From an administration that targeted immigrants, hunted them down, and attacked businesses for hiring them, President Trump this week signed an executive order under the Defense Production Act to help ensure meatpacking plants can stay open. This is despite the raids on meatpacking businesses that his administration has orchestrated, despite his threat to not only build a wall but also end the legal programs that allow immigrants to work here legally, and despite his continued berating of immigrants. Trump has now signed an order basically begging immigrants to still go to work to help save our country.
That is a level of hypocrisy that is actually kind of hard to digest.
Tyson Foods ran a full-page ad last week explaining that the food supply chain might be breaking. It has seen breakouts of COVID-19 in its factories, as would be expected during a pandemic, and because of those breakouts and deaths, has had to shutter several plants. Those closures alone will likely have a great effect on the meat supply, but other factories that haven’t been shut down are worried that states will close their doors to help mitigate the risk of community spread. These preemptive closures would be devastating to the food supply.
So, Trump’s use of the Defense Production Act is understandable.
However, what is wild about it is who actually works at these meatpacking plants. Immigrants disproportionately fill these jobs, and that is no secret to an administration that has staged raid after raid after raid on the meat industry.
While exact numbers are hard to come by, it is clear that the meatpacking industry is disproportionately staffed by immigrants. In the 1980s, about 10% of the industry was Hispanic, and by 2003, that number had increased to 41.5%. To put those numbers into perspective, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that immigrants made up 16.9% of the workforce in 2016 (documented and undocumented).
The jobs in the meatpacking industry are dangerous, and the pay is low. These workers are there because that is the job that they could get. If this group of workers wouldn’t fill the jobs at that level of pay or the level of danger that they have to endure, then food prices around the country would increase, lowering everyone’s quality of life.
The problem is that since this is an “emergency,” many of Trump’s supporters will overlook this while they continue to push on to build a wall — and most egregiously, end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and, therefore, the “Dreamer” program.
DACA was originally implemented in 2012, and the goal of the program was to protect immigrant children that were illegally brought to the United States through no fault of their own. Trump has had the program in his sights for a long time, however, and in September 2017, announced he was terminating the program. Since then, the program has been in limbo, but a decision from the Supreme Court is considered imminent. If the Supreme Court allows the program to be terminated, it will have severe consequences for DACA recipients, their families, our communities, the economy, and now possibly the food supply.
This attack is despite the fact that DACA beneficiaries are economic multipliers who contribute $42 billion to the economy annually, pay $3.1 billion in state and local taxes, $5.7 billion in federal taxes, contribute almost $2 billion to Social Security, and almost $470 million to Medicare every year. Now, they are likely the ones holding together our food supply.
Maybe now that Trump is calling on the very group of people that he has villainized to save the country, maybe he will rethink his immigration policies. In the meantime, I am going to digest his hypocrisy while I also enjoy a nice steak, hamburger, or hot dog on my patio — and digest that too, thanks to immigrants.
Charles Sauer (@CharlesSauer) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is president of the Market Institute and previously worked on Capitol Hill, for a governor, and for an academic think tank.
