GRAND ISLAND, Neb. - Like many workers at the meatpacking plant here, Raul A. Garcia, a Mexican-American, has watched with some discomfort as hundreds of Somali immigrants have moved to town in the past couple of years, many of them to fill jobs once held by Latino workers taken away in immigration raids.Ain't diversity grand? I feel so enriched.Mr. Garcia has been particularly troubled by the Somalis' demand that they be allowed special breaks for prayers that are obligatory for devout Muslims. The breaks, he said, would inconvenience everyone else.
"The Latino is very humble," said Mr. Garcia, 73, who has worked at the plant, owned by JBS U.S.A. Inc., [Send them mail]since 1994. "But they are arrogant," he said of the Somali workers. "They act like the United States owes them." [Somali Influx Unsettles Latino Meatpackers, By Kirk Semple, New York Times, October 15, 2008