Tyson Foods has been dropped in the deep fat fryer of politics after cutting more than 1,000 American workers at the same time it is hiring refugees and other recent immigrants.
The company says there’s no connection, but Republican Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio thinks the whole thing smells.
According to Fox News, Tyson is closing a pork production facility in Iowa that will result in the loss of 1,000 jobs.
Meanwhile, in Manhattan, Tyson is hiring what are termed “migrants” and “asylum seekers” to fill jobs at its plant in Humboldt, Tennessee, according to a Tribune News Service report in the Portland Press Herald.
The report said Tyson is part of the Tent Partnership for Refugees “with a plan to hire some of the 181,400 migrants that have come through New York City’s intake system over the last two years.”
The report noted Tyson has 42,000 immigrants in its 120,000-person workforce
Garrett Dolan, who according to the report “leads Tyson’s efforts to eliminate employment barriers such as immigration status or the need for child care,” was quoted in the report as saying, “We would like to employ another 42,000 if we could find them.”
Vance said that sounds like something of which he does not approve.
“All we know is that they are firing American workers and hiring illegal aliens to replace them. This is the entire point of illegal immigration — and Republicans, we’ve got to hammer this point home,” he said.
Is it time to boycott Tyson?
In comments on the Fox News show “Jesse Watters Primetime” Thursday, he said Congress needs to investigate what’s taking place.
“That is not capitalism or a market economy. That is the decimation of the American middle class via illegal immigration, and it’s happening all over the country,” he said.
Vance said the Biden administration makes it easy for companies to “pretend that economic migrants are asylum seekers.”
“This is the end of the American dream if we let this stuff happen. We’ve got to re-elect Donald Trump, and we’ve got to get congressional Republicans with some spine to push back against this stuff,” he said.
Tyson provided Fox News a statement saying there is “a lot of misinformation in the media about our company” and that “we feel compelled to set the record straight.”
“Any insinuation that we would cut American jobs to hire immigrant workers is completely false,” the statement said, noting that Tyson “is strongly opposed to illegal immigration” and that it participates in E-Verify, a program created to address employment of illegal immigrants.
A Tyson representative said the Iowa facility closing “emphasizes our focus to optimize the efficiency of our operations to best serve our customers.”
The American Conservative Values Exchange-Traded Fund, a conservative investment fund, is not buying the Tyson line, and placed a “refuse to buy” rating on Tyson’s stock, according to Fox Business. The fund was created for conservative investors by Ridgeline Research LLC.
“We believe Tyson’s management has blundered into a political minefield (and should have known better),” Bill Flaig, Ridgeline’s founder and CEO said.
“The risk of alienating a significant percentage of their customers outweighs any potential economic benefit. In a recent Pew Research poll, 80 percent of U.S. adults say the U.S. government is doing a bad job of handling the migrant influx. We have seen the negative impact of alienating customers recently with Bud Light and Target and by divesting we are protecting our shareholders,” Flaig said.
