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>everyone knows that immigrant labor keeps rural communities going in Iowa What? I know people who made $30 an hour with full benefits in the 70s doing those j

>everyone knows that immigrant labor keeps rural communities going in Iowa What? I know people who made $30 an hour with full benefits in the 70s doing those jobs. It amazes me people can claim to support the poor/middle class and illegal immigration at the same time Illegal immigration killed those communities by driving down wages and forcing people to go to college and move to a city to find a job that provides a living wage. The result is the death spiral of many rural communities as young kids are forced to leave I won't blame illegals completely, big business and corporate farms are the ones that pushed for it in the name of better profit margins for investors

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Spooky23 8y ago
Yes and no. They made $30/hr in Des Moines or Chicago or other cities. There were profitable union slaughterhosues in New York into the 80s. Slaughterhouses were moved out to the country to break the unions, period. “Saving money” by being closer to farms is a contrived argument. A good place to start is the book “Fast Food Nation”. Illegals are a symptom. The problems are industrial facilities with heavy manpower requirements, high turnover, designed to operate in a way that guarantees chronic medical problems with workers, placed in places with no people. The big waves of Mexicans chose to move to places like rural Iowa in the 90s not out of a desire to break their bodies hacking at meat at high speed, but because trade policy flooded cheap corn into the market and exploded the Mexican agricultural economy. Rural communities have been conned hook line and sinker. Their death began when the alliance between western resource barons and southern democrats (ie segregationists) began with Nixon. Trade policy, financial sector consolidation, offshoring of industrial economy dug the grave. I grew up in a beautiful northeast rural community. It’s a shell of what it was when I was a child. All of the dairy operations are gone, and most of the full time farms will cease operations when the owners retire. The economy runs on social security, public assistance, government workers commuting up to 90 miles away, and a couple of small industrial operations. Nobody with any ability will stick around, and that has nothing to do with people trying to escape life in Central America.
- Fjolsvith 8y ago
  It occurs to me that if there had been a border wall, companies couldn't have utilized underpaid immigrants to break the unions up.
  - acct1771 8y ago
    Careful, now.
  - sliken 8y ago
    A theoretical perfect wall sure. But it's the nature of long walls that they 1000s (if not more) times cheaper to defeat than build. Witness the various tunnels, drones, ladders, and even catapults used to cross the existing border fences.
    - Fjolsvith 8y ago
      Well, I watched a wall defeat a caravan of migrants on TV back in November and December...

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Spooky23 8y ago

Yes and no. They made $30/hr in Des Moines or Chicago or other cities. There were profitable union slaughterhosues in New York into the 80s. Slaughterhouses were moved out to the country to break the unions, period. “Saving money” by being closer to farms is a contrived argument. A good place to start is the book “Fast Food Nation”. Illegals are a symptom. The problems are industrial facilities with heavy manpower requirements, high turnover, designed to operate in a way that guarantees chronic medical problems with workers, placed in places with no people. The big waves of Mexicans chose to move to places like rural Iowa in the 90s not out of a desire to break their bodies hacking at meat at high speed, but because trade policy flooded cheap corn into the market and exploded the Mexican agricultural economy. Rural communities have been conned hook line and sinker. Their death began when the alliance between western resource barons and southern democrats (ie segregationists) began with Nixon. Trade policy, financial sector consolidation, offshoring of industrial economy dug the grave. I grew up in a beautiful northeast rural community. It’s a shell of what it was when I was a child. All of the dairy operations are gone, and most of the full time farms will cease operations when the owners retire. The economy runs on social security, public assistance, government workers commuting up to 90 miles away, and a couple of small industrial operations. Nobody with any ability will stick around, and that has nothing to do with people trying to escape life in Central America.

Fjolsvith 8y ago
It occurs to me that if there had been a border wall, companies couldn't have utilized underpaid immigrants to break the unions up.
- acct1771 8y ago
  Careful, now.
- sliken 8y ago
  A theoretical perfect wall sure. But it's the nature of long walls that they 1000s (if not more) times cheaper to defeat than build. Witness the various tunnels, drones, ladders, and even catapults used to cross the existing border fences.
  - Fjolsvith 8y ago
    Well, I watched a wall defeat a caravan of migrants on TV back in November and December...