Immigