Driven from land in Zimbabwe, couple in their 50s seize opportunity in N.C.
AYDEN - In Zimbabwe, Wally Herbst would’ve left this kind of hard and dirty work to his hired hands. But in North Carolina, stripped of his vast African ranch and starting over at 58, his only hands are his own. So he bends to his filthy task, the removal of a bloated, dead pig that weighs more than 200 pounds, its stink thickening in the humidity of the July afternoon. He ties a simple knot with a piece of rope — a “bit of African technology,” he says — and pulls a loop tight around the pig’s hind legs. Using a 4-foot board as a ramp, Herbst yanks the carcass into the bed of a pickup.
In Africa, Herbst worked a 13,000-acre farm, part of which had been in his family for generations. He grew paprika that was exported to Spain, ran a successful safari business, raised cattle and employed more than 150 people during the busy harvest seasons.
That life ended in 2002 when men armed with automatic weapons evicted the Herbst family from its farm. In a land redistribution campaign overseen by President Robert Mugabe, political loyalists seized thousands of white-owned farms in Zimbabwe and turned them over to impoverished blacks.
The seizures wrecked the country’s agricultural infrastructure, leading to extensive food shortages and stratospheric inflation. The United Nations estimates that 1 million people have lost their livelihoods and homes as a result of the redistribution.
Herbst and his wife, Helen, are among them.
Theirs is a refugee story turned upside down. They were not poor political dissidents, but successful farmers whose skin color and economic achievement made them vulnerable in a violent, hostile environment.
At an age when most couples are spoiling their grandchildren and mapping retirement plans, the Herbsts packed four suitcases for a chance at the American dream. In Africa, the couple lived among giraffes and elephants, and hunters from overseas paid big money for the right to hunt sable antelope on their land.
In Ayden, south of Greenville, their first home was a one-bedroom apartment across the street from a Piggly Wiggly.
Nearly broke when they arrived a year ago, the Herbsts need to save money so they can eventually retire. Wally secured a visa and a job with a large hog operation near Greenville. It’s grunt work, but he does not complain.
As if to prove this, he finishes his gruesome chore, pulling another pig that has succumbed to natural causes into the back of the pickup. It will be taken to a compost bin.
Wally smiles.
“It keeps me young.”
Dispossessed
Wally is built like a middle linebacker, with a strong-willed attitude to match. Helen, 53, has the red hair and fair complexion of her Irish ancestors, and she is the chatty one. In an African accent that exudes its British ancestry, she shares their story:
Wally and Helen, both born in Africa, were married in 1977 and have three children. They lived and worked in rural Matabeleland, a region in southwestern Zimbabwe.
Wally employed about 30 permanent workers, who lived in traditional African huts on the property. Their homestead was a three-bedroom, two-bath house that, until 15 years ago, depended on generators for electricity.
Chaos and violence has defined Mugabe’s 28-year presidential reign. In the 1980s, he dispatched troops to attack a rival tribe in a campaign that became known as the Matabeleland atrocities.
It was during this time that Wally found a mass grave on the farm. The police removed about 20 skulls, including those of children.
By 1997, Mugabe announced his plan to seize white farms and redistribute the land. Five years later, Helen was home eating lunch when an employee rushed to tell her that police were parked at the gate and wanted to speak with her.
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(NewsUSA) - The latest “flavor of the week” in federal immigration enforcement bills is the Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act, which relies on the electronic employment verification system (EEVS), which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) calls “E-Verify.”
EEVS sounds easy. Employees fill out an I-9 form proving that they are authorized to work in the U.S. The employer enters this information into a computer, which searches the Social Security Administration (SSA) and DHS databases. If the information provided matches the database, the employee is eligible to work. If not, the employee has a short time to fix the glitch with SSA; if they do not, they must be terminated.
The SAVE Act would require the country’s 7.4 million employers to participate in a mandatory EEVS program. Currently, 55,000 employers use E-Verify - fewer than 1 percent of employers. Adding over 7 million employers to the E-Verify program would cause widespread chaos:
U.S. citizens would be adversely affected: Employees who receive a non-confirmation from E-Verify are often fully eligible to work. The error may be due to a name change, adjustment of immigration status or a data-entry error. SSA estimates that 17.8 million of its records contain such discrepancies - an error rate of 4.1 percent.
E-Verify spurs discrimination: Contrary to state policy, 47 percent of employers using E-Verify entered their employees’ information before the employee’s first day of work rather than after hiring, as required by law.
These employers, fearful of fines and hassles involved with non-confirmation notices, racially profile their prospective employees to begin with and avoid hiring those who appear foreign-born, or refuse to hire those who do not “pass” the E-Verify test. Others encourage those who receive non-confirmations to not contest them; still others take advantage of the non-confirmation status to require their workers to work longer hours under poorer conditions.
It is clear that E-Verify is not ready for prime time. Neither the DHS nor SSA databases have reached the level of accuracy required for a mandatory electronic employment verification system to function fairly and efficiently. Rather than enacting harsh new “enforcement only” measures like the SAVE Act, Congress should get back to the hard work of enacting smart, workable immigration reform that serves America’s interests by protecting employees and employers alike.
For more information, visit The American Immigration Lawyers Association at www.aila.org.
