We have a local group, Vision Together 2025, trying to raise the population of the Greater Johnstown area by trolling for refugees. Except you can’t call them refugees, but rather “legally vetted immigrants.”
In the way that the guy (or girl) collecting your garbage might be called a sanitation engineer but is still a garbage collector, so it is that the Vision people are big on semantics and euphemisms to make things sound less harsh.
Let’s concentrate on the term “vetted.” It makes one think of Supreme Court justices, high level political candidates and Cabinet appointees, among others, all being vetted to make sure they have what it takes.
When done right, it’s a thorough examination of a person’s character and qualifications for a job. But who will be vetting these “legally vetted immigrants?”
That is not a detail you will find on the organization’s Facebook page. Myopia problems for Vision Together?
What you will find are assurances that all will be legal residents of the United States. Of late the topic of a possible inflow of immigrants here has turned to discussions of displaced Afghans.
A quick internet search showed that Afghan refugees (I will use the word) are unhappy in general with slow progress in awarding them citizenship, but hold out hopes for speedier legislative solutions.
A Green Card is a temporary measure, but a holder of a Green Card is not a citizen.
Also, it was interesting to read that some Republican lawmakers on a national level have doubts about how good the vetting process will be for Afghan refugees.
Recall that the Biden regime made a mess out of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan and do you really trust these same boobs to guarantee no undesirables got on planes or other transportation headed to our country?
Early in the discussion about immigrants in general being recruited to settle in Johnstown, terms “skilled workers” and “highly skilled workers” were tossed around.
It was implied and sometimes stated outright that they would readily find employment here and not be a further boost to our growing industry of life spent on the government dole.
Again, what does that “skilled” or “highly skilled” verbiage mean? A person with a talent for making mud bricks could be said to be skilled, but does that translate to landing a job here?
Statistics vary, but the best literacy rate I could find quoted for Afghanistan is 43 percent, meaning that underwhelming percentage of people 15 years of age and older can read or write – in their language. The global literacy rate is reported as a touch over 86 percent.
Are we to presume that all of our refugees will come from the 43 percent able to read and write, albeit not necessarily in English?
As is customary with such issues, anyone who would like more information, who would like to see specifics cited and not just the vague generalities, is labeled as a racist, bigot or otherwise undesirable person not fit to breathe. Homophobia is not yet being tossed around to tar critics, perhaps because homosexuality is widely disapproved of by followers of Islam.
Last, the refugee recruiters are trying to inflict guilt on those not eagerly going along with it all, noting this is a region that once was a hotbed for immigrants.
That is true. But those immigrants, as some have noted, came for plentiful jobs in steel mills or mines, neither of which are anywhere near as widely available now. And those jobs back in the day were not described as skilled labor.
Also, the immigrants who settled here long ago, bought into the melting pot philosophy. They might speak the language of their home country at their residences, but they understood that their children had to speak and be taught in English and had to know English for the workplace.
This is not the common philosophy these days in America, particularly among many refugees/immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries. This helps explain why the local Sears store, before it was closed, had “Caballero” signs above the men’s dressing rooms.
It explains, too, why virtually every time you need telephone assistance, an automated voice has you press 1 or some other number for English and yet another number for Spanish.
Can press 3 for Dari and press 4 for Pashto (the two official languages of Afghanistan) be in our future?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Sam Ross Jr's site 