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View Full Version : Years after immigration raid, Iowa town feels poorer and less stable.



Ponce
7th December 2011, 10:56 AM
The danm town even had Menorahs hanging from the light poles.....the town was being taking over by the Zionist "Jews".....and the kids walking around in their yarmulkes? I have never seen that here, and hope that I never will.
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Years after immigration raid, Iowa town feels poorer and less stable.
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.By Liz Goodwin

POSTVILLE, Iowa—A group of Jewish boys in yarmulkes and winter coats walked past the "Taste of Mexico" restaurant on Lawler Street last week on their way home from school. Minutes later, a Somali man wearing a keffiyeh scarf around his neck passed by, perhaps on his way to the town's makeshift mosque on Main Street.

This improbably diverse rural town of about 2,000 people in northeastern Iowa suffered a near-fatal shock more than three years ago when a federal immigration raid scooped up 20 percent of its population in a single day. An ultra-Orthodox Lubavitcher Jewish family from Brooklyn bought the town's defunct meatpacking plant in 1987 and attracted workers from Israel, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. The plant became the largest producer of kosher beef in the world. When the plant was raided one spring morning in May 2008, most of the workers on shift were Guatemalan and Mexican, and undocumented. Many workers later said they had been physically or sexually abused at the plant, and at least 57 minors were illegally employed there, some as young as 13.

Six months later, the plant shut down abruptly. Sholom Rubashkin, the chief executive, was convicted of fraud and sent to prison. The national and local news media documented the near-demise of the town that followed, as businesses were shuttered overnight and hundreds of homes abandoned. The town shrank to nearly half its former size, as many of the illegal immigrants who were not netted in the raid left out of fear or because they couldn't find a job.


http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/years-immigration-raid-iowa-town-feels-poorer-less-133035414.html

chad
7th December 2011, 11:06 AM
i've been to postville about 30 times. i don't know how they could feel "less stable." it was never anything but this plant, about 1 block of stores, and a casey's general store gas station. oh, and there is a school, 2 churches and a synagogue. it's hardly even a town. so the feeling "less stable." less stable than what? it hardly even exists.

here's is a pic of it. that's the whole thing:

http://www.minnpost.com/_asset/gw3qjb/mp_main_wide/PostvilleStreet452.jpg

JDRock
7th December 2011, 11:09 AM
story by liz GOODWIN......hava naghila!

palani
7th December 2011, 11:20 AM
Sholom Rubashkin, the chief executive, was convicted of fraud and sent to prison.

Note to self: Ok to hire underage and undocumented aliens. Just don't mess with the bank or you WILL spend time in jail.

chad
7th December 2011, 11:36 AM
i have family in marshalltown, iowa. at least 30% of the town is illegal. the whole town knows about it. my sister had to pull my niece from public primary because they went to teaching EVERY CLASS in bilingual. my niece was literally sitting around looking at the wall for half of every class because they were reteaching it in spanish for the other 8 or 9 kids. the whole north side of town used to be a quaint ww2 era neighborhood. totally safe, clean, nice place. now it's a hood, total crime, meth dealers, everything is run down. it's sad.

Joe King
7th December 2011, 11:50 AM
Should have also locked up the Mayor and the entire city council for harboring criminals, no way in hell they didn't know what was going on, I bet you could do an audit of past city employees and find many were illegals.

I'm tired of our so called elected officials picking and choosing what laws they will enforce and which ones they will ignoreThat's a symptom of having too many laws that attempt to cover too many things.
ie it's cost prohibitive to enforce all laws all the time, so selective enforcement of them becomes the logical result.