I live in the middle of the area where all these raids happened, here’s my opinion on some of the points.
First, e-verify is a joke. It’s designed to be a joke so as to enable illegals to defraud the system just like the rest of our immigration laws. Mississippi actually requires employers to use it but it’s irrelevant if it’s a useless system that is designed from the beginning to allow illegals to slip through.
Second, there is a huge population in the immediate area of these plants that is unemployed and perfectly capable of doing these jobs. They’re all on welfare though and welfare pays better than working in a chicken plant. That’s why the plants bring in illegals instead of hiring locals. I remember in the late 80’s when the plants went from almost all black workers to all illegals, it happened almost overnight and my dad had to hire a Spanish interpreter at his tax prep business. The illegals live 20 to a trailer, work hard for low wages, and show up for work on time. They don’t back talk when told to do something hard. The locals show up drunk or not at all, slack on the job and balk at hard work. Given the choice between getting $50k a year in welfare for nothing and making $30k in a chicken plant working in hard, disgusting conditions they pick the former so instead of paying more the plants bring in illegals. Trust me, they know they’re hiring illegals, they’ve known it all along. The whole act of not knowing they were illegal is BS, everybody knew they were illegals but all the plants care about is plausible deniability, don’t ask don’t tell.
Any fix is going to have to involve huge reforms to our bloated welfare system so locals can’t sit at home watching TV for more money than they can make working. I don’t see congress having the guts to cut money to the welfare queens, it’s too politically unpopular.
Plus, there’s also the fact that illegals use STOLEN IDENTITIES of American citizens to obtain those jobs.
Yet when Americans lined up for jobs years ago at Midwestern meatpacking plants (after ICE raids), they were asked by a reporter why we were told Americans won’t do those jobs; they responded they had worked those jobs until they were laid off and replaced by illegals.
“The illegals live 20 to a trailer, work hard for low wages”
As Americans we should have a problem with this; expecting low-skilled American workers to accept Red Chinese slave conditions is ridiculous. Too many American employers want to evade the natural supply & demand dynamic of wages, so they simply use open borders to suppress wages. The decline in our standard of living, and more importantly, OUR POPULATION, is clear for all to see.