https://www.npr.org/2025/02/26/1233894748/tyson-perry-iowa-waterloo-tennessee

FOXMAN: Really low-skilled jobs. And that's the vast majority of Tyson's workforce. Tyson employs about 120,000 people. Of them, about 100,000 are in these very low skilled jobs-- jobs like washing meat, placing the cuts in the trays, all of those things. You don't need a ton of expertise in order to do them, but you need a lot of people.

ARONCZYK: And they really struggle to keep workers in a lot of these jobs.

FOXMAN: These have an extraordinarily high turnover rate of about 40%. So from Tyson's perspective, they're constantly trying to fill these jobs.

ARONCZYK: The CEO of Tyson said that it had been even harder over the past few years with such a tight labor market. Unemployment has been historically low, sitting right around 4%.

GARCIA: Now, this was all taking place at this moment when New York was receiving a huge influx of migrants. About 175,000 people had arrived. A lot of them were looking for work.

ARONCZYK: So to fill some of their open jobs, Tyson was working with a nonprofit called Tent Partnership for Refugees. They're like a matchmaker between large companies and recent immigrants and refugees. 

 FOXMAN: We first heard about this program from both Tyson and Tent. And they were very excited to hire refugees, asylum seekers.

ARONCZYK: Tyson put out a press release that said, quote, "We are proud to play our part in promoting a society that is welcoming and supportive of people from all backgrounds."

GARCIA: So in February of last year, Simone goes to an office in lower Manhattan. She's there to report on this meeting between a group of migrants from Mexico, and Colombia, and Venezuela, and representatives from Tyson, the meat company.

FOXMAN: It was morning. It was extremely cold. But I will say, you know, it didn't look like anything super special.

ARONCZYK: Right. Right. If you were-- if you'd walked by the building, you would have no clue what was going on there that day.

FOXMAN: Absolutely, yeah.

GARCIA: Inside, there were translators and interviewers, some people from Tyson.

ARONCZYK: The potential employees were asked questions, given applications to fill in. And then, on the spot, they were offered jobs at a chicken plant in Humboldt, Tennessee.

FOXMAN: You know, I think there were 17 people hired. And ultimately, the event, sort of, continued for the following couple of days, and that included 70 more people the next week.

GARCIA: Tyson did a few rounds of hiring in New York. Their stated goal was that they would hire 2,500 asylum seekers and refugees this way, some of whom would be added to the workforce at their plant in Tennessee, which was already a mix of American-born workers and recent immigrants.

ARONCZYK: Simone, she watches all of this happen, does some more reporting. And then, along with a colleague, she writes up a pretty standard article.

GARCIA: The headline reads, "Tyson is hiring New York immigrants for jobs no one else wants."
…
ARONCZYK: But that is what happened. Over the past decade, Venezuela has had a mostly tanking economy, gone through a bunch of political upheaval. Camacaro says he started to fear for his life, got to a point where he decided he needed to get out.

GARCIA: To get to the US, he made the trek through the Darién Gap, the notoriously dangerous 60 miles of rainforest between Colombia and Panama.

GARCIA: He then got stuck in Mexico for a couple of months. Camacaro finally crossed the border to the US in October 2023. He applied for asylum and was given a work permit while he waits for his case to be heard.

ARONCZYK: Now, you may remember around this time that the governor of Texas was offering free bus rides out of Texas to cities all around the country, basically saying, migrants, you're welcome to take a bus out of here. Camacaro, he obviously took a ride to New York. And when he arrived, he got a bed in one of the giant tents the city had set up for migrants. He ended up moving around a few times, going from shelter to shelter.

GARCIA: He'd spend some of his time going to churches and soup kitchens. And he was given a lot of donations of clothing. 

ARONCZYK: And with that money, he would buy food. He says he was doing what he could to get by. That is, of course, until he heard about the job with Tyson.

GARCIA: He heard about it from a friend, went to an office building in Manhattan. He says there was an application, drug test. They checked his work permit.

