Summary
The 2019 ICE raids on Mississippi poultry plants, which detained 680 workers, have left the immigrant community in Morton scarred and fearful of renewed workplace raids under Trump, who plans mass deportations.
Residents recall the trauma, with children left stranded and families torn apart. Local businesses, reliant on immigrant workers, suffered economically, while poultry plants quickly resumed operations.
Activists and nonprofits are preparing families for potential detentions, emphasizing the economic and social impacts of such raids.
Many undocumented workers fear another round of disruptions and family separations.
majority of my life was spent as an illegal immigrant. i’ve been embedded in illegal immigrant communities my whole life. i’ve worked with many and have known many more
it’s my experience that both of those statements are true.
a) they do work citizens aren’t willing to do and b) they work harder
i can elaborate on why I believe those things are true, but absolutely if I’m looking for a laborer for specific types of work… I will always avoid the native-born citizen.
believe it or not there are many illegals that make wages higher than what most americans make.
there’s many types of illegal immigrants. there’s not one size fits all to make generalizations. but the majority of them are similar to oil drill workers.
a working class male goes far away to a labor-intensive job that nobody wants to do. they do this because they can make a relatively large salary and then use that money to do something back at home.
so for example Mexicans will come and work in construction. They can make upwards of $300+ a day of work with experience. this is many times more than what they could reasonably expect in Mexico. but not only that, they’re making more than many native born American citizens.
it’s just lower skilled Americans tend to flock to low salary and low effort jobs like retail or food service.
I definitely don’t want to make the impression that I don’t think immigrants are hard workers. I’ve certainly worked with a few.
My main point is that the system is designed to keep undocumented immigrants in the “informal economy” by paying under the table. They can absolutely make equivalent (or even greater) wages because their employers save a lot of money by not paying all the right taxes and benefits. If employers were forced to provide the same working environment and benefits to all their employees, the system would fall apart.
There’s also obviously plenty of, for lack of a better word, entrepreneurs. Unlicensed childcarers, contractors, landscapers, etc.
Yeah, it’s interesting.
Over the course of the last two decades or so, the government has slowly been enforcing the I9 verification process. Where employers have to get some information from you when they hire you. Social security number, driver’s license, etc. This makes it so illegals shouldn’t be able to work most jobs.
Of course, there are ways around it. I’ve worked for smaller sized publicly traded companies that simply look the other way. I knew a middle manager who was illegal and the company knew about it- but didn’t really care. So they just cooked the books, so to speak, so the employee could continue working. I remember when he got deported. His wife wanted her niece from their home country to come visit and stay with them for a couple weeks. Girl was 16. Customs officer thought it was suspicious, started asking girl some questions. Officer did not like the responses.
So they waited at the airport with the girl until employee went to go pick up his wife’s niece. Officer then questions employee, he doesn’t have appropriate documents. 8 months later, after the standard deportation procedures (which involves going in front of an immigration judge, etc), he was deported.
Moral of the story? If you have to pick up someone from the airport and you’re illegal… find a friend with documents and send them instead. Safer
One way to get around as an illegal that seems to be very popular is just to start a company and work as a 1099 subcontractor.
So for example, you don’t need documents to start a business. You start a business, apply for an EIN number with the IRS under that business. Then when you go work for some construction company, you don’t work as an employee. You sign up as a 1099 contractor.
That way the company hiring you is not legally liable for anything - they are simply hiring a company to provide a service. They aren’t hiring illegals to do work- whoever the contractor chooses to hire or not is not a concern of the host company. Uncle Sam gets his taxes and everybody is happy.
Vast swathes of the construction industry work using that system. I don’t want to name names, but some very big-name companies would suffer quite a bit should we actually deport even a small % of illegals.
I understand the point you’re making and I agree with you. It’s designed to keep them in the shadows. Although keep in mind, it’s not always under the table. Like I outlined above, a lot of it ends up being taxed and documented properly. I know illegals that get paid $2000 weekly salary, have a work truck assigned to them, and have their rent paid for. They do their yearly taxes and Uncle Sam doesn’t care because he’s making his cut.
There’s a high demand for people that speak both English and Spanish and have both a) technical skills (aka can work spreadsheets, emails) and b) have construction experience. It’s really hard to find these people and many of them tend to be illegals.
