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GREENSBORO — It was welcome news to recently arrived Iraqis desperate for work: job openings at $9 to $12 per hour.

But there was a catch.

The jobs are in West Virginia at a poultry plant, refugees learned during a community meeting Friday night.

Mountaire Farms’ largest processing plant in Moorefield, W.Va., a six-hour drive from Greensboro, already has recruited several Iraqis who are clients of Lutheran Family Services, a staff attorney for the agency confirmed Saturday.

Through Labor Solutions, a staffing company, Mountaire hired a group of Iraqis. They left in an interpreter’s minivan for Moorefield on Wednesday, and they are scheduled to begin work in the factory on Monday, relatives said at the meeting.

In an e-mail to the refugee committee of the Triad Islamic Center, a Lutheran Family

Services caseworker said there were still jobs available. But Iraqis who want to go would need to go through Lutheran Family Services’ employment director, who was communicating with the hiring firm.

Attempts to contact Mountaire Farms corporate offices were unsuccessful.

Refugee sponsors at Friday’s meeting at FantaCity Community Center had reservations about whether the jobs were permanent and whether there would be support services for Arabic-speaking refugees in West Virginia.

“They say there will be somebody there to translate for you, and there will be caseworkers,” Karen Mujali told a meeting of refugees. “But if not, and you’re there and we’re here, how do we help you?”

Still, Jamal Yousuf, 28, was considering the move. He and his brothers arrived in Greensboro from the war zone in August but could not find work.

They are carpenters, painters and masons by trade, but they applied to fast food restaurants, even dollar stores, while spending the winter in a cold apartment at Hunters Glen off McKnight Mill Road.

Yousuf said that last week, after Lutheran Family Services’ employment liaison arranged the contact with the company, the two younger brothers struck out for West Virginia. Yousuf is waiting to see what they report.

“I don’t want to sit on my behind,” Yousuf said. “I want to work.”

Nationwide, poultry plants increasingly have recruited immigrant labor, particularly after immigration crackdowns resulted in a portion of the undocumented Hispanic work force being deported.

Perdue Farms, 90 miles south of Greensboro in Rockingham, employs than 200 Burmese refugees, many of them commuting daily from Greensboro.

At Church World Services, a non-profit that has resettled Burmese to the area, executive director Sarah Ivory said Saturday that taking the poultry jobs is seen as a short-term sacrifice but not a long-term plan for clients.

“It’s not an ideal situation. The concern is that they’re separated from their families and not progressing in their English skills,” Ivory said.

“There’s also a concern that places that go out of their way to recruit only people with limited English skills are places that want people who tend not to complain too much,” she said.

Ivory said Mountaire Farms also had recruited for its Lumber Bridge poultry plant, which employs 2,500 in Robeson County. On a recent visit, Ivory’s employment liaison observed that the plant employed immigrants who had moved here from Texas and California.

Last summer, that plant was the scene of an ammonia leak that killed one worker and hospitalized four others.

The Lumber Bridge plant had a history of OSHA violations, according to WRAL-TV, and an inspection two months before the accident resulted in a $19,600 fine by OSHA and 15 violations, including nine listed as serious.

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com