Where Companies Welcome Refugees, the More, the Better

From The New York Times, reporter Patricia Cohen, April 1, 2018. For the whole story go here.

SILVER SPRING, Md. — With forecasters expecting the unemployment rate to sink further this week, the chorus of complaints about worker shortages — from custodians to computer prodigies — has swelled.

Yet companies that turn to labor recruiters like Ray Wiley tend to have an especially tough time: The jobs they offer are in out-of-way places; the work is low-paid and disagreeable; and native-born Americans, particularly white men, are generally not interested.

“We have employers call us all the time,” said Mr. Wiley, who primarily works with meat-processing plants and lumber mills that have trouble retaining workers even when the jobless rate is well above its historically low level of 4.1 percent.

And then there's this:

“I was dragging my feet,” Ms. Johnson said. But after coming up for a day to check the area and the classrooms her two children would attend in Woodstock, Va., she was convinced. “I loved the school just by looking at it,” she said. Most important, she saw no signs of the drugs, violence and bullying that plagued the White Oak neighborhood of Silver Spring, where they were temporarily doubled up with family. “And there’s no roaches and mice or rats.”

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