NYT: How Tyson Foods and its greedy demand for cheap immigrant labor 'saved' an Iowa town
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.
We told you here last November that the Obama State Department was making Storm Lake a direct resettlement site.
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!).
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