Local Republican and Democrat politicians are taking potshots at former President Donald Trump as he focuses media attention on government-subsidized, bussed-in migrants in Charleroi, Pennsylvania.
In September, news of the migrant crisis in the small town just south of Pittsburgh made national headlines as employers fled while thousands of Liberian and Haitian migrants flooded in, materially changing the character of the small river town.
As Breitbart News reported, the region around Charleroi had been devastated years ago when two major steel mills were closed, costing thousands of residents their jobs. Now, two more large employers are signaling an end to their businesses in the small town along the Monongahela River.
Since 2020, Charleroi has been inundated with migrants, turning the town from a majority of homeowners to a majority of renters and creating a two-tiered society: One tier that speaks English and another that does not.
The flood of non-English-speaking migrants has fostered numerous car accidents, as the migrants buy cars that they drive without driver’s licenses or even an understanding of the rules of the road, police calls for crime and disturbing the peace rise, and serious pressures grow on schools that were ill-prepared for thousands of non-English-speaking migrant children.
However, establishment Republicans and officials looking for cheap labor are now siding with Democrats and trying to dissuade the media coverage with the claim that there is nothing at all amiss in Charleroi.
For instance, Charleroi’s state senator, Camera Bartoletta, a purported Republican, told the media that it “breaks her heart” that the Haitian migrants are being “disparaged.”
She went on to note that they are only in Charleroi to “legally work and pay taxes and raise their children and be part of the community.”
In another case, Kristin R. Hopkins — a Democrat and the president of the Charleroi Borough — expressed her “deep concern” over people “misrepresenting” what is going on in Charleroi and attacked Trump for mentioning the situation at one of his rallies, according to CBS News.
“Trump chose to exploit our town for political purposes, using divisive rhetoric to unfairly target the Haitian immigrant community,” Hopkins sneered.
However, the issues are many and deep. Many migrants are paid low wages, in part because their rent, medical care, education, and monthly food bills are floated by taxpayers’ aid payments both from the state and the federal government.
The subsidized migrant labor may be good for landlords and for employers who do not want to pay higher wages, but it is a double-hit for the working Americans whose taxes are funding the migrants even as those same migrants are competing for their wages and homes.
The insatiable desire for cheap labor seems to have already fostered a salacious murder case on the other side of the state in Philadelphia, where a man was arrested and charged with murdering another man from whom he bought a migrant employment agency.
Keven Van Lam is accused of killing Indonesian immigrant Boyke Budiarachman after Lam bought the migrant staffing agency. Prosecutors allege that Lam, who emigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam, later found Budiarachman engaging in deceptive and unfair business practices that made the employment agency less than profitable. So, he contracted to kill the former business partner for stealing from him, police said.
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