcomers with jobs, language skills

BARRON -- In his book, "Fast Food Nation," author Eric Schlosser wrote that trends in the meatpacking industry have "created a migrant industrial workforce of poor immigrants and spawned rural ghettos in the American heartland. Crime, poverty, drug abuse and homelessness have lately taken root in towns where you'd least expect to find them. Towns like Garden City, Kan.; Grand Island, Neb.; and Storm Lake, Iowa, now have their own rural ghettos, drugs, poverty, rootlessness and crime."

Residents here are trying to prevent those problems before they start. Representatives of churches, schools, businesses, as well as individuals, established the Diversity Council, a volunteer group that tries to improve relations between longtime residents and the Hispanics, Hmong and Somalis who have settled here.

This winter an International Center was established in the lower level of the Barron County Office Complex here. Workforce Resource, of Menomonie, a private, non-profit organization offering employment and training assistance in nine counties, obtained a grant from the federal Office of Resettlement Assistance to establish the center. While the grant is mainly to help nearly 300 Somalis who have settled here in the last few years, the center will offer services to all.

Mahado Qassim, a Somali refugee who fled her war-torn homeland in 1991, is the International Center coordinator. She came to the United States in 1993, and followed a friend here five years ago.

When she arrived, Qassim recalled, "I was scared to go outside. I would go to Kmart, and kids would say, 'Mom, a black person.' Now people know me by name. I have friends, and have gotten to know the community."

"Everyone knows Mahado," said Jane Lillegard, training coordinator for Workforce Resource. "She has interpreted for everyone from schools to medical facilities to businesses."

Since she came to Barron, Qassim has worked at Jennie-O Turkey Store, the meat processing plant that is the largest employer here, with an estimated 2,000 workers. She continues to work there as a translator because "I like the people I work with."

The plant has drawn newcomers to the area, starting with Hispanics who often had been migrant farm laborers, a pattern found in many towns with meat processing plants.

"Many packing companies relocated to rural outposts in the Midwest and Southeast during the past two decades as they moved to a more mechanized approach to processing beef, pork and poultry," the Los Angeles Times reported this winter. "Production was speeded up by dividing the work once performed by skilled butchers into many tasks that could be done by unskilled laborers. The jobs increasingly have been taken by immigrants from Mexico, Central America and Asia."

Schlosser was very critical of practices he found at meatpacking plants in other states, but admired the workers he met, describing them as "hard-working, religious people willing to risk injury and endure pain for the benefit of their families."

Lillegard said the plant here will start workers at $8.50 to $9 per hour, without experience. She pointed out that meatpacking has traditionally been an industry where hard-working immigrants can establish themselves in the U.S. "It's a place where people can get started, earning good money," she said of Jennie-O Turkey Store. Two decades after they started working there, "Latinos are working in all kinds of places."

Most of the Somalis here had previously lived in the Twin Cities, which has developed one of the nation's largest Somali communities. According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, "estimates of their numbers (in the Twin Cities) vary wildly. Public school enrollment and welfare numbers suggest a range of 10,000 to 30,000. Most of the Somali refugees interviewed (by the newspaper) originally settled in other U.S. cities, then moved to Minnesota because of the spreading word that Minnesota was a safe place, had job opportunities, a welcoming attitude and enough Somalis to create a community."

But Lillegard noted that "for a lot of them it's hard to get a job in the Cities, because they don't speak the language, don't have a car. In Barron, they can walk. The cost of living is lower, there's not as much crime, and it's easier to learn to drive for the first time."

The Barron school system now has a full-time teacher of English as a second language. Lillegard said the system has 17 Somali-speaking high school students, many of whom are also working. There are only three Somali speakers in middle school and two in elementary school.

Lillegard explained that most of the Somalis here are adults. "Their families may still be in Africa, or in other states," she noted.

The International Center has launched several programs to ease transition for newcomers to Barron, including working with the court system to train interpreters in Spanish and Somali, and interceding with landlords. Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College offers courses in English as a second language there and in Rice Lake, and plans to offer computer training at the center for those without English skills.

"People are trying to be proactive," Lillegard said. "Mahado is doing a lot of presentations on Somali culture to groups."

Tricia Duhaime, of the diocesan Office of Social Justice, said she expects the International Center to seek a grant from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. "We want to support their efforts to grow and be part of the community," Duhaime said.

Fr. Gerard Willger, pastor of St. Joseph Church, said parishioners serve on the Diversity Council board, "and I've encouraged them."

Willger noted that "there have been some conflicts in the Barron area," including a run-in at Barron High School. He also said some longtime residents feel uncomfortable when Somalis congregate in parks.

"There have been struggles within the community, this is a time of transition and challenge," Willger said, stressing that "if we see each person as a human person, we will be more accepting of one another."

Lillegard remarked that "there's always a potential for problems if people don't understand each other. I'm sure there's a fair amount of discomfort. There have been run-ins, but nothing major. That's what the center is trying to avoid.

"In the long run," Lillegard concluded, "communities benefit from having people come in with different backgrounds and experiences."

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© Superior Catholic Herald, 2002