Tag Archives: moving to Williston North Dakota

Refugees Coming To Western North Dakota Whether You Wanted Them Or Not

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Sometimes, because of my anger about how I and other out of state workers were treated in western North Dakota, I have thought about schemes to get even with North Dakotans.  All I had to do was point out to Democrats and Liberals in Minneapolis, New York City, and Washington D.C., that a tremendous amount of new housing just got completed in Williston, Watford City, and Dickinson, and that 60% of this new housing was sitting vacant.  What a good place to bring thousands of Syrian refugees, don’t you think?  There are thousands of job openings in western North Dakota, right?  That’s what the Chambers of Commerce and North Dakota Job Services keep saying all the time.

I know how loving, kind, and welcoming the North Dakotans were to me and the other out of state workers, so I know that they would love to have thousands of Muslims from the Middle East moving in.  Thousands of hard core militant Muslim refugees straight from the Middle East brought to your neighborhoods and the companies where you work.

I didn’t contact anyone about Syrian refugees and the tremendous amount of new unoccupied housing in Williston, Watford City, and Dickinson, because I knew that some Liberal organization probably would think that it was a good place to send Syrian refugees.  Can you imagine what a disaster it would be?  The hostile, hateful, mean, scowling Catholics having to cohabitate with thousands of hostile, hateful, stubborn, militant Muslims that have no intention of assimilating?

Too late!  Somebody else thought of it!  It is going to happen!  A few weeks ago when I was half-way paying attention, I heard that Lutheran Social Services in Minnesota was trying to bring in thousands of Syrian refugees.  Tonight, I was looking at the internet website Indeed.com, and I saw a job advertisement for “Relocation Consultant” in Watford City.  At first, the job advertisement tries to say that the “Relocation Consultant” will be helping corporate employees relocate to Watford City.  But when the job advertisement started talking about having to drive the “corporate employee” around in your car and help them get an apartment, open a bank account, and get a social security card, I knew that they are talking about refugees.  Any non-developmentally disabled working adult in the United States can obtain an apartment, open a bank account, and they sure as hell already have a social security card.

The Rumor, “Everyone Was Making $100,000 Per Year In North Dakota”

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In 2011, 2012, and 2013, I read newspaper articles, magazine articles, heard it on the radio, and heard it on television news, that workers from all over the United States were moving to North Dakota and were making  $100,000 per year.  Getting rich.  Making so much money, that they didn’t know what to do with it.

I have lived in western North Dakota for a little over four years now, met many local people and workers from out of state.  I have only ever met three people who came close to making $100,000 per year in the oil field.  One of them was a drill rig boss, one was a wireline operator, and one of them was a Union electrician.

The wireline operator told me, that a few months, with both working a tremendous amount of  overtime hours and bonus pay, he made $15,000 in a month.  But in several years of working as a wireline operator, he made $70,000 to $80,000 per year.

About one person in a thousand who came to North Dakota could be a wireline operator.  You had to have a commercial drivers license to drive a very large tractor truck that contained about $150,000 in special equipment.  You had to be the farthest thing from an idiot or dumb ass, in order to be able to operate and understand the equipment.  You had to be able to stay in one spot and work for maybe 24 hours straight or more, being filthy dirty, tired, and cold.  And when you were filthy, tired, and cold, you had to load, rig, and detonate explosives.  Most people are not capable of doing this job.

The Union electrician that I knew, he and his co-workers would sometimes work seven days a week, ten hours a day, for months at a time.  At $40 per hour, that’s $3,400 per week, about $14,000 per month.  After working about four months like this, a project would be over.  Not all projects were like this.  Some projects were fewer hours per week, and only a month or two in duration.  Neither my friend or his co-workers were willing or able to work ten hours per day, every day of the year.  The best year that my Union electrician friend had was $90,000.

About one worker in a thousand who came to North Dakota was a Union journeyman electrician.  About one worker in a thousand who came to North Dakota could be a wireline operator.  These two highest paid oil field workers that I ever met, almost made $100,000 per year.  So why was there this popular widespread rumor going around the world that all of the people who came to work in North Dakota were making $100,000 per year?

One reason why there was this rumor, was because the reporters and journalists from Los Angeles and New York would get sent to Williston for three days to do a story about the oil boom, they would go to a bar and start talking to everyone, ask people how much money they were making, ask them to prove it.  There were many people that could show a one week pay check for over $2,000, including me. Many people worked seven, twelve hour days in a row, I did.  But I didn’t do this every week.  Most people aren’t going to be boasting in a bar in Williston about making $600 a week, and run and get their pay check to show a reporter.  The reporters who got sent to Williston from the west coast and the east coast for three days to cover the oil boom here, seldom if ever saw how things really were in western North Dakota.

I could write several pages about all of the truck drivers that I met in western North Dakota that were broke because they had not been paid for the work that they had done.  (I will write about it in a future post.)  I could write several more pages about all of the people that I met in western North Dakota that were broke and living in their cars.  Why was there this rumor going around the United States that all of the workers who came to North Dakota were making $100,000 per year?

