Posted on 12/21/2001 5:00:09 AM PST by Brian Mosely
Edited on 05/07/2004 9:19:55 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. — A federal investigation into accusations of widespread smuggling of illegal immigrant workers has been centered in this town of 16,105 people, about an hour's drive south of Nashville.
Here, federal authorities say, three Tyson Foods managers smuggled illegal workers from Mexico to work at the chicken plant, as part of a companywide conspiracy involving 15 such plants in nine Southern states.
(Excerpt) Read more at tennessean.com ...
I hope they don't get them mixed up. File this statement in the "More than I needed to know" folder.
The town's reputation as a safe haven from immigration officials has now changed, Morales said.
File this one under "I don't have a problem with that".
I beleive that if B(WP)C was republican, that would be all over this sstory.
They could of gotten rid of the evidence by using the illegal workers in the Jimmy Hoffa Brand Sausage.
Tipped off by Clinton Administration holdovers at INS, perhaps?
Tyson has $50 million local impact
The local Tyson processing plant has 1,250 employees and processes approximately 1.2 million chickens each week. According to source information, the Tyson plant has an economic impact of $50 million annually on the county. In addition to the factory workers, approximately 2,000 people in Bedford and surrounding counties are associated with the processing plant as chicken growers, farmers providing feed for chickens and those involved with the transportation of both the raw and finished products. Wages paid to plant workers are in the $24 million to $32 million range.
The plant's primary products are boneless, skinless chicken that is easy to prepare and chicken feet, which are considered to be a delicacy in some countries such as China. According to reports, the company spent $15 million at the local plant last year to expand the processed chicken line.
Or this...check out the quotes from this LA times article...
"When they're the ones with the paychecks, you don't ask questions and you don't talk bad," Mike Wadsworth, a longtime Ashland resident, explained Thursday.
Tennessee is Algore's home state and Don Tyson and Tyson Foods was right up there with the Chinese as Clinton's biggest contributors, could there be any link between the Clinton administration and this "safe haven from immigration officials"?
(/sarcasm)
The newspaper actually raises a worthwhile point (although tangentially) but for the wrong reasons.
Undocumented workers are a tantalizing commodity to those labor-intensive industries (such as poultry processing) that still remain in the U.S.
With the employer "navigating around" FIT, FICA and the rest of the mandated alphabet soup, a chicken-plucker who's paid $6/hour GETS TO KEEP IT. The legal American worker, to take home the same pay, would have to earn closer to $10.
This puts the American chicken-plucker at a disadvantage, of course, the under-educated, unskilled or semi-skilled worker who needs the job the most because he has the fewest options in the job-market. Now, maybe he's a high-school dropout or maybe he got a dumbed-down diploma that isn't worth jack-schitt.
Whatever the reason, his employer has to get the perishable birds in the store for 39-69 cents a pound, or lose business to competitors that do. Claim that it's wrong, immoral or whatever, but the cost savings on those "illegals" allowed the company to continue to employ the higher-priced Americans (higher-priced because of decades of government meddling.)
Some longtime Southern industries have almost given up. My grandmother worked for Fieldcrest in North Carolina until she died in 1968. Today, the U.S. textile industry is a shell of its former self. But rather than "pull a fast one" as Tyson is accused, they simply moved the whole damn manufacturing operation out of the country entirely.
That might keep Jose out of your town, but it also keeps John from being a productive taxpayer, because he's not qualified to do much else, never learned enough in school to do much else, and can't easily move to Mexico.
Americans at all levels should be the most educated people in the world today. The fact that we're not, and are not even close, is a national disgrace. The same government that is teaching them little beyond "self-esteem" is the one that makes it so difficult to maintain the resultant low-level laborer at a competitive wage.
Tyson is getting hit from both sides. They won't win this, but I hope it doesn't ruin them.
''They discriminate against us,'' she said.
I agree with the first part of her statement because it is the Hispanics that don't assimilate and for the most part refuse to adapt to our standards and culture.
I'm not buying into the discrimination part. That is a big cop out. If Mrs. Morocho feels that the going is a little to tough for her here in the U. S. then I suggest she go back where she came from.
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