![]() ![]() “The only barrier is the language, but they are picking it up very quick.” “The big factories … they have a problem with the drugs, so like every time they fire someone, they replace him with the refugee, to be honest,” said Bassam Dabbah, who works at a US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants field office in Erie. ![]() Which is why refugees like Alzamel, despite some language barriers, are quickly snapping up jobs. “We’re seeing positive tests anywhere from marijuana through amphetamines, right all the way through crystal meth and heroin.” “Twenty percent of the people are failing,” said Cary Quigley, the company’s president. ![]() And the problem is even worse at places like Sterling Technologies. More than 9% of employees tested positive for one or more drugs in oral fluid screenings in 2015, the most recent year for which data was available. With roughly half of US employers screening for drugs, failed tests have real consequences for the economy. The increase has been fueled in part by rural America’s heroin epidemic and the legalization of recreational marijuana in states like Colorado. The percentage of American workers testing positive for illegal drugs has climbed steadily over the last three years to its highest level in a decade, according to Quest Diagnostics, which performed more than 10 million employment drug screenings last year. “We don’t even know what they look like or how to use them.”īut for an increasing number of American-born workers, passing drug tests is a big problem. “In our lives, we don’t have drugs,” said Alzamel, who was hired within three months after arriving in Pennsylvania. And they’ve all passed the company’s standard drug test. The refugees at Sterling come from all over the world, from Syria to Sudan, Chad to Bhutan. ![]()
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