President Donald Trump’s promised large-scale immigration raids in major cities across the US could begin as early as this week (and have already begun in other places). And that’s likely to mean the worker shortage is about to get a lot worse.
Immigration rights groups in Iowa City have been sounding the alarm and holding “Know Your Rights” training calls. Iowans say they’ve spotted Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vehicles in Southeast Iowa. Undocumented workers, workers on a path to citizenship, and those who care about them, are on edge right now.
I added a news item last week from Investigate Midwest putting numbers to what would happen under a mass deportation: Undocumented workers are an estimated 16% of food supply chain workers in total. On farms, it’s a whopping 41%.
If they were somehow all deported, it would lead to an estimated 10% hike in prices and the “likely collapse” of our agricultural system. And it’s likely that Iowa, where agriculture is the largest part of our economy, where immigration accounts for the vast majority of the state’s growth, and where voters once again voted for Trump, could see these effects in a pronounced way.
“Great,” those voters might think, “Americans can take those jobs.” But there’s a reason companies, particularly in difficult industries like meatpacking and food processing, prefer recent immigrants: They tend not to speak up about workplace abuses, ask for raises, or form unions to advocate for all workers. In short, they accept far less than they deserve, and their companies are all too happy to have it that way. (This is something the excellent documentary “American Factory” explored in depth.)
America was quite literally built on the backs of exploited workers, from enslaved people in the South to immigrant factory workers in the Northeast to migrant farm laborers in the West. It continues today.
Of course, that does not mean we should accept this.
Instead, we could have an honest conversation about why we allow companies to exploit vulnerable people for maximum profit. We could ask why we have collectively accepted the narrative that those workers are “taking our jobs” (that we never wanted in the first place). And we could instead turn the microscope onto the do-nothing billionaires who would rather steal all the pennies their workers earn, and invest nothing back into this country or its people.
Is it time for immigration reform, finally? Should I learn to love the billionaires instead? Email me here.
