Pilgrim’s Pride to Hire Myanmar Refugees

NACOGDOCHES — An East Texas company preparing to employ more than 200 refugees. But there are still a lot of unanswered questions about how it’s going to work. Pilgrim’s Pride in Nacogdoches has 4,000 employees, but it still needs about 400 more. According to Pilgrim’s, after advertising for two years, the company still couldn’t fill the empty slots. The refugees being hired are from Burma, also known as Myanmar, the second poorest country in the world. Currently workers and their families are living in Houston, getting ready for the Nacogdoches transition.

Work at Pilgrim’s Pride means a paycheck, plus benefits. Company officials say the workers will have the same responsibilities as others in the U.S., including taxes and rent. City officials say the children will go to public schools and families will live in a closed nursing home. There are no Burmese translators right now for the company, But Pilgrim’s is confident it will find one. As for the children, most don’t have birth certificates, making it difficult to determine in exactly which grade in school they’ll be enrolled.