That is pretty much the gist of the New York Times story here about Storm Lake, Iowa.
The opening paragraphs give the message that I, and others before me, have been giving for years. When big global corporations like Tyson Foods discovered cheap (first illegal) immigrant labor and now legal refugees, the cultural make-up of American heartland towns was changed forever.
The NYT spins it as a feel-good story as this town that features a PORK (no Muslim laborers) plant would have died.
My question is, why would it have died? If Tyson had kept up the wages over the years, there would be more generations of rural Americans who would consider this work (if they weren’t brainwashed in liberal colleges that is)?
It is especially maddening because immigrant wages stay low and you (taxpayers) help support the families with your welfare dollars. Wow! What a business model!
I’m posting this story for a reason other than the fact that it confirms what I have been yammering about for years—-refugee resettlement is about labor, not first and foremost ‘humanitarianism’ by our government and its resettlement contractors***. But, I am posting it to give readers an example of what you can do!
Here are the opening paragraphs about how Tyson Foods is ‘saving’ a town:
STORM LAKE, Iowa — When Dan Smith first went to work at the pork processing plant in Storm Lake in 1980, pretty much the only way to nab that kind of union job was to have a father, an uncle or a brother already there. The pay, he recalled, was $16 an hour, with benefits — enough to own a home, a couple of cars, a camper and a boat, while your wife stayed home with the children.
“It was the best-paying job you could get, 100 percent, if you were unskilled,” said Mr. Smith, now 66, who followed his father through the plant gates.
After nearly four decades at the plant, most of them as a forklift driver, Mr. Smith is retiring this month.
The union is long gone, and so are most of the white faces of men who once labored in the broiling heat of the killing floor and the icy chill of the production lines. What hasn’t changed much is Mr. Smith’s hourly wage, which is still about $16 an hour, the same as when he started 37 years ago. Had his wages kept up with inflation, he would be earning about $47 an hour.
Continue reading here to see what meatpackers have done to Storm Lake.
One more thing, you will see if you read it all is that the NYT is out to get Rep. Steve King (no surprise!).
So what can you do?
Readers ask me all the time, what can they do to help get the message out. I’ll try to write a comprehensive (as comprehensive as I can) post in the coming days about what you can do, but here is what one reader did because every little bit helps! (I’ll make a new category and call it ‘What you can do’ for ideas like this!)
She actually took the time to comment to the NYT.
The comments are closed now, but please have a look and see what readers of the NYT said, here. The NYT probably did not appreciate the tone of many of them! (When you open that previous link, the comments should pop-up in the right hand side bar, they do on mine.)
Here is our reader:
D Flinchum
Blacksburg, VA
It should be clear from this article that the influx of cheap foreign labor is for the benefit of the company owners. Pay low wages w/no benefits, but because low wages don’t often pay for a 1st-world life, shift the cost to the community at large by gov social services and higher costs for housing, lower quality schools, and ER health care.
The refugee program has become a recruiting system for Big Meat. It is made out to be some great humanitarian system and anybody who opposes it is called a heartless bigot. This is nothing more than gas-lighting – trying to make people who see the truth believe something that they can see isn’t so by calling them names. It’s just like a philandering husband trying to gas-light his wife into thinking that she is crazy for suggesting he is out partying with Marcia in Marketing instead of working late when he comes home half drunk with lipstick on his shirt.
It is also important to note that most of these new workers and their children qualify for affirmative action. It is likely that these new workers’ children who do go on to college will be able to take advantage of programs not available to the white working class kids who might also be interested in advancing into the professions.
As one man in the article said, it’s hard to have ill feelings for someone just trying for a better life, but the company owners already have a good life and it is they who should be held accountable.
Thus we have Trump in the WH.
See our tag ‘Meatpackers’ for many more stories about BIG MEAT changing America. Don’t miss this one about meatpackers worried about the Trump ‘proposed’ slowdown.
*** US federally-funded refugee resettlement contractors are paid by the head (by you!) to bring migrant laborers to your American towns and cities:
- Church World Service (CWS)
- Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) (secular)
- Episcopal Migration Ministries (EMM)
- Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
- International Rescue Committee (IRC) (secular)
- US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) (secular)
- Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS)
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
- World Relief Corporation (WR)