ARONCZYK: And that day, Camacaro was one of the people who got a job offer, to move to Tennessee to cut up chickens. He'd be paid $16.50 an hour, which is the standard starting rate at that plant. And it is also more than twice the minimum wage in Tennessee. Plus, he was being given a $4,000 signing bonus. Tyson would also pay for his move and put him up in a motel for two months.

GARCIA: He told his wife, I just signed. Come on. Let's go. No turning back.

ARONCZYK: They hadn't really put down roots in New York. It was easy for them to pick up and move. They got on the long bus ride from New York to Tennessee. 
…

ARONCZYK: In a tiny town like Perry, Iowa, the biggest employer closing its plant has had a lot of impact. The town has seen a big jump in unemployment claims. Several businesses have shut down while others are struggling, plus, there has been a hit to local tax revenues.

GARCIA: Because Jody worked for the union, she helped negotiate a plant closing agreement, basically, severance for the workers. They got $1,700 plus vacations and holidays paid out.

ARONCZYK: Now, the controversy over this made it sound like Tyson was giving opportunities to migrant workers while laying off American workers in Perry, that it was a kind of swap, and that the Perry workers didn't get the same opportunity to go work in Tennessee.

GARCIA: So we wanted to know, was that true?

ARONCZYK: Did Tyson offered to pay people to move elsewhere, relocate to work at a different plant?

WELLS: Yes, to Waterloo and Tennessee.

ARONCZYK: Oh, they did offer to let them move to Tennessee.

WELLS: Correct. I don't recall the number, but it wasn't everybody. It was just a certain amount.

ARONCZYK: Tyson disputes this. They say anyone who worked at that plant could get a job at a different location. But either way, at least, some of the Perry workers could have moved to work at the plant in Tennessee.

GARCIA: But Jody says most people didn't want to go. They told her that the pay was going to be worse. And a lot of the people who worked at the plant have kids in school. They're settled. They like Perry. They don't want to pick up and move hours and hours away.

WELLS: I mean, it's a great town, friendly people. I think it's a nice little town.

GARCIA: Tyson told a reporter that 200 of the roughly 1,200 people laid off relocated to take jobs at other Tyson facilities.

ARONCZYK: And this might be another thing that made the migrant workers attractive to Tyson. They hadn't put down super deep roots, so they were willing to up and move to Tennessee, to a plant where they needed workers.

GARCIA: There was another implication of this controversy that we wanted to ask Jody about.

ARONCZYK: I think one of the things about the two stories coming together is that the impression one is given of the plant in Perry, is that it's like just a bunch of American workers, and it's not a diverse place. Whereas this new plant in Tennessee is recruiting all these people who aren't Americans, you know, they're asylum seekers or migrants.

WELLS: Oh, no, we had-- let's see, we had Hispanics from all over, Africans, at one time, we had Bosnians. We had Burmese. I think it's Salvadorian. You know, people from all-- all over.

GARCIA: Perry, Iowa also has a lot of recent immigrants living there, people who moved to Perry to work at the plant. Jody says, when they would make printouts about the union, they had to use interpreters. They'd print everything out in a dozen languages.

ARONCZYK: The reality is that a lot of the people taking low-paying jobs in this country are somewhere in this space between, being immigrants and becoming Americans. Some people are not legally authorized to work in the US. Some people have temporary work permits, some have green cards and are on a path to citizenship, and some are immigrants who have recently become American citizens.

GARCIA: Tyson, for their part, has never made a secret of the fact that they hire from this range of people. They say that 35% of their workforce are immigrants. 
 
Different but similar here.. immigrants will do the jobs.. take on the broken down houses.. send their kids to school.. work the dirty jobs.. which Anglos don’t want.  A third of our town is Hispanic.. their kids keep the teachers employed.. they Pay property taxes..  it’s not like Fox News portrays.

 I Believe a friends nephew goes before the immigration judge this week.. hoping and praying that he’s not arrested by the Nazi ICE thugs.

I know that’s not a popular opinion on this board.. but it’s life.. here.. in our community.