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Have you all read this? It's SO interesting! It's an article about all of the immigrants (focusing on a young woman from Puerto Rico) who come from all over the world to SD to work at the turkey processing plant in Huron.
Here's a quote from the article: "Everywhere she looked, she saw people from somewhere else. Only a handful seemed to be local. The people hanging the birds were from Burma. Some of the people trimming the breasts were from Puerto Rico. Deeper in the factory, cutting skin, removing organs, there were people from Cuba and Guatemala and Vietnam. More than a dozen were from Chuuk, an island chain in Micronesia. A supervisor, from Haiti,..."
I guess all of the people who are so against immigrants are going to have to think about who would process these turkeys if not these immigrants.
I guess one of the arguments is that if a better wage was paid then locals instead of immigrants would work there. But would they? The article says people at the plant start out at $10/hr and soon go up to $12/hr, and that's not much different from what many unskilled labor jobs here in SD pay. So is it just lack of local population the reason for the need for the immigrants, or lack of willingness by Americans to do the unpleasant work of meat processing? Hmmmmm.
(Just want to note that yes, I know that Puerto Ricans are Americans and thus not technically immigrants.)
From my point of view it's great to have a population increase of productive working people. But then, I've never been to Huron and know nothing about any possible downside to this.
My guess is that a lot of the locals (not bashing Huron, people like this in every city & state) just think they're above that type of job, especially younger people. Most people of Generation X, the Baby Boomers, and earlier generations had to work hard to get where they are now. The Millenials and Gen-Z kids have grown up seeing the fruits of that labor, but not the labor, so they think they deserve to have a nice home, nice things, and a high-paying, rewarding and prestigious job without getting their hands dirty.
I believe it has a lot to do with demographics. A characteristic of an aging population is a more skilled population. Consequently, without immigration, we simply do not have enough unskilled people to fill many of these jobs. Especially around smaller population areas.
I guess all of the people who are so against immigrants are going to have to think about who would process these turkeys if not these immigrants.
I'm going to assume your intent here is to besmirch those who are against the continuation of illegal immigration to the country. Those that acknowledge that we're a country of immigrants, and we should continue to be a country that welcomes anyone who wants to become an American and play by the rules that everyone else does in the country. That's a shared responsibility.
You have that group on one side. Then there are those who want to seem "pro-immigrant" but put illegal aliens on the same footing as guest workers and legal immigrants.
To stop the spread of misinformation, I know for a fact that if we had zero illegal aliens, those that are called "immigrants" by those trying to hide facts, we would still have foreign born people working at the turkey processing plant because they would be able to get guest workers (or in this case, Puerto Ricans). My wife's family has been in the agriculture business for decades in southern Arizona within walking distance of Mexico, and have always been able get the produce planted, grown, picked, packaged and shipped with zero illegal labor. The percentage of illegal aliens working in agriculture is actually very low, so we don't need to be told that the fruit will rot on the ground or the turkeys won't get processed unless we have a bunch of illegal aliens in the country.
There are very, very few people in this country who want to kick out legal immigrants and guest workers, or stop them from coming to the country. The debate on this issue has been hijacked by liars, and those who benefit from the slave-wage labor. Nobody who is advocating for the illegal alien "lobby" will have to live with the effects of rampant lawlessness in the flouting of our immigration laws.
So to counter your assertion that there are people who are "so against immigration", you're wrong. Nobody is against immigrants. Stop spreading BS.
It's always best to discuss specifics; the turkey plant in Huron, SD being the topic of this particular conversation.
It's depressing how very much the ugly-heartedness of so many posts on C-D has increased over the past year or so.
You mentioned that people need to think about where the turkey on the table is going to come from if they're against immigrants. Nobody is against immigrants. Many people are against illegal immigration, which, if it were stopped completely, there would still be immigrants working at the Huron plant.
I haven't looked at my heart, I'm in pretty good health so I bet it's quite pretty. I'm also a first generation American, I never wanted my mother deported.... and she came here legally.
It is so tedious when people from other states, who have evidenced no interest in either visiting South Dakota for fun or in possibly moving to South Dakota for the short or long term, interject their personal political objectives into every possible sort of thread, no matter the topic.
I keep thinking about the young woman from Puerto Rico, and wondering if, after power is restored in Puerto Rico and the infrastructure is rebuilt, she will stay here or go back home. I wouldn't imagine working in any meat processing facility is much fun, and I know many warm climate people don't like the weather here. But maybe she can save some money and go on to one of our technical schools or colleges and then on to another career. And I wonder if any of these new immigrants will soon become land owners and go into South Dakota's agriculture sector, as the Hmong in Minnesota have done.
It was either in this article or another one about the Huron plant that noted that the employee turnover rate there last year was only 20%, which is very low for a meat processing facility. That must mean that either the employers are doing a good job picking workers, or conditions at the plant are pretty good, or Huron's a great place to live, or maybe all three!
I know our Debey's from the Huron area. I know she doesn't do long posts anymore, but I'd sure like to know what she thinks about it all!
I agree with the out of stater part, to an extent. Trust me I wouldn't be looking at the SD page if I wasn't looking at visiting. I used to live a couple of hours away from the Black Hills, and of course whenever friends came to visit there was the obligatory trip to Rushmore.
Sorry to burst those thinking Huron is a happy melting pot but it is not. If you look at the Beadle County State Attorney Facebook page they list daily arrests. You will see a disturbing majority (and repeat offenders) are ironically carrying surnames from all those countries listed. It has been a major problem in our town. Especially, since a lot are DUIs and drug related offenses. Native Dakotans are not at all happy with what this town has become. The ”need” for migrants is a fallacy. It is simply the owner of the turkey plant (whom I met) using the local church to funnel cheap labor for working conditions that are below par. Turnover is low because their visas do not permit them to quit.
Sorry to burst those thinking Huron is a happy melting pot but it is not. If you look at the Beadle County State Attorney Facebook page they list daily arrests. You will see a disturbing majority (and repeat offenders) are ironically carrying surnames from all those countries listed. It has been a major problem in our town. Especially, since a lot are DUIs and drug related offenses. Native Dakotans are not at all happy with what this town has become. The ”need” for migrants is a fallacy. It is simply the owner of the turkey plant (whom I met) using the local church to funnel cheap labor for working conditions that are below par. Turnover is low because their visas do not permit them to quit.
So, why are you trolling the S D forum?
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