Twin Falls a “welcoming city” for refugees? (lease, crime rate)

[rob043055]

Today I saw a news story that went like this:

"In the same week that three refugee boys pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 5-year-old girl in Twin Falls, Idaho, the mayor and council floated the idea of passing a resolution declaring Twin Falls a “welcoming city” for illegals and refugees."

Is this true? Or is this Fake News? Just wondering,

[banjomike]

I don't know if the story is true, but Twin Falls has a long reputation of being a refugee-friendly town. There's a relocation center there that helps refugees learn what they need to know for life here that has existed for many years.

Though living at the center is not a permanent relocation, once finished there, many refugees do choose to stay in the Twin Falls area, while others move to different places in the U.S.

So it would be no surprise that the city council would do something like this as an affirmation of Twin's center. The refugees have been very good for Twin's economy over all the years it has been in operation, and was one of the reasons why Chobani yogurt decided to build it's largest facility in the country there.

The Twin Falls area is a major national dairy producer, which was the other main reason, but the owner and founder of Cobani was once a refugee himself, so Twin held an advantage there that other competitors for the factory didn't have. The abundance of clean water from the Snake River aquifer was a 3rd reason. The dairy industry in general employs a lot of the refugees, as many were farmers in the countries they came from.

Illegals? Not the same situation. Idaho has a lot of them for sure; we have had Mexican farm labor who have moved freely between Idaho and Mexico for many decades, who come here to work our crops and then go back home in the winter. I'm 72, and my father employed some of them as far back as I can remember.

But for a very long time, work visas weren't necessary as a rule. The same guys would come up year after year, to work for the same farmers. Very often, they would call here to learn when to plan on coming, or to say they wouldn't be coming this year, or whatever. Some of the migrants are multi-generational- their grandfather worked for a farm owner's grandfather, and so did his kids and grandkids as the years went by.
Some ended up staying here in the north, some not. Some got their citizenship papers and became US citizens, some not.

It was a very stable situation, as the potato growers here need a lot of workers when the spuds need harvesting and planting, but not at other times of the year. But over the past decade or more, as anti-migrant feelings have grown, this has largely ended, as crossing the border isn't as quick or easy.
So it has forced the Mexicans into difficult decisions. Either they just stay as illegals, apply for working visas and hope for the best, or go back and try to get a visa in Mexico quickly enough to come back in time for the next year's season. If the visa process bogs down in either direction, they're out of a job and the farmers don't have the labor they need.

Farmers help their workers as much as they can to get visas, but the more restrictive the visas become, the longer it takes to get them, and nature doesn't wait for paperwork. If the spuds must be planted, the farmers need the workers to plant them. Same thing with the harvest.
And no farmer is willing to let crops that are worth hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars go unplanted or unharvested. So, if necessary, a farmer will cast a blind eye as to whether the guy who has worked faithfully for him for the last 20 years has a green card or not. Many of the migrants know the farm and everything about it as well as the guy who owns it.

This is especially true as farming has become more industrial. When I was a kid, 60 years ago, there were still a lot of 80 acre family farms here growing spuds, but not now.

Those fields were either sold or leased to larger operators years ago, as the economies of size have taken over the entire agricultural industry. A typical potato farm is now around 320 acres or more. Many are much, much larger than that in total, with well over 1,000 acres owned or leased by a big grower, although the land is not always adjoining.

In fact, it's an advantage when all the land is not in one piece, as elevation, drainage, slope, and location all plays a large part in when a field goes into cultivation. Land that has a southern exposure and lies lower than other land, for example, can be planted weeks earlier than land that is high and has a northern exposure.

The farm workers start on the earliest land when planting begins, and move to the other lands as planting progresses. During the growing season, workers will stay on one place to irrigate and till, and then during harvest will begin moving from place to place again on the farm during harvest. A big farmer will often have a handful of managers who oversee different sections of the farm as their sole responsibility, and some of those managers are Mexican migrants. Many have become citizens, but not all. Many hold long-term visas, but not all.

That's how farming is now in America, all over the nation, but especially out here in the west. Not in just potatoes, but in all crops. It's a highly industrialized, specialized industry now, and it requires expert laborers, often in large numbers, to grow, process and ship our food to market.

One reason why so many Mexicans have come north is because they grew up on farms themselves, and arrive with all the skills needed to grow a good crop. It's no big deal for them to learn the upscale mechanization, as Mexicans have a lot of mechanical skills, and most importantly, they like the work very much.

Anglos by and large don't know how to farm anymore, so their learning curve is much steeper. And all beginners make many mistakes. Farming is an occupation where a mistake can be very, very costly.

An example of a simple mistake that's a good example is a beginner accidentally filling a tractor up out of the wrong fuel barrel. A diesel engine will blow up when filled with gasoline, and that's not a hard mistake to make when two big fuel tanks are identical. If a tractor goes down, the potential cost is massive.

A farm kid knows which fuel is the right one by smelling the fuel's odor spilled on the ground before a nozzle ever goes into the tractor's tank. A beginner doesn't know the difference in the smell.

[Syringaloid]

Originally Posted by rob043055

Today I saw a news story that went like this:

"In the same week that three refugee boys pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 5-year-old girl in Twin Falls, Idaho, the mayor and council floated the idea of passing a resolution declaring Twin Falls a “welcoming city” for illegals and refugees."

Is this true? Or is this Fake News? Just wondering,

I would think most of the crime in Twin Falls is created by legal Caucasians and Hispanics. What those boys did is inexcusable and should not be an avenue to discriminate against the rest of the refugees.

[pnwguy2]

It is a stretch to compare one incident with a general policy. In fact, that only makes the issue more muddled. Perhaps a better overview would be how many refugees have managed to assimilate into the community without any problems.

[Cida]

FYI, I posted this in the state forum. Should I have posted it here?

//www.city-data.com/forum/idaho...daho-jobs.html

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by Cida

FYI, I posted this in the state forum. Should I have posted it here?

//www.city-data.com/forum/idaho...daho-jobs.html

Ask Volo. Maybe there's no harm in a duplicate post, as it applies to the whole state, too.

[banjomike]

Originally Posted by pnwguy2

It is a stretch to compare one incident with a general policy. In fact, that only makes the issue more muddled. Perhaps a better overview would be how many refugees have managed to assimilate into the community without any problems.

Yes.
And some statistics on the general crime rate in Twin would also be much more useful as well.

Crimes like the one mentioned are always so shocking that they garner huge attention, but they really do not indicate much of anything, as they're statistically rare, no matter where one lives.

Larger cities will have more, smaller fewer, but the odds are remote that it will ever happen to any family, especially in comparison to theft, burglary, and crimes like that.

Any reasonable person should be more concerned about what is most likely to happen, not some crime so unlikely.

Rape is pretty common. But rape by refugees is not. At all.

If I was a newcomer, I wouldn't allow feelings of prejudice to color my thoughts on this crime. I would worry about the most common suspects, not the least common.

Since Twin Falls has been taking in refugees for a long time, I'm sure they have statistics that apply to the refugees alone. If rape is a real concern, then it would certainly be worth the trouble to ask the city for them.

[juneaubound]

Originally Posted by rob043055

Today I saw a news story that went like this:

"In the same week that three refugee boys pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 5-year-old girl in Twin Falls, Idaho, the mayor and council floated the idea of passing a resolution declaring Twin Falls a “welcoming city” for illegals and refugees."

Is this true? Or is this Fake News? Just wondering,

The story is true.

Cities choosing 'welcoming' over 'sanctuary' for immigrants