Christopher Rufo
In Charleroi, Pennsylvania, the local population grapples with a surge of Haitian migrants.
Charleroi, Pennsylvania, is a deeply troubled place. The former steel town, built along a stretch of the Monongahela River, south of Pittsburgh, has experienced the typical Rust Belt rise and fall. The industrial economy, which had turned it into something resembling a company town, hollowed out after the Second World War. Some residents fled; others succumbed to vices. The steel mills disappeared. Two drug-abuse treatment centers have since opened their doors.
The town’s population had steadily declined since the middle of the twentieth century, with the most recent Census reporting slightly more than 4,000 residents. Then, suddenly, things changed. Local officials estimate that approximately 2,000 predominantly Haitian migrants have moved in. The town’s Belgium Club and Slovak Club are mostly quiet nowadays, while the Haitians and other recent immigrants have quickly established their presence, even dominance, in a dilapidated corridor downtown.
This change—the replacement of the old ethnics with the new ethnics—is an archetypal American story. And, as in the past, it has caused anxieties and, at times, conflict.
The municipal government has felt the strain. The town, already struggling with high rates of poverty and unemployment, has been forced to assimilate thousands of new arrivals. The schools now crowd with new Haitian pupils, and have had to hire translators and English teachers. Some of the old pipes downtown have started releasing the smell of sewage. And, according to a town councilman, there is a growing sense of trepidation about the alarming number of car crashes, with some vehicles reportedly slamming into buildings.
Among the city’s old guard, frustrations are starting to boil over. Instead of being used to revitalize these communities, these residents argue, resources get redirected to the new arrivals, who undercut wages, drive rents up, and, so far, have failed to assimilate. Worst of all, these residents say, they had no choice—there was never a vote on the question of migration; it simply materialized.
Former president Donald Trump, echoing the sentiments of some of Charleroi’s native citizens, has cast the change in a sinister light. As he told the crowd at a recent rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, “it takes centuries to build the unique character of each state. . . . But reckless migration policy can change it quickly and permanently.” Progressives, as expected, countered with the usual arguments, claiming that Trump was stoking fear, inciting nativist resentment, and even putting the Haitian migrants in danger.
Neither side, however, seems to have grappled with the mechanics of Charleroi’s abrupt transformation. How did thousands of Haitians end up in a tiny borough in Western Pennsylvania? What are they doing there? And cui bono—who benefits?
The answers to these questions have ramifications not only for Charleroi, but for the general trajectory of mass migration under the Biden administration, which has allowed more than 7 million migrants to enter the United States, either illegally, or, as with some 309,000 Haitians, under ad hoc asylum rules.
The basic pattern in Charleroi has been replicated in thousands of cities and towns across America: the federal government has opened the borders to all comers; a web of publicly funded NGOs has facilitated the flow of migrants within the country; local industries have welcomed the arrival of cheap, pliant labor. And, under these enormous pressures, places like Charleroi often revert to an older form: that of the company town, in which an open conspiracy of government, charity, and industry reshapes the society to its advantage—whether the citizens want it or not.
The best way to understand the migrant crisis is to follow the flow of people, money, and power—in other words, to trace the supply chain of human migration. In Charleroi, we have mapped the web of institutions that have facilitated the flow of migrants from Port-au-Prince. Some of these institutions are public and, as such, must make their records available; others, to avoid scrutiny, keep a low profile.
The initial, and most powerful, institution is the federal government. Over the past four years, Customs and Border Patrol has reported hundreds of thousands of encounters with Haitian nationals. In addition, the White House has admitted 210,000 Haitians through its controversial Humanitarian Parole Program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV), which it paused in early August and has since relaunched. The program is presented as a “lawful pathway,” but critics, such as vice presidential candidate J. D. Vance, have called it an “abuse of asylum laws” and warned of its destabilizing effects on communities across the country.
The next link in the web is the network of publicly funded NGOs that provide migrants with resources to assist in travel, housing, income, and work. These groups are called “national resettlement agencies,” and serve as the key middleman in the flow of migration. The scale of this effort is astounding. These agencies are affiliated with more than 340 local offices nationwide and have received some $5.5 billion in new awards since 2021. And, because they are technically non-governmental institutions, they are not required to disclose detailed information about their operations.
In Charleroi, one of the most active resettlement agencies is Jewish Family and Community Services Pittsburgh. According to a September Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report, JFCS staff have been traveling to Charleroi weekly for the past year and a half to resettle many of the migrants. The organization has offered to help migrants sign up for welfare programs, including SNAP, Medicaid, and direct financial assistance. While JFCS Pittsburgh offers “employment services“ to migrants, it denies any involvement with the employer and staffing agencies that were the focus of our investigation.
