Illegal alien workers performed an estimated 45% of the work for food grown in the United States in the decades prior to the 2020 coronavirus. These illegal aliens, from Mexico, Central America, South America, Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe, plant, tend, pick and package American-grown fruits, vegetables, nuts and even commercially-grown flowers.
For the raising of beef, chicken, lamb/mutton and pork products immigrant workers are minimally involved. For slaughtering and processing these meat products, immigrant workers are heavily involved — they are major players.
The American meatpacking business has had a varied and difficult history. In the late 1800s and early 1900s newly arrived Eastern European immigrants worked the slaughterhouses. The slaughterhouse work was and is dangerous and unforgiving of mistakes.
The U.S. Congress passed the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 (FMIA), and President Theodore Roosevelt signed it into law. The act made it a crime to adulterate or misbrand meat and meat products sold as food and it regulated sanitary conditions for the slaughter and processing of meat.
The catalyst for the 1906 Congressional action was The Jungle, a 1906 novel by Upton Sinclair (1878-1968).
In 1904, Sinclair was covering the labor strike at Chicago's Union Stockyards for the socialist Appeal to Reason magazine. Seeing the working conditions and contaminated meat products he was appalled. He wrote of the sufferings the immigrant workers endured working in Chicago stockyards. During the early 1900s, meat packing was primarily an urban industry. Today, it is a rural industry.
From his magazine article, he expanded his socialist stride with a book, The Jungle, condemning capitalism and American industries. He was an instant success, professionally and financially. This literary success, along with the financial success, emboldened Sinclair's socialist efforts.
In typical hypocritical socialist style, Sinclair took part of his earnings from The Jungle to establish a socialist-oriented Utopian community, the Helicon Home Colony in New Jersey.
The Colony was for "white non-Jewish persons."
Sinclair was a Democrat Socialist. He ran for Congress as a socialist and for governor of California as a Democrat.
The Roaring '20s was a relatively peaceful time in Chicago's meat- packing industry. 1929 was the start of the decade-long depression that rocked America's and the world's financial world. It hit the meat packing industry — hard.
In the 1930s, unionizing meatpacking workers began. Blacks entered the meatpacking workforce joining the very small number of Hispanics.
With the 1932 election, President Franklin D. Roosevelt led the Democratic party to a 20-year national control of the American political scene.
The beginning of World War II lifted America out of the existing depression. However, FDR and his "New Deal" had a socialist basis that has been modernized and expanded by radical-leftist Democrats in 2020.
During WWII, the military took all able-bodied men. Some women volunteered. To handle the farm and manufacturing needs of a wartime country, relatively small numbers of Mexican nationals migrated into the United States to help the U.S. war effort. This migration was legitimized by the government=sponsored Bracero Program. This program started in 1942 and was continued until 1964. In Spanish, Bracero is translated to mean manual labor.
President John F. Kennedy officially end the Bracero program. In reality, President Eisenhower began the demise of the program in 1954 with "Operation Wetback." This operation abruptly deported many Mexican nationals who had settled into American communities. There was little notice nor national outcry.
In the 1960s, the meatpacking business scaled down and some 940 meatpacking companies were reduced to less than 200. Survival meant a move to the rural areas for cost-saving. Urban union workers refused to go to rural environs. The lessening of union wages and the proximity to the meat producing ranches were pluses for the industry.
By 1969, unions lost the meatpacking workers. Mexicans became the main workforce and loving the higher American wages, even if less the American minimum wage. Since 1989, millions of illegal foreign nationals, migrated to the United States and the meatpacking industry welcome them.
According to a 2016 analysis, the U.S. meat and poultry industry accounts for $1.02 trillion in total economic output or 5.6% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States. These numbers likely increased in 2019.
The coronavirus of 2020, obviously skewered all the meatpacking numbers.
Since the surge of illegal immigration in the late 1980s, the illegal alien population of the United States appears to be above 30 million. There has never been an accurate count of illegal aliens in the United States for the obvious reason, the aliens hide their illegal presence.
Democrat politicians over decades have sought to protect illegal aliens and promote open-borders legislation. HouseSpeaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., constantly proposes open-borders legislation and immediate and automatic citizenship for all illegal aliens.
The American electorate remains against open-borders and automatic citizenship.
James H. Walsh was associate general counsel with the U.S. Department of Justice Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1983 to 1994. Read James H. Walsh's Reports — More Here.
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