Seen on Facebook today:
“Wages for meat packers were a lot higher years ago before companies started replacing Americans with illegal aliens. Of course, once wages dropped from $25/hr with benefits to as little as $8/hr and no bennies Americans stopped applying for those jobs. That’s why companies can complain Americans don’t want to work hard; they can’t handle these jobs. Of course that’s BS. Americans don’t want jobs that don’t pay them enough to survive…especially when they know their fathers and grandfathers often did these same work for much higher pay. New jobs this plant start $12/ hr. Still not close to $25 but keep rounding up illegals and those wages will rise so companies can fill the slots.”
About 25 to 30 people showed up to apply for jobs at Koch Foods’ nearby poultry processing plant. Of those, about an equal number were black, white or Latino.
The company, one of four whose plants in small Mississippi towns were targeted by federal immigration officials on Wednesday, contacted the state employment agency the same day to request its help in hiring workers.
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.
It remains unclear how so many workers without proper paperwork got jobs at the chicken plants in the first place.
NOTE: Almost half of those arrested (300) have been released from custody and given court dates.
Stella's Place 
I remember reading an article about a company actually going to another country and importing the illegal aliens to work in their plants.
LikeLike
Here’s the trailer for the PBS Frontline documentary, “Trafficked in America”. What the traffickers did was have the parents in Guatemala hand over the deeds to their property in payment for smuggling their teenage kids into America promising good jobs etc. Then they put them to work illegally in egg processing plants in Ohio – housing them in filthy mobile homes – to pay off the debts.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That makes me so angry. The owners and managers need to be punished.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Here’s the link to the complete documentary.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/trafficked-in-america/
LikeLike
Thx. I bookmarked it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I looked this up, it was filmed in 2014. While this is likely still happening, it didn’t start “becsuse of Trump” or “under Trump’s DHS/immigration departments”. Just wanted to make that clear to any trolls.
LikeLike
I should have said this, because I knew it. Even the NYT printed a story about how DHS had become lax about releasing minors to persons not their parents or guardians.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Reading comments from former employees yesterday, the working conditions are bad. The workrooms are refrigerated and make for uncomfortable hours with just the regular breaks to try to warm up. No wonder they don’t have such plants in parts of the country which get below zero in winter.
“It remains unclear how so many workers without proper paperwork got jobs at the chicken plants in the first place.” LOL!
Dishonest employers find all kinds of ways to get around the law such as falsifying records…where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
LikeLiked by 2 people
Keeping the restrooms uncomfortably cold prevents workers from…lingering. The cheap price of chicken demands a heavy throughput. When they’re dumping product it ain’t unusual to find 10# bags of chicken at 549-cents a pound.
This is chicken and catfish country, you’ll see pulloffs with huge banks of fans on either side of a drive where, in hot weather, 18 wheelers full of chickens on the way to the processing plant can stop to cool the birds off. This is big business, ain’t been mom and pop with a hen house for a long time.
These plant people KNOWINGLY hired illegals, Feds monitored them for over a year doing business. They hired illegals who’d been deported numerous times, felons, and even illegals with monitoring bracelets on their ankles. They facilitated social security card fraud and the Feds have proof.
Now locals in counties where there’s a good amount of poverty and unemployment will have a job. These jobs won’t solve these issues but they will ease it and contribute to the local, and not Mexican, economy.
LikeLiked by 2 people
BTW, one of the Saints has come out with some boo-hoo-hoo rant on the poor illegals that ICE busted. Never dawned on him that they took jobs his own people could have used, that more than a few were felons and that their taking these jobs at wages half of what locals were paid not only hurt the unemployed but removed money from the local economy.
LikeLiked by 2 people
The illegals should never have been given court dates and released. I’m sorry, I don’t trust people, some people I trust less than others. Now that these people have been released what keeps them from getting jobs elsewhere?
There should be no hearing; it should be automatic. You can’t prove you’re a citizen? You’ve been using a stolen or fraudulent SSN? Automatic deportation. Second offense? Whipped in the street, then deported.
I’m really tired of these people. Like, really, really tired.
LikeLike
Don’t know if you saw it but I posted that the local; papers have been carrying stories on how many of the illegals are multiple offenders, they’ve been caught, tried and deported a number of times before. There were also ones released from court pending a hearing and were wearing court ordered ankle bracelets.
The managers are going to be raked over the coals as they not only knew they were illegal but helped them. The arrest of illegally employed illegals has been going on in Mississippi for some time as has the arrests and jailings of those who hire them, press just doesn’t cover it much.
LikeLiked by 1 person