Last week, I.C.E. agents raided food processing plants across Mississippi and removed hundreds of illegal aliens. Black Americans showed up to a job fair in Mississippi, hoping to fill some of the positions following the raids.
President Trump and many leaders in the Republican Party have been saying it for years—The people who are hurt most by the Democrat Party’s insistence on bringing massive numbers of illegal aliens into the United States, are black Americans.
According to NBC News, the immigration officials picked up 680 workers in what was being billed as the biggest single-day, one-state sweep in U.S. history, officials said.
The raids hit seven plants in six cities, and most of the workers arrested are Latino.
“While we are a nation of immigrants, more than that, first and foremost, we are a nation of laws,” said U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst of the Southern District of Mississippi. “They have to come here legally or they shouldn’t come here at all.”
Breitbart News reports -Roughly 150 locals attended an August 12 job fair to apply for jobs at the Koch Foods’ plants in Mississippi.
The fair was run after the August 7 removal of 243 alleged illegal migrants in two of the company’s chicken processing plants, according to local authorities.
“By 10 a.m., a crowd of dozens was on hand … Most were black and spoke with accents from the American South. A few appeared white or Hispanic,” ABC News reported.
According to USA Today – The raids detained 680 mostly Latino workers in what marked the largest workplace sting in at least a decade. Of those, about 300 were given future court dates and released, but they can’t return to work.
Kamerio Whitley, a resident of the nearby town of Morton, spoke to reporters after he left the building. He said there were several positions available at the plant, including forklift operators.
Whitley said he applied for a job working at the plant’s rehang table, where workers hang frozen chickens.
The job starts at $12 an hour, which is decent pay for the area, Whitley said.
“That’s not bad to start, and it can always go up,” he said.
Joseph Butler said he, too, found the wages attractive. He also said he liked the fact that Koch Foods pays weekly.
Bell said MDES puts all applicants through the federal government’s E-Verify system. All job applicants were required to have two forms of identification and a Social Security card.
ABC News reports- Eddie Nicholson Jr. of Louisville, among Monday’s applicants at a state employment service office in Forest, was more succinct: “They hire anybody.”
The 25-year-old has worked in chicken plants before and was considering a return, but wanted to see if wages had gone up. Plants in recent years have typically paid $11 to $12 an hour, according to labor statistics, but Nicholson said he wants $15 an hour.
Like Nicholson, many who applied Monday were chicken plant veterans. They understand the arduous and sometimes dangerous work of slaughtering, butchering and packaging chicken, from hanging up live chickens, to pulling off skin, to cutting with super-sharp knives, to boxing up chicken, much of it done in near-freezing temperatures. The line moves fast and people repeat the same motions over and over.
“It’s definitely hard,” said Cedric Griffith of Magee, who said he’s been working at McDonald’s after getting fired from another chicken processor for missing too many days. “You’re going to lose of a lot of weight. Nine times out of 10, when that week is over, you’re tired.”
That draining work, at relatively low wages, leads many people to quit. So chicken plants are always hiring. Angela Stuesse, an anthropology professor at the University of North Carolina who spent years among labor organizers in Morton and nearby towns, said the desire for cheap, docile labor led poultry firms to begin recruiting Spanish-speakers in the late 1990s. At first, Stuesse said they were people who could legally work. But they were eventually replaced by Mexicans, Guatemalans and others who often lacked legal working papers. Later, came a wave from Argentina, Uruguay, and Peru.
Which begs the question…
Why are Democrats fighting so hard to bring foreign workers to America to labor in dangerous and difficult conditions for low wages? Aren’t they supposed to be the party of compassion?
