09/01/2019
In 2008, I did a column called Labor Day In Mississippi — Job Openings For Americans After Raids about the good that enforcing the immigration laws did for actual Americans. A company named Howard Industries was raided, and there were stories in the local paper saying "Residents lined up for jobs at Howard Industries."
Two black Mississippians were quoted at the time as saying:
Shantay Holles, 26, of Heidelberg said she used to work at Howard Industries as an electric tester but was fired last year. She said she is applying today because she heard on the news about the ICE raid.
"That’s all they would hire — Mexican, Mexican, Mexican!" Holles said.
Samantha Stevens, 18, a 2008 graduate of Heidelberg High School, said she couldn’t find a job and she is glad the ICE stepped in.
"We were here first. It’s not fair for them to have a job," Stevens said.
Ms. Stevens could say "we were here first" without being called a racist, because she’s black. (Everyone in her high school is black.) As such, she could claim that her ancestors were brought to America in chains to work for no pay. Now that they were free, Howard Industries was trying to replace them with illegals from Brazil, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and Peru, according to ICE.
Well, the same thing is happening this year at Koch Industries (no relation) in Forest, Mississippi, the site of a major raid by ICE.
This Mississippi Chicken Plant Just Held a Jobs Fair to Replace Workers Snatched Up by ICE, by Gaby Del Valle, VICE, August 13, 2019
FOREST, Mississippi — Koch Foods, one of the chicken processing companies targeted as part of a massive immigration raid in Mississippi that swept up hundreds of immigrants last week, is looking to replace the workers it lost.
The Illinois-based company had a job fair in Forest, Mississippi on Monday — in the same town where many of the immigrants swept up in the raids live.
The mass raids — thought to be the largest in American history — resulted in the arrests of approximately 680 workers across seven plants — including a Koch facility in nearby Morton. Of those, some 300 have been released, but since they’re undocumented, they’re no longer able to work, meaning companies like Koch have to find new people to fill their shoes, something experts have said could be difficult for a company that relies so heavily on immigrant labor.[More]
I don’t see what their problem is — Mississippi is full of Americans of all colors. The plant owners say they were trying not to hire illegals, but ICE said they were "willfully" hiring illegals, including illegals on immigration parole (with no work permits) who were wearing ankle monitors:
In June 2018, for example, a Guatemalan woman was detained by immigration authorities before eventually being released with an ankle monitor. The monitor showed that she worked at the Koch plant in Morton for 8 to 10 hours a day a few times a week. Other immigrants tracked by ICE ankle bracelets also worked at chicken plants in the area, according to the unsealed records.
However, the American workers interviewed didn’t say bad things about the Mexican illegals, possibly because they were white, and knew they weren’t allowed to.
This raid and its aftermath are one more one case of Trump being, if inconsistent and beleaguered, many times better for American workers than either Hillary or ¡Jeb!
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