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Arguably the town's character had already been degraded though. It's a Rust Belt town, that lost 30% of its population and had one of the worst drops in median income in the US (almost 30%) and a crime rate that was increasing, along with drug problems. It's like so many Rust belt towns hollowed out and dying, you either let it die (bad for the people there) or you inject fresh blood (arguably also bad for the people there). There is no non-destructive outcome at this point most likely. It's just picking your poison.
Notably the local government believes it was a network of local companies that coordinated to attract the influx as they wanted to take advantage of very cheap real estate but there were not enough workers in the city.
"Springfield officials were in the dark about the possibility of a large immigrant relocation to the area, Mayor Rob Rue said at the recent Springfield City Commission meeting, but a “network of businesses knew what was coming.”
Investigation by the city’s Immigrant Accountability Response Team formed in October of 2023 has revealed the possibility “there were companies that knew they were going to make an effort to bring in individuals who were crossing the border based on federal regulations that they could do that,” Rue said. "
People left the rust belt because there were no jobs in the first place. What were these companies desperate for cheap labor? We keep hearing about them in the abstract, but what actual companies had 20,000 positions to fill?
Again, how many of these Haitians are actually working? They get more "cash assistance" than someone working for $10/hr anyway!
There's a pro open borders story being spun in every article by being very flexible with the truth.
No idea, but it is what the mayor seems to think. Who is hardly happy about the situation, so it seems unlikely he is too pro-open borders.
Until or unless the city publishes the report of the investigation, we just have the fairly vague public statements. But they presumably have access to more information than we do.
Its possible property is cheap given the town shrank so much, so companies were able to buy up commercially useful space cheaply and just need a greater workforce. But i wouldn't have that on its own would get you 10,000 plus specifically Haitians moving in. Maybe the companies are owned by a Haitian or something. Its unclear.
Voodoo R Us is hiring I heard
Am I missing a joke here?
well yeah, Haiti is known for voodoo and zombies, so a company owned by a Haitian being voodoo related and tangentially named after a toys store sort of fits into the joke. I thought the joke was pretty obvious :(
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Just be very careful not to damage the merchandise!
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I still don't really get it. Was it like
<businesses> government! we need a bunch of cheap workers to run our factories in Springfield. Maybe we can put together an incentive program or something to attract people back to the town? Fix issues with high cost of housing? New initiatives on reducing crime?
<government guy> mmmm, ... how many do you need again?
<businesses> oh, like 20,000
* government guy looks at clipboard of refugee camp populations in Texas
<government guy> they'll be there on Monday
No idea, but the government may not have been involved at all. Other than to put them on the refugee scheme in the first place. They aren't living in camps or anything as far as it appears.
We just don't have enough info to know how these busineses did whatever it is the mayor is accusing them of. Some kind of contract agency? Reaching out to pro immigrant organizations? Direct approaches to Haitian community groups? The Feds as you suggest? No idea.
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As an aside, the federal government possessing the ability to drop tens of thousands of migrants on your town seems like a surprisingly powerful instrument of coercion. Remembering the Washington Bridge Fort Lee lane closure scandal, I do wonder if this is over something as petty as the mayor calling the wrong person a cocksucker on a phone call, or whatever.
Dropping a literal biblical plague of retards on your political opponents should be classified as a war crime. We need a new Hague.
Citation 1: Average Hattian IQ is 67
Citation 2: An IQ below 70 is considered retarded
I'm not joking, I'm not being snide. That is the literal, object level thing that was done to a once functional community. How is that not a crime against humanity?
No, you're not joking or being snide, you're just being as inflammatory as you can so you can bitch at us about how you can't even call an entire country "retards." Posting "But technically they are retards!" links is not much better than your ChatGPT stunt.
Let's suppose your links are accurate and the average Haitian does indeed have an IQ that low. Do you think if every time people referred to Haitians they called them "retards" that would invite reasonable discussion? You could have expressed your point without calling every Haitian a "literal Biblical plague of retards" but that wouldn't have been so satisfyingly vicious, would it?
Be honest, you knew you were going to get modded for this, and I'm sure you have your whine about it already locked and loaded.
Lately you are about 50/50 AAQCs and venom-spewing shit-takes, and I recently told someone else, posting AAQCs gives you a little slack, but your long record of being incapable of controlling yourself and devoting much of your considerable cleverness to seeing how nasty a one-liner you can get off is eroding that slack. Unlike some of our shit-tier posters, you are capable of doing better, more often, and I wish you would.
Yes, i did know id get modded for saying a true thing and citing my sources like you tell me to. It says more about you than it does me.
Edit: You know what, this is getting under my skin. You always tell me if I'm going to say something inflammatory, I need to have citations. I include citations, and you lump actually having the citations you told me to have along with my other "stunts". You told me to include citations. Don't use that against me when you mod me.
Furthermore, you act like they aren't even real. Like they don't even count, without any basis. Just "Nope, you don't get to use citations for that." We doing hate facts now here?
Then you go on to act like I've spent the last day calling Haitians retards all over. "if every time people referred to Haitians they called them 'retards'". Well it's a good thing I only did it once then, isn't it? And came with citations to show the majority of Haitians meet the clinical definition of retard.
You are capable of doing better, more often, and I wish you would.
You cited Bing searches; those aren't sources of information but notoriously-unreliable aggregators. I'm pretty sure I rated your earlier comment either "Bad" or "Deserves a warning" on the volunteer page, and part of it was because the only motive I could come up with for citing Bing searches (given that a Bing search is not going to convince anybody) was that you were hoping people would take the existence of the link as evidence without actually checking what the link was.
If you'd dug a bit deeper to provide actual sources, I'd have been much more positively disposed toward your post and I imagine Amadan would too.
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Most Asian, Eastern European, and Latin American countries would consider it an act of war if you dropped 20,000 Haitians into one of their towns (and rightfully so), yet the US government is voluntarily and enthusiastically subjecting its own people to it.
they just need bodies buying and consuming shit to boost GDP, I'm doubtful they care about anything else while living inside their gated communities.
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Time out. Why do you keep calling them "Hattians"? You know the country is called "Haiti", right? And that actual Hattians lived in Anatolia? Is this some new meme?
Autocorrect strikes again.
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I've been saying the same thing for years, but Anime Con keeps happening and nobody puts the organizers on trial for crimes against humanity.
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Did the Federal government have anything to do with it? (Other than the refugee scheme itself of course). With free movement inside the US, anyone can drop migrants on you, right? See the various governors bussing/flying migrants to New York or whatever. And in this case assuming businesses organized it, all you need is money or the offer of employment.
Oh, fair, it could be state governments or even heads of non-profits acting out of spite. It certainly seems at least coordinated. Why would it be overwhelmingly one ethnic group moving there if it was simply an artifact of free movement?
As noted the mayor seems to believe, after investigation it was a group of businesses that coordinated somehow, in order to bring workers to the city. It seems unlikely (though not impossible) they would be doing it out of spite as their businesses are presumably trying to make a profit there.
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