And yet, business is brisk. In 2023, JFCS Pittsburgh reported $12.5 million in revenue, of which $6.15 million came directly from government grants. Much of the remaining funding came from other nonprofits that also get federal funds, such as a $2.8 million grant from its parent organization, HIAS. And JFCS’s executives enjoy generous salaries: the CEO earned $215,590, the CFO $148,601, and the COO $125,218—all subsidized by the taxpayer.
What is next in the chain? Business. In Charleroi, the Haitians are, above all, a new supply of inexpensive labor. A network of staffing agencies and private companies has recruited the migrants to the city’s factories and assembly lines. While some recruitment happens through word-of-mouth, many staffing agencies partner with local nonprofits that specialize in refugee resettlement to find immigrants who need work.
At the center of this system in Charleroi is Fourth Street Foods, a frozen-food supplier with approximately 1,000 employees, most of whom work on the assembly line. In an exclusive interview, Chris Scott, the CEO and COO of Fourth Street Barbeque (the legal name of the firm that does business as Fourth Street Foods) explained that his company, like many factory businesses, has long relied on immigrant labor, which, he estimates, makes up about 70 percent of its workforce. The firm employs many temporary workers, and, with the arrival of the Haitians, has found a new group of laborers willing to work long days in an industrial freezer, starting at about $12 an hour.
Many of these workers are not directly employed by Fourth Street Foods. Instead, according to Scott, they are hired through staffing agencies, which pay workers about $12 an hour for entry-level food-processing roles and bill Fourth Street Foods over $16 per hour to cover their costs, including transportation and overhead. (The average wage for an entry-level food processor in Washington County was $16.42 per hour in 2023.)
According to a Haitian migrant who worked at Fourth Street and a review of video footage, three staffing agencies—Wellington Staffing Agency, Celebes Staffing Services, and Advantage Staffing Agency—are key conduits for labor in the city. None have websites, advertise their services, or appear in job listings. According to Scott, Fourth Street Foods relies on agencies to staff its contract workforce, but he declined to specify which agencies, citing nondisclosure agreements.
The final link is housing. And here, too, Fourth Street Foods has an organized interest. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Scott said, Fourth Street Foods was “scrambling” to find additional workers. The owner of the company, David Barbe, stepped in, acquiring and renovating a “significant number of homes” to provide housing for his workforce. A property search for David Barbe and his other business, DB Rentals LLC, shows records of more than 50 properties, many of which are concentrated on the same streets.
After the initial purchases, Barbe required some of the existing residents to vacate to make room for newcomers. A single father, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was forced to leave his home after it was sold to DB Rentals LLC in 2021. “[W]e had to move out [on] very short notice after five years of living there and being great tenants,” he explained. Afterward, a neighbor informed him that a dozen people of Asian descent had been crammed into the two-bedroom home. They were “getting picked up and dropped off in vans.”
“My kids were super upset because that was the house they grew up in since they were little,” the man said. “It was just all a huge nightmare.”
In recent years, a debate has raged about “replacement migration,” which some left-wing critics have dubbed a racist conspiracy theory. But in Charleroi, “replacement” is a plain reality. While the demographic statistics have shifted dramatically in recent years, replacement happens in more prosaic ways, too: a resident moves away. Another arrives. The keys to a rental apartment change hands.
In one sense, this is unremarkable. Since the beginning, America has been the land of migration, replacement, and change. The original Belgian settlers of Charleroi were replaced by the later-arriving Slavic populations, who are now, in turn, being replaced by men and women from Port-au-Prince. The economy changed along the same lines. The steel plants shut down years ago. The glass factory, the last remaining symbol of the Belgian glass-makers, might suspend operations soon. The largest employer now produces frozen meals.
In another sense, however, legitimate criticisms can be made of what is happening in Charleroi. First, the benefits of mass migration seem to accrue to the organized interests, while citizens and taxpayers absorb the costs. No doubt, the situation is advantageous to David Barbe of Fourth Street Foods, who can pay $16 an hour to the agencies that employ his contract labor force, then recapture some of those wages in rent—just like the company towns from a century ago.
But for the old residents of Charleroi, who cherish their distinct heritage and fear that their quality of life is being compromised, it’s mostly downside. The evictions, the undercut wages, the car crashes, the cramped quarters, the unfamiliar culture: these are not trivialities, nor are they racist conspiracy theories. They are the signs of a disconcerting reality: Charleroi is a dying town that could not revitalize itself on its own, which made it the perfect target for “revitalization” by elite powers—the federal government, the NGOs, and their local satraps.
