The small Pennsylvania town of Charleroi has been stunned by the federal government’s deliberate one-two punch of economic devastation and out-of-control migration.
Free trade has allowed major investor-owned companies to move their factories from this and other U.S. towns to Mexico, and open-door migration allowed the remaining companies to hire wage-cutting migrants that enter the U.S. from Mexico. The result is a steep loss in well-paid jobs for Americans, a dying-off of local businesses, an explosion of poverty, and the collapse of city tax revenues.
The pressures being put on Charleroi, Pennsylvania, is a case study of the massive failures of the Biden-Harris border crisis, according to a local city council member. But Charleroi is typical of hundreds of American small towns in the problems Biden and Harris have foisted upon them.
Breitbart News spoke exclusively with long-time city councilman Larry Celaschi, and he detailed the massive problems his borough is facing from job loss and the growing migrant crisis, all of which can be ascribed to Biden’s failed economic and border policies.
Celaschi told Breitbart News, “We are a small town of about 4100 in population. And we are not even a mile long.”
But despite its small size, Celaschi adds that back in the day, his Pennsylvania borough was a mercantile mecca for the area. When the steel mills were running at peak output back in the 60s and 70s and before, Charleroi served as a major shopping area for the many bedroom communities whose inhabitants worked at the steel mills, or Anchor Hocking glass factor — where Pyrex cook wear is made — and more recently food maker Quality Pasta.
But almost all of these jobs are now going away as Bidenomics continues to cause U.S. manufacturing to contract or move jobs to facilities in foreign countries, such as Mexico. Just this month, both Anchor Hocking and Quality Pasta have announced that they are looking to scale back, which will result in hundreds of jobs lost in the area.
The closures will leave the city of Charleroi with no large employers and will devastate the town, Celaschi told Breitbart News.
“So, the loss of those jobs decades ago [when the steel mills closed], we saw a trickle down effect that was devastating to Charleroi,” Celaschi lamented. “We had close to 312 stores within our borough. And now, like I said, the devastating effect from the mills, we saw a punch in the gut really, it really did devastate our town.”
Today, with the glass plant and food plant announcing their shutdowns, Celaschi says Charleroi is poised to suffer even more blight and economic devastation.
Celaschi added that town officials are working with Anchor Hocking and Quality Pasta to save their jobs, but if that fails, the loss of the big employers — both of which paid a lot of taxes and used the city-owned water and sewer system — is going to be a major blow to both the citizens and the city.
“Our tax revenue for our borough, and the budget that we have, which we have about a $3 million budget, that’s going to be impacted, you know, the school districts as well, families are going to have to relocate to find another job. So, a lot of these employees living in Charleroi, they walk to work, and now we don’t have any other jobs for them to start over again — to get the same benefits, the same salary, have the same seniority — that’s been stripped from them, and you know, the family sustaining jobs are going to be tough for them to come upon.”
While that is all bad enough, the flood of Haitian and Liberian migrants forced upon the town by failed Biden-Harris policies is making matters worse for the struggling town, Celaschi said.
“Well, you know, again, this is a macro problem. You’re losing jobs. And frankly, you know, we’re losing jobs because of the Biden-Harris administration. And Charleroi is a case study right now,” the councilman said. “It’s [Donald] Trump’s narrative of what he’s been talking about with the border, the immigration influx into different communities and cities within the country, always just a little molecule on the map. You probably never even heard of us. Maybe you did, but I’m gonna say you probably didn’t until you still saw all this blow up.”
In fact, the former president recently mentioned the troubles Charleroi is facing during a campaign stop.
Celaschi went on to explain that Charleroi has always been a predominantly white area, but a few years ago, thousands of Haitian and Liberian migrants began flooding into the area, enticed by federal policy and the jobs in the area. So many of these migrants moved in that it pushed out the town’s small population of Mexican migrants.
“The influx of immigrants started a few years ago,” Calaschi said, “and all of a sudden, you know, we have immigrants from multiple nationalities relocated into the borough of Charleroi, and the citizens here, naturally, one’s got to think, ‘how did they get here? Why are they here? What effects are they going to have now on our community? They don’t speak our language. They’re not accustomed to our culture.’”
Now, when residents go into the town’s Dollar General store, they no longer hear English spoken. “You know, they got dumped off in our community, and here they don’t speak any English. You go into Dollar General, and what once was filled with the English language is now filled with a foreign language that we don’t understand. They don’t understand us,” he said.
But before any of the individual migrants even had a chance to make an impact on Charleroi, their influx as a whole caused a major change to the town, the councilman said.
“Our community used to be approximately 70% homeownership, 30% landlord, tenant, and just within a matter of the past five years, that percentage has flip flopped, and honestly, I would be safe to say that we are at 70% landlord tenant and 30% homeownership,” he said.
This has occurred because longtime residents have up and moved away and rental corporations have spent millions buying up homes to convert them into rentals to get the government subsidized money that follows the migrants.
The “flip flop” in home ownership worries Calaschi because if the town does lose some of its last remaining large employers, even the migrants won’t have jobs and they may also leave. That could leave a large portion of homes sitting empty in the near future, and that leads to decaying properties and blight — a problem the city has been dealing with for a generation already.
