Diversity In Northwest Iowa

PRI's The World:

Immigration reform has come up in the Republican presidential debates, but it hasn’t been nearly as big of a topic as in years past. The issue still evokes strong passions, however, in many small Iowa towns that rely on immigrant labor at their meat packing plants. It’s an open secret: Many of the workers are undocumented.
Storm Lake is a city of some 10,000 tucked in the corn fields of northwestern Iowa. The main employers are a turkey and hog processing plant.
Storm Lake’s demographics run counter to the state. Iowa’s population is 91 percent white. In Storm Lake, the school district is 22 percent white. The students are a mix of mostly Latinos, along with Southeast Asians and Africans. Many here, like Sara Huddleston, proudly say this mix is working.
“We call ourselves the conquistadores of this little town in the middle of nowhere,” said Huddleston, who was among the very first Latinos to come here from Mexico back in 1989.

Surprise, surprise, it takes a packing plant to bring diversity to a midwestern town.  Most people in town seem comfortable with it, even though the town is represented by idiot bigot Steve King:

Tyson Foods is one of the two major employers in Storm Lake. The company says it uses all the available tools provided by the government, and more, to verify documents of the people it hires.
A Tyson spokesman said starting pay at the hog processing plant in Storm Lake is $11 an hour. That’s $4 above minimum wage. Tyson employees also get benefits like medical and dental insurance, paid vacations and a retirement savings plan.
That’s not enough to entice native Iowans to gut hogs though, says Police chief, Mark Prosser.
“It’s difficult work, hard work, repetitive work, monotonous work,” said Prosser. “Sometimes there’s the perception, and even criticism of shifting demographics that people categorized as ‘those people’ are taking jobs from the people who are native to this area, born and raised here, and that’s just not the case. That’s a myth. We don’t have lines at our packing plants trying to get jobs.”
Congressman Steve King disputes this. “When they say there are jobs that Americans won’t do, that’s not true, that’s a lie that’s been perpetrated against the American people.”
“Every job in this country is being done by Americans, there’s no job they won’t do,” said King. “But you need to pay them what it’s worth. And I would like to see a tighter labor supply in this country, so that a person could get out of bed, go to work, and make enough money to pay for a modest house, educate their children, and plan for retirement. It’s used to be that way."

King is partially right here.  Americans might do the job-for $30 an hour.  When he's talking about the good old days, it seems odd he doesn't mention unions.  Much of the meatpacking work was unionized, until the companies started breaking the unions and closing plants in larger cities.  The reason Storm Lake and other towns in the middle of nowhere have plants is because the companies wanted to open non-union facilities.  With the lower wages, Americans won't do the work.  Back in the '90s, 60 Minutes reported on how IBP, which is now part of Tyson, was recruiting homeless people on the east coast, giving them some cash, and putting them on buses to Iowa.  They'd be put to work in the packing plants, and when they quit or were injured, they ended up living on the street in Iowa.  Eventually, the immigrants ended up taking the jobs.  The unfortunate thing about Steve King, other than his stupidity, is that the only reason he favors higher paying jobs in the meatpacking industry is because he is a bigot who can't stand Hispanics, and wants to pretend that they are the problem.  That man is an embarrassment for the state of Iowa.