The key question in Charleroi is the fundamental question of politics: Who decides? The citizens of the United States, and of Charleroi, have been assured since birth that they are the ultimate sovereign. The government, they were told, must earn the consent of the governed. But the people of Charleroi were never asked if they wanted to submit their borough to an experiment in mass migration. Others chose for them—and slandered them when they objected.
The decisive factor, which many on the institutional Left would rather conceal, is one of power. Martha’s Vineyard, when faced with a single planeload of migrants, can evict them in a flash. But Charleroi—the broken man of the Rust Belt—cannot. This is the reality of replacement: the strong do what they can, and the weak endure what they must.
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In a job posting for a security escort position at the U.S. Consulate General in Lagos, for example, applicants are told that “[t]he U.S. Mission in Nigeria supports Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA),” and that “[a]ll genders are welcome to apply.” Some two-thirds of the job summary is dedicated to DEI, as if U.S. security officers should be more concerned with gender pronouns than terrorist attacks.
The U.S. Department of State is charged with advancing American interests abroad through complex and delicate diplomatic missions, as well as maintaining the safety of those missions and the Americans serving them.
The institution’s lodestar should be the national interest, but under President Joe Biden, the State Department has demoted that critical objective in favor of a new global agenda: to spread radical gender theory to foreign nations.
The shift began at the top. President Biden and, in turn, the apparatus beneath him led America’s leftward charge on the world stage. Upon taking office in 2021, the administration used the previous year’s racial unrest as a pretext to issue a slew of executive orders and memoranda entrenching left-wing ideologies in all levels of the federal government, under the guise of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI.
As part of this initiative, the White House required each federal agency to submit detailed DEI progress reports regularly, appoint a chief diversity officer, and create “Agency Equity Teams,” whose leaders were tasked with “delivering equitable outcomes.” These requirements contributed to what the president called “an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda.”
The gender component of this agenda spread to the State Department through the president’s “Memorandum on Advancing the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Persons Around the World.” Published in February 2021, this memorandum directed State and other agencies to monitor closely and report on the “LGBTQI+” policies of our allies, to “broaden the number of countries willing to support and defend” the radical Left’s understanding of gender—for example, by funding pro-transgender “civil society advocates” in order to shift public opinion in those countries—and to tie in the principles of gender theory to America’s foreign-aid programs.
If necessary, the memo maintained, agencies should use “the full range of diplomatic and assistance tools” to ensure foreign governments’ compliance with this agenda, including “financial sanctions, visa restrictions, and other actions.”
The policy’s most visible expression was Secretary Antony Blinken’s 2021 authorization allowing American embassies to fly rainbow flags. This symbolic gesture was just the tip of the iceberg, however. Under Blinken’s leadership, State has woven critical theory into the fabric of America’s foreign policy. “I want to be crystal clear about this,” the secretary said upon appointing the agency’s first chief diversity officer in June 2021. “Promoting diversity and inclusion is the job of every single member of this department. It’s mission critical.”
To that end, Blinken spearheaded the adoption of an internal diversity plan that commits the department to hiring “a workforce that reflects the diversity of the United States . . . and implementing a comprehensive recruitment plan that targets underrepresented groups”; conducting a sophisticated “DEIA Climate Survey”; and, bizarrely, producing a “crowdsourced digital storytelling campaign” called #FacingDiplomacy, a self-flagellating chronicle of “the historic impact of discrimination in the Department.”
Material incentives ensure compliance with this official ideology: the “advancement of DEIA” is now considered “as an element for all employees as part of their job performance criteria, career advancement opportunities, and senior performance pay.”
The heart of the department’s effort, though, is not to increase adherence at home but to spread it abroad. State recruited a cadre of gender activists to entrench these theories into foreign policy.
One key figure is gender activist Jessica Stern, whom the president appointed as special envoy to advance the human rights of LGBTI+ persons. She was previously the executive director of OutRight Action International, helped to found the United Nations LGBTI Core Group, and was responsible for the first UN resolution to include the term “gender identity.”
Another key figure is Zakiya Carr Johnson, who stepped in as the department’s chief diversity officer earlier this year. Like Stern, Johnson also has a history of activism, having spent six years at a left-wing NGO in Brazil, as well as at other “inclusive” organizations, such as Atlantic Fellows, ODARA Solutions, and her own start-up, Black Women Disrupt.
These women are not figureheads. They aggressively press gender theory into foreign policy. Johnson, in particular, regularly promotes the State Department’s ideological agenda on social media, spotlighting her exchange with the Brazilian high representative for gender issues, meeting with the Chilean ambassador to applaud his “#FeministForeignPolicy,” or speaking at the Colombian embassy about “diversity” and “inclusion.”