To try and mitigate the blight, Charleroi has already spent millions in city funds and grant money to tear down dilapidated homes and businesses that have sat empty for years. And Calaschi worries that the most recent loss of jobs and the influx of poor — often government subsidized — migrants will cause the town to deteriorate into a ghetto-like condition.
The spending on migrants is also a serious drain on Charleroi, especially with the schools.
“The impact of the immigrants has affected our school district tremendously,” Calaschi explained, “and so from the borough standpoint, it’s impacted our budget to where and the school districts. We weren’t prepared for any of this. We did not get any help from the federal government or the state government.”
“From the trickle down effect of the Biden-Harris administration, allowing the immigrants to be crossing the border — maybe some legally, a lot illegally — and we’ve had some of that in the community as well, too … our budget is suffering,” the councilman said. “I placed on our agenda just last week that we need to reconstruct all of our traffic signs in our entire town because of the amount of automobile accidents that are taking place from the immigrants. And, you know, Creole being the most dominant second language, we now need to have the English language and Creole language on our stop signs.”
“But guess who pays for it? We do, right? We’re not a very big community, and we don’t have a large budget. That’s an unexpected expense, sure, and we don’t have the revenue coming in,” Calaschi added.
With the looming loss of even more jobs, Calaschi added that the town’s revenue will be devastated and that will have serious impact on the schools.
“And now look at the loss of jobs, you know? I mean, that’s going to devastate not only the borough, it is going to devastate the school district. It’s going to devastate our city-owned water and sewage company,” he exclaimed.
“The school district, it’s going to affect them because families are leaving the borough and then being replaced by the Haitian community, or Liberian, or the immigrants in general, to where they’ve had to hire interpreters. They’ve had to pay for resources that they weren’t prepared for and restructure the way the learning process is in the Charleroi school district,” Calaschi continued.
“All that has an impact on the American student, to where they have to learn how to coexist, right? And that’s a tough thing for the teachers and the school district. And I tell you what, I give them big kudos for the job that they do up there, and we’re not seeing a dime coming in. They have cried for monies from the state and federal government, and they’re not receiving it,” he said.
Calaschi also blames all of this on the Biden-Harris regime.
“You know when, you’re coming in and you’re changing the mirror image of a town, and who’s changing it? Well, the government’s changing it, and it’s sure not our local government,” Calaschi insisted. “It’s not us. It’s coming from the top, Biden-Harris, and then it goes down to the state. It went back to Governor [Tom] Wolf, and now it’s Governor [Josh] Shapiro, and I’m not going to target whether you’re Republican or Democrat. I don’t care, you’re the government. You should have had a plan for every community that this was going to affect, and they didn’t have a plan. And so you dump it on us. Come on, we’re just small communities. We don’t have the resources.”
If they could have provided the resources and the knowledge and the team to come in to first educate us before this was going to happen, it would have been great,” he said. “Well, they didn’t do any of that, and that was just totally unfair. And it’s trying to ride a bicycle for the first time, and that’s how I would probably compare it. Your parents put you on a bicycle, and you’re trying to balance yourself and trying to pedal and trying to make the bicycle go forward. And it’s a disaster in the beginning.”
Recently, U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick (R, PA) blasted the Biden-Harris regime for the failed border policy so badly impacting Charleroi.
“Weak immigration policy is hurting Pennsylvania communities. Take the small town of Charleroi, which has grown by 2,000% due to an influx in migrants. Roads are dangerous, schools are overwhelmed and police are struggling to keep up with the surge. We need strong leadership to fix our immigration crisis and protect Pennsylvania,” said Dave McCormick.
Finally, the crime has also risen in Charleroi, a town that had already been forced to disband its own police force and replace it with a regional cooperative whose 12 officers are tasked with responding to several other local communities along with Charleroi.
On top of the petty crimes — often having to do with marijuana trafficking — car accidents have also skyrocketed as migrants somehow get hold of cars and drive without either licenses or insurance, or even knowing the rules of the road.
All these pressures are sending the borough of Charleroi into a tail spin of alarm and depression, Calaschi said. And the number of migrants — if they stay — will further result in material changes to the area. Indeed, the time is not very far off when migrants will be voting in the town’s political representatives.
“I guarantee you that right now, if they were able to and they were registered to vote, they could take over. We have seven members of Borough Council and a mayor, I will tell you that it’s a majority. Would probably be the immigrants if they were to hold an election in Charleroi today, they would hold the majority of the seats, and possibly the mayor,” he said.
But, in the end, the town simply has no choice but to “move forward,” Calaschi said.
“We got to move forward. This is the hand that has been dealt to the borough of Charleroi. I just want to see the federal and state government step up to the plate and come here and deliver a truckload of funding for us, OK, to be able to improve our community and improve the lives of the immigrants that are now here,” he concluded.
But the cost has already been so high for the town, said Calaschi, who comes from a long line of city officials and whose father was the chief of police back in the 60s.
“I hear this statement from a lot of families. Larry, your dad would be rolling over in his grave if he saw what happened to the borough. And then we had a former congressman in our town that lived here, Frank Mascara. And I hear Frank Mascara would be rolling over in his grave if he could see what happened to his Charleroi,” Calaschi said. “They are gone. We are here, and we have to deal with it.”
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