You want to really hurt illegals? Get rid of the ability to do what I just outlined. But then Uncle Sam would lose $$$. So that’s what I’m curious what Trump is actually gonna do.
There absolutely are illegals being put in similar situations as Dubai does with the Indians. For example, the Chinese love doing this. They’ll start a Chinese restaurant and then import Chinese to live and work there for pennies on the dollar. Other examples are Mexicans working in agricultural in the SW of the country.
But that certainly isn’t the only way and in my experience isn’t that common.
I work in the heart of agriculture in Central California. We only hire immigrants that have working visas or green cards… and there’s tons of them. My point is, this whole “no one will do the work and all the vegetables and fruits will just sit there and rot away!” is a bunch of bullshit. Illegal immigrants make up a very small portion of the overall working force out here. If anything, many companies (farms, packing sheds, distribution plants) won’t hire any undocumented workers because they typically disappear after getting paid.
I’ve worked all over the rust belt / bible belt in a little over a dozen states doing large construction projects. At least for my industry, the vast majority of the laborers are illegals. They don’t disappear after getting paid. I’ve worked with some regularly for over 5 years.
From what I’ve heard from people in California, your experience is not typical
So, if those illegals are removed (because you know, they’re here illegally) are you saying that those construction projects won’t get done? All construction will seize to exist? Nothing will get built? I mean, this is they way the left makes it sound… as if, we DON’T support illegal immigration, our country is doomed… and it’s ridiculous.
No, but it would both
a) slow down significantly
b) costs would rise significantly
The issue is it’s hard to find laborers. Americans simply don’t work as hard as immigrants. I’ve been doing this for about a decade now and that’s one thing I’ve learned. You don’t hire Americans to dig holes. They will work half as hard, complain 5 times as much, and leave as soon as they find something better.
But Pablo and Juan will work with a smile on their face, don’t care about being nomads working from state to state without complaints, and they’ll work Saturdays and even Sundays if you let them. You gotta basically force them to take days off.
Low-skill Americans prefer easy jobs like working at a cashier where they can stand around all day. That’s what they’re good for. Skilled Americans do office jobs, management, supervision, etc.
So let’s say we get rid of all illegals. During a time where we already have a labor shortage, we would eliminate 10~15 million people from the economy that basically fuel key parts of our economy.
What would happen? An exacerbation of the labor shortage and inflation. Large construction companies would see their costs jump up. Productivity would lower. Which would mean less demand for construction materials. Which would lead to price instability - aka more inflation. Small businesses would be most effected.
That’s just construction. We would see effects in many industries such as landscaping or agriculture as well.
First, I want you to remember being pro-illegal immigration is a right-wing capitalist policy. Ronald Reagan gave amnesty to all illegals. His economic advisor, Milton Friedman, advocated for open borders.
The reason being because immigration is essentially an extension of economic policy. The labor market is a market like any other. The more regulations you put, the worse it gets for business. Regulations include, for example, restricting the importing of labor or artificially removing labor from the population (aka mass deportations)
Second, I would like to remind you that Obama deported more people than Trump did.
This entire conversation has nothing to do with left versus right. Both parties are more or less in agreement on the general trends. There has been no significant immigration reform for decades, even though there have been multiple instances of GOP majorities and DNC majorities. Why?
Because of the reasons I outlined above. It’s actually really beneficial to the economy for us to have an underclass of cheap labor that has less rights than everyone else. It’s essentially a mini and voluntary slavery. Sort of like how Dubai imports Indians. Lots of pros, very little cons.
Thirdly and lastly, it’s only been since 2016 or so that we have seen the anti-illegal and anti-immigrant rhetoric in general start increasing. You want to know why?
Because our society has been taken over by populists. Our country is in its death throes and vultures are already picking at the corpse.
This once free market economy that produced the strongest country in the world is being destroyed bit by bit. They want to restrict the market as much as possible. First, you put in tariffs restricting the free flow of goods. Then you artificially freeze the labor market.
The end goal? An economy designed for only the largest corporations who are allied with those in power. That is what we are becoming and they are accomplishing that by pulling the wool over your eyes.
Sure, but if history is anything to go by, those legal immigrants will get rounded up and deported as well. Happened the last two times we decided to do shit like this in the US, and the ICE agents here are all racists.