(ARA) - Fast-food companies have known for decades that it isn’t hard to find good workers. It’s hard to keep good workers from leaving. The national employee turnover rate in the quick service restaurant industry rose to 130 percent last year, according to the National Restaurant Association’s Restaurant Industry Operations Report.
With the industry expected to create an additional 2 million positions over the next 10 years, companies are looking for new ways to recruit, train and retain dedicated employees.
McDonald’s, the world’s largest restaurant chain, says it wants to spotlight career opportunities available within its company and, in turn, drive out the dead-end job perception of its restaurants.
“In 1975, I began as a swing manager in Georgia,” says Karen King, east division president of McDonald’s USA, who appeared in a TV commercial as part of a campaign to emphasize career opportunities at the fast-food chain. “Now I oversee 5,200 restaurants between Maine and Florida. I truly believe that with hard work, anyone at McDonald’s has the chance to excel.”
The campaign that features King is designed to showcase career growth at McDonald’s. In addition to the advertisements, it features a Web site, www.mcdonald.com/careers, which details King’s career path as well as success stories from other employees across the country.
Professor Jerry M. Newman, author of “My Secret Life on the McJob,” said in a recent news release that the best way to change the negative image of the “McJob” is to positively redefine the perception of the fast-food worker.
“A fast-food worker is able to handle a variety of demands and produce under pressure, a veritable Big Mac of reliability, integrity and workplace maturity,” says Newman, a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the University at Buffalo School of Management.
Fast-food employees today receive flexible schedules, rising wages and health insurance. Career training and even college-accredited courses are now available. According to King, the McDonald’s campaign is intended to help current and potential employees realize and seek out those benefits and rewards.
“One of the things that is important about this campaign is I want employees to have that same sense of pride that I do and to understand they have the opportunities that I have,” King adds.
The latest employment figures show that 30 percent of McDonald’s franchise owners, 50 percent of its corporate staff, and 70 percent of restaurant managers started as crew. Additionally, 40 percent of McDonald’s top management started behind the counter, including CEO Jim Skinner.
Courtesy of ARAcontent
Immigrant debate feeds anger, fear
Miguel Munoz was standing in a drug store parking lot having a conversation in Spanish when a pickup pulled up beside him. The driver shouted curses, shook his fist and called Munoz an “illegal alien.”
“He said, ‘When you come to my country, you need to speak English,’ ” said Munoz, a Durham lawyer who immigrated legally from Mexico 17 years ago.
In that parking lot, Munoz said, he realized for the first time that some people see him as an invader in the place he calls home.
As furor over immigration rises across the nation, many Hispanics say they are increasingly the targets of hostility in a state where they once felt welcome.
Some commentators and politicians concerned about illegal immigration routinely associate illegal immigrants with violence, disease and dependence on public resources. Immigrants and their advocates say the prevalence of such ideas has changed the way many Americans view Hispanic immigrants — legal or illegal.
Discrimination complaints are increasing, and some Hispanic nonprofits are struggling to maintain their funding as major benefactors become more cautious about Hispanic causes. Hispanics say they feel that even public officials and law enforcement officers are inclined to see them in a negative light or treat them poorly.
This month, a state Highway Patrol trooper resigned after he was accused of abducting Hispanic women and making sexual advances toward them. One woman said he threatened her husband with immigration arrest. In May, it was revealed that a federal, Raleigh-based Drug Enforcement Administration agent humiliated a Hispanic suspect, who was a legal immigrant, by forcing him to pose for a picture wearing a sombrero and holding a Mexican flag.
Munoz, the lawyer, said he got no response from police when he reported being harassed in the parking lot. He said an officer told him the man’s actions were not a crime.
“I was shaking that night,” said Munoz, 41. “I have children who look Hispanic. I was afraid for what can happen to them.”
Assumptions change
Ivan Parra, an immigrant from Colombia who heads the N.C. Latino Coalition in Durham, said he has watched stereotypes of Hispanics take a bad turn.
“A few years ago, there was the general idea that these folks are hardworking, they contribute to the economy, they go to church,” Parra said.
Now, he said, the stereotype is of people who skirt taxes or belong to gangs. Parra said he does not deny that some immigrants commit crimes or cheat the system, but he said the actions of a few are beginning to color the perception of an entire group.
Marco Guerra, 48, a Raleigh auto mechanic who immigrated legally from Chile, said he was eating at a restaurant bar a few weeks ago when a man sat next to him.
“Right up front, he asked me, ‘Are you a wetback?’ ” Guerra said.
A few weeks earlier, Guerra said, he walked into a public restroom. A young boy who was inside screamed, “Daddy, it’s a Mexican, it’s a Mexican,” Guerra said.
“People look at me, and they just assume that I’m illegal,” said Guerra, a U.S. citizen who left Chile in 1981.
Guerra said he has always suspected that people made assumptions about him because of his brown skin and accented English. Now, he said, people are giving voice to their assumptions.
Leonor Clavijo, a spokesperson for El Centro Hispano in Durham, said discrimination complaints used to be rare. Now, her group gets about one a week. She said she hears stories of disputes between neighbors — about the placement of trash cans or other mundane issues — that escalate into anti-immigrant slurs.
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