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Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin

(107,111 posts)
Fri Aug 16, 2019, 07:46 PM Aug 2019

Why it's immigrants who pack your meat

The immigration raid last week at seven poultry plants in rural Mississippi was a perfect symbol of the Trump administration’s racism, lies, hypocrisy, and contempt for the poor. It was also a case study in how an industry with a long history of defying the law has managed to shift the blame and punishment onto workers.

-snip-

As The Washington Post and others have noted, immigrants to the United States are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans. Far from being a drain on the American economy, immigrants have become an essential component of it. According to a recent study by the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University, “The industrial produce and animal production and processing systems in the U.S. would collapse without the immigrant and migratory workforce.” The handful of multinational companies that dominate our food system are hardly being forced to employ immigrant workers. These firms have for many years embraced the opportunity to exploit them for profit.

More than a century ago, when Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, the workers in American meatpacking plants were recent immigrants, largely from eastern Europe. Sinclair eloquently depicted the routine mistreatment of these poor workers. They were employed for long hours at low wages, exposed to dangerous working conditions, sexually abused, injured on the job, and fired after getting hurt. In the novel, the slaughterhouses of Chicago serve as a metaphor for the ruthless greed of America in the age of the robber barons, of a society ruled by the law of the jungle. During the following decades, the lives of meatpacking workers greatly improved, thanks to the growing strength of labor unions. And by the early 1970s, a job at a meatpacking plant offered stable employment, high wages, good benefits, and the promise of a middle-class life.

When I visited meatpacking communities in Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, and Washington State almost 20 years ago, those gains had been lost. As I described in my book Fast Food Nation, published in 2001, the largest companies in the beef industry had recruited immigrants in Mexico, brought them to the meatpacking communities of the American West and Midwest, and used them during the Ronald Reagan era to break unions. Wages were soon cut by as much as 50 percent. Line speeds were increased, government oversight was reduced, and injured workers were once again forced to remain on the job or get fired. In The Chain, published in 2014, Ted Genoways wrote about similar changes in the pork industry. And in 2016’s Scratching Out a Living, Angela Stuesse wrote about the transformation of the poultry industry in the rural South, with a prescient focus on the abuse of Latino workers in Mississippi.

All three books reached the same conclusion: What Trump has described as an immigrant “invasion” was actually a corporate recruitment drive for poor, vulnerable, undocumented, often desperate workers.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/opinion-why-its-immigrants-who-pack-your-meat/ar-AAFTm2H?li=BBnbfcN

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Why it's immigrants who pack your meat (Original Post) Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin Aug 2019 OP
It's nothing new - it's been happening for many years. Never heard of one demosincebirth Aug 2019 #1
These employers need to be fined hard... VarryOn Aug 2019 #2
I keep pointing out the obvious. Igel Aug 2019 #3
I wonder how seriously sellers of fake IDs, stolen SSNs, etc... VarryOn Aug 2019 #4
"Illegal" immigration is matter of demand not supply. Thomas Hurt Aug 2019 #5
 

VarryOn

(2,343 posts)
2. These employers need to be fined hard...
Fri Aug 16, 2019, 08:48 PM
Aug 2019

And someone needs to be on the hook by the Feds for insuring their employees are here legally.

In public companies, finance and accounting upper management have to certify quarterly their financials are correct and in accordance with the law. Why cant HR folks and the CEO be personally liable if they have illegals on the payroll? If one is found on the payroll, someone in management has legal exposure.

I go through antitrust training periodically. If I were to engage in antitrust behavior, my ass could go to jail (I'm not in upper management) and my company potentially in serious trouble.

Feds need to get serious with theseemployers big time.

Igel

(35,197 posts)
3. I keep pointing out the obvious.
Fri Aug 16, 2019, 09:20 PM
Aug 2019

If you don't have records, or if there aren't adequate measures for ensuring that the records are accurate, then you can be cited. As a corporation.

If you're a small business, it can be hard to make sure that the documentation presented is accurate. I've been there, done that. (And, no, you can't say, "Gee, Miguel, you have an accent. I'll do a thorough investigation of your documentation based on your ethnicity and apparent national origin, while George over there, well, based on his ethnicity and how he talks, I trust him.&quot I looked at drivers' licenses, state-issued IDs, and I had no idea if any except my own were actually valid. And under federal guidance, if I preferentially checked some IDs based on ethnicity/race, well, that's discrimination, no matter how unlikely it was that where I was working there'd be a large number of Canadian illegal workers. In other words, the skew in the immigrant population didn't justify a skew in my suspicions, no matter how realistic and reasonable they would have been. Because legal reasoning.

If it's a large company, then there's specialization that can and should occur, with procedures for verifying IDs. But that's "procedures" that are checked, with the penalties being corporate. It's also fairly easy to nail those responsible for doing the record checking/keeping. "No, Becky, Texas drivers' licenses aren't on lined notebook paper in orange crayon saying 'daiber lisens fram Tehas'." "Really? How was I supposed to know?"

Showing that individuals at a higher level are responsible for that in any direct way requires more evidence of personal involvement. "Neglect" or "gee, I didn't know" isn't always evidence of personal involvement. Sometimes neglect is just neglect, and it's not the truth that matters but what's provable with due process.

Note that one of the companies a couple of days after the raids fired what appeared to be a lot of illegal workers. And there was widespread outrage. On the other hand, that's what's needed to show corporate repentance and intent to comply. You can consider that the Feds almost certainly have enough to seriously mess with the company, if not individuals at a non-peon level.

It's pretty hard for Misha over there who immigrated illegally and has fake ID to say, "Oh, gee, I didn't know I crossed the border and my ID is fake," on the other hand, so that's where the law enforcement easily is. And one way to find official tolerance and sanction for being here is to turn state's witness against employers. Ahem.

 

VarryOn

(2,343 posts)
4. I wonder how seriously sellers of fake IDs, stolen SSNs, etc...
Fri Aug 16, 2019, 09:37 PM
Aug 2019

Are pursued and prosecuted? Maybe some emplyoyers were trying in good faith to follow the law, only to be fooled by bad documents.

Maybe every new hire of every company needs to swear the identification they use to gain employment is real and theirs personally. If I lie on a loan app at a bank, I can go to jail if caught. Perhaps something for lying about identity should apply in these cases. Just a thought.

Thomas Hurt

(13,903 posts)
5. "Illegal" immigration is matter of demand not supply.
Fri Aug 16, 2019, 10:17 PM
Aug 2019

The right refuses to deal with it as a matter of demand. It is more profitable to warehouse people in concentration camps for a taxpayer buck than to hold the employers accountable.

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