Tyson Foods tapping into a pool of migrant asylum seekers to staff its production lines isn’t surprising. The timing of the company’s announcement to that effect, though, is. The move and the timing of it are the consequence, respectively, of the industry’s operational efficiency and our nation’s political deficiency.

The industry bellwether’s most recent decision to tap a ripe group of desperate people to work its lines comes amidst dizzying turnover (Tyson says its production jobs have 40% turnover per year). But then, that decision came only days after the company announced the closure of its Perry, Iowa, pork plant — and the termination of 1,200 workers.

And so, Tyson finds itself at the confluence of powerful pressures: One is the industry’s success in optimizing efficiencies to such an extent that the American consumer is conditioned to affordable meat, while the American worker can’t accept the lower pay associated with the model needed to deliver it. The other is the election-year, two-party politicking that ignores that very reality.

As we near the November presidential election (the centerpiece of which is immigration), fear around non-U.S. citizens on U.S. soil is at a fever pitch. Sure, it was poor timing on Tyson’s part to go the migrant route so soon after shutting down a plant in America’s heartland. But the most ardent critics have reacted poorly too — as though those employees in Perry were all American born and bred, with spotless records.

Fact is, most meat production workers are foreign-born people of color. Many are legal. Many are not. Some are children too young to work legally in a plant. Many are as desperate for work as employers are for their help.

The meat industry for decades has advocated for immigration reform. But it’s an increasingly toxic nonstarter in Congress. In February, a conservative-authored reform bill that upped enforcement without amnesty was blocked by Senate Republicans, apparently to support their presidential candidate’s platform. It was a relatively hardline approach agreed to by Democrats, to fund an apparently doomed war in Ukraine backed by their candidate.

It’s in this festering environment that the asylum seekers Tyson is hiring are painted as “illegals” — ignoring the fact that Tyson’s action, part of a three-year commitment it announced in 2022, is legal. And, as the destabilization of more regions of the world push more people to our borders, the pressure — and the discomfort — will only mount.

In the absence of a regulatory fix, packers and processors like Tyson will do what they must within the laws and related guard rails currently afforded them. And, in the absence of adjustments to their own business model that assures today’s scale, efficiencies and margins, they must do so with the people who are willing to work for what they can pay them.

They won’t all be born Americans, but hopefully they will want to become Americans — and hopefully the industry, with its powerful lobby, can help them in that process.

This article ran as the Editorial in the April magazine issue of Meatingplace.

The Chickens Are Home to Roost

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