Here is what I think about the reporters and journalists who came to North Dakota.  They might not have wanted to be in North Dakota at all, and would have preferred to have been back home in Los Angeles or New York where they were comfortable, and it is civilized.  After getting off one of the fifty passenger jets that land in Dickinson and Williston, they were probably ready to do some reporting at the nearest bar.  In a bar, a new school, a new prison, you don’t trust the people that run up to you and start talking to you.  But the people who came up to the reporters and started giving them the story about how things were, were the people the reporters got their information from, (though these people that came up to the reporters running their mouth might have arrived in Williston a week before.)

The next day, it was probably a big relief for the reporters and journalists to find that the Chamber of Commerce was so willing to give them all kinds of information about the oil boom, and was so considerate to hook the reporter up with a local real estate developer who very graciously drove them around in his Chevy Suburban.  Can you imagine how difficult it would have been for a reporter or journalist to rent a car, drive around in the snow in an unfamiliar area, and possibly make a wrong turn into one of those truck stops or Walt-Mart with all of those wretched looking people?  Who were those wretched looking people?  They looked like they were living in their cars or something.  It was a lot easier to be driven around by some business person in their Suburban and be taken to meet their business associates who worked in real estate and development, who provided them with more than enough information to write their story over lunch at a nice restaurant.

It was in the interest of the real estate agents, property investors, real estate developers, and business owners, to get the story out, that everyone who came to work in North Dakota was making $100,000 per year.  There was already a shortage of housing, more people relocating here would mean being able to raise housing prices and rents even more.  An over abundance and surplus of workers would mean that the wage rates would go down, and business owners would make more money if they could pay lower wages.  Newspapers, magazines, radio, and television helped lure and trick people into relocating to North Dakota by spreading rumors that weren’t true.

Maggie McNeil, The Honest Courtesan, Part II

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In my previous blog post I wrote about the website “Maggie McNeil, The Honest Courtesan, frank commentary from an unretired call girl”.

Maggie McNeil is not her real name, it is a pseudonym that she chose for herself to protect her identity.  Maggie McNeil received her B.A. in English, and her M.S. in Library Science.  She became married after graduating and began working as a librarian.  When she became divorced after four years of marriage, she began working as a stripper in New Orleans to pay off debt that she was left with.  While working as a stripper, she found out that she could make more money as a prostitute, so she became a prostitute.

Maggie McNeil writes about all aspects of her life, but mostly she writes as an advocate for women’s rights, especially the right for women to earn their living by having sex for money, without being persecuted and treated like a criminal.

Maggie McNeil came from a stable family, was mentally and physically healthy, completed her education, and was not destitute.  She chose to become a prostitute, she was not forced into it.  She writes that she enjoys having sex and she likes being a prostitute.  She has always been able to manage her own affairs, she has always been in control of her life.  She was never under anyone else’s control, and she was not victimized.

Maggie McNeil writes that there are many women throughout the world that are just like her.  There are many women throughout the world that are perfectly capable of taking care of themselves, and they to chose to have sex for money as a profession.  Maggie McNeil has written more than a thousand blog posts on the subject of people working as prostitutes.  She reads research, studies, and news articles from around the world related to prostitution daily, and she posts links, summaries, and commentary.

I am writing about Maggie McNeil on my blog website, because I would like for people in North Dakota to consider some things in a rational, logical way.  When you have 20,000 male oil field workers move to Williston, North Dakota, there are not enough local women for the oil field workers to court, become engaged, and become married like you Catholics would like.  The ratio of men to women was probably 10:1.

Throughout the history of the world, in most parts of the world, there has been the situation where there were great numbers of men, and very few women.  Wars in remote locations, mining and lumber operations in remote locations, settling of frontiers and far away countries, gold rushes, oil booms.  There has been prostitution everywhere that there has been great numbers of men and few women.

Readers probably have images in their heads of dirty, filthy, diseased women working as prostitutes near battle fronts and mining towns.  The truth is, if these women working as prostitutes didn’t have access to clean lodgings, bathing facilities, and medical care, they might be dirty and diseased.  The best thing for women working as prostitutes and the men using these prostitutes, would be that these women have a clean, safe, regulated environment to work in.

What the North Dakotans should have done, was acknowledge and understand that there were going to be way more men than women due to the oil boom.  There was going to be prostitution.  When prostitution is illegal, and law enforcement and the judicial system seek to find and arrest all prostitutes, prostitution is conducted as a criminal enterprise, by criminals.  No normal woman is going to want to come to North Dakota to work as a prostitute when law enforcement is determined to arrest all prostitutes.  So instead what you get in North Dakota is, gangs, pimps, and criminals in other states get girls and women addicted to drugs, keep them high on drugs, beat them, threaten them, and drive them to North Dakota and force them to work as prostitutes.  These women are so drug addicted, so high on drugs, so coerced, that they have no control over how many men they have sex with, take no health precautions for their own safety, and take no health precautions against spreading disease to men.

If North Dakota would have allowed prostitution to be conducted as a legal business, there could have been normal, healthy, safety conscious women working in safe, clean places of business, with good access to health care, and some regulation.  Instead with North Dakotans vilifying and criminalizing prostitution, you have gangs and pimps drugging girls and women, holding them against their will, and forcing them to have sex with as many men as possible with no regard for their own health, for their customer’s health, or for spreading diseases.