The diversity agenda has been translated to the day-to-day operations at embassies around the world. Some embassies are even screening security positions for adherence to DEI. In a job posting for a security escort position at the U.S. Consulate General in Lagos, for example, applicants are told that “[t]he U.S. Mission in Nigeria supports Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA),” and that “[a]ll genders are welcome to apply.” Some two-thirds of the job summary is dedicated to DEI, as if U.S. security officers should be more concerned with gender pronouns than terrorist attacks.
Inside the embassies, gender has become a near obsession. State’s latest annual LGBTQI+ progress report lists countless present and future efforts across all foreign agencies to make the world safe for queer theory, from “Pride Events at Headquarters” to “Gender Equity in the Mexican Workplace.” Among these is a department-wide partnership with the Global Equality Fund, a public-private entity “dedicated to advancing and defending the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons around the world” that has directed funds to 116 “grassroots” LGBTQI+ organizations in 73 countries.
State itself asserts that U.S. diplomatic efforts should reflect progressive ideology. In a special report on “DEIA Promotion” by the department’s advisory commission on public diplomacy, State evaluates “how U.S. missions adapt existing programs to DEIA principles,” which are to inform “all aspects of the Department’s policymaking as well as efforts to address barriers to opportunity for individuals historically and currently burdened by inequality and systemic discrimination.” Realpolitik, in other words, should give way to critical theory.
These efforts raise a critical question: Does gender theory advance the U.S.’s national interests? The answer appears to be no. But that is hardly an obstacle for State’s gender activists. They want to hang the rainbow flag throughout the benighted parts of the world. This mission trumps all others.
Christopher Rufo is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This article was originally published in City Journal
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“I’m Not Mad at Americans”
Under the Biden administration, an unprecedented flow of 7 million migrants has entered the United States, through licit and illicit channels, including more than 1 million parolees. Several hundred thousand of those have come from Haiti.
Those Haitians have entered through a designated route: the parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans (CHNV). The initiative, which the Biden administration enacted in October 2022 and recently declined to renew, allows individuals from those four countries to enter the United States for up to two years; for Cubans and Haitians, it also lets them collect welfare benefits, such as food stamps, cash assistance, and employment services. What began as a two-year parole program could, for many, turn into a longer stay, as the Department of Homeland Security announced in June that it would extend Haitians’ eligibility for Temporary Protected Status to February 2026.
The federal government runs a multibillion-dollar apparatus of government agencies, NGOs, and other institutions to settle the current wave of Haitian migrants in cities and towns across the country—including Charleroi, Pennsylvania, a small Rust Belt borough that has watched its demographics transform.
We spoke with many of Charleroi’s old residents and with some of the recent Haitian arrivals, including a man who asked to be identified only as Rene, out of fear of reprisal. Rene, 28, arrived in Charleroi at the beginning of this year. He was a truck driver in Haiti and has worked to integrate into American life.
But he also raised concerns: about exploitation, corruption, and the refusal of many Haitians to assimilate. Rene’s story reveals the fraught dynamics of migration and provides a vivid illustration of how the system works.
The following interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Christopher Rufo for Substack: Can you walk us through the process of migrating from Haiti to the United States?
Rene: It’s called the Humanitarian Parole Program. My sponsor applied for me. My sponsor is my cousin’s husband. My cousin has been in the U.S. for about two years. He was living there legally before me. He went to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website and filed an application. He had to prove his income and an address to host me. The U.S. government knows everything about him through his Social Security number. He has a clean record. When I got approved, they sent me travel authorization documents in a PDF. It is pretty easy. It takes time to get approved; for some people, it can take a year. It took me six months to get approved.
But some people manage to leave without going through the airport. They cross the border of the Dominican Republic and from there, they leave the country. Once they’re in the Dominican Republic, I’m not sure how they leave, but I think some people do manage to come to the U.S. that way.
Christopher Rufo for Substack: And what happens when you arrive? How did you get to Charleroi?
Rene: I paid for my own plane ticket to New York City, and my cousin picked me up. I came to the country basically with nothing. When I got here four days later, I went to the DHS office to get government assistance, like food stamps.
I had to wait two and a half months to get my work authorization card, which is required if you’re an immigrant and want to work in the U.S. I had to pay $410 for it, but they raised the price and now you have to pay $470.
Once I got my work authorization card, I started working at Fourth Street Foods in Charleroi, through Celebes Staffing Services. A friend who had worked for them before told them I was looking for a job. Because I speak a little bit of English and I know computers, I wasn’t an assembly line worker. I was doing a job called “paperwork” and then I had to work on the computer. And then after that, I was a supervisor. I wasn’t working directly with the company. My paychecks came from Celebes.
Christopher Rufo for Substack: What was it like working at the facility?
Rene: There’s two Fourth Street Foods facilities, a north plant and a south plant, both in Charleroi. I worked at the north plant, which had around 250 to 280 employees—not including the Americans in the office. I’m talking about the assembly line workers.
I think room one had 60 people and they were all from different agencies. I can be working for Celebes and the person next to me could be working for Wellington Staffing Agency. So you never know how many people are from which agency. It is not only Haitians working there; there are also Asians and Africans. But the Americans, they work in the offices.
Assembly line workers only got $10 an hour, but they recently raised it to $12. In my jobs, I started at $10, then $11.75, and finally $16 an hour when I became a supervisor. I worked there for about 2 months.
We worked in the freezer. If you’ve been to Charleroi, you will see a lot of people in high temperatures wearing coats. Fourth Street Foods does not provide coats. We had to buy our own.
It’s not an easy job, working in the cold. If you cannot work the hardest you can, you’ll get fired so they can get better workers. Fourth Street Foods is not for the weak. You can’t work, you go home. Pretty simple and easy to get fired.
Fourth Street Foods needs these immigrants because they accept any treatment. The company knows that it can use them because they don’t know their rights. It’s sad.
Christopher Rufo for Substack: What was your experience with the staffing company?
Rene: The staffing agency took money from our wages. If the real rate was $16 an hour, they might take $4, saying it was for transportation and to run the agency. And they give you the rest of the money.
It would be much better to just apply directly to the company, but they make a business out of it. I don’t think $10 or $12 an hour is enough. It would be more if we worked directly with the company, but these agencies are somehow making some money out of their employees and it seems like it benefits the company, too.
It wasn’t enough money. I was just doing it temporarily. I didn’t want to just sit at home and do nothing. I was going to do it until I found something better.
Fourth Street Foods should stop using agencies and let people work directly with the company. No one provided a contract or any documents, which is why I wanted to quit so badly. I needed proof of employment or income to get a loan to buy a car and they couldn’t give it to me.
The agency business is suspicious. Some agencies are trying to compete with others to get more workers so they can get more money. From my second week working for them, I knew something wasn’t right. They call you an employee, but they can’t give you proof of employment. That’s not fair. I’ve even heard scary stories, like people getting shot in this business.
Christopher Rufo for Substack: You must be referring to the murder of Boyke Budiarachman two years ago, who was allegedly killed by a hitman hired by his competitor, Keven Van Lam. The motive for the crime appears to be business rivalry, following Budiarachman’s sale of his staffing company that supplied workers to Fourth Street Foods.
Rene: Yes, I had heard that but didn’t know the names. Fourth Street used to hire workers under the table, but the authorities cracked down on that. Now you need a work card and Social Security number. I tried to work for them before I had my work card, but they wouldn’t let me (Fourth Street Foods denies having hired workers under-the-table.).
Christopher Rufo for Substack: And after you left Fourth Street Foods, where did you go?
Rene: I work at an Amazon warehouse now, making $19.25 an hour. When I started earning more, I informed the public benefit office and stopped receiving government assistance.
I’m in a three-bedroom apartment with five people, including my cousin. Rent is around $800 to $850, not including utilities.
It was harsh in Haiti. There’s a lot of crazy stuff that happened. The gang stuff. A lot of madness. I had never thought about leaving Haiti, but since all the crazy stuff started happening there, I changed my mind. As a truck driver, I was making good money by Haitian standards, but the insecurity made me leave. It’s much better here.
I’m only here for two years. I don’t know if the program I’m in will get renewed. But for now, I know I’m here for two years.
Christopher Rufo for Substack: Some people in Charleroi have expressed concerns that many recent Haitian migrants are not interested in assimilating. What is your perspective on that?
Rene: Some Haitians are acting bad or weird. Some Haitians that came here were from the countryside. There is a lot of things about living in the city they’re not too familiar with. It’s a big cultural change.
I can say that I’m a little educated but most of the other Haitians aren’t, especially the ones that came from Chile or Brazil and had to walk through 13 or 14 South American countries to come here. They’re all “country” and don’t trust white people because they say white people are racist and don’t like them. They don’t want to talk to white people. I’ve seen people work at Fourth Street for two years and still not speak English or understand the traffic signs and traffic laws. Many Haitians fail their driver’s test here. Some of them blame racism for why they keep failing their driving test. So they go to Florida to get their driver’s license. Maybe it’s easier to get in Florida than here.
I’m not mad at Americans. I’m frustrated with myself, my people, my government, and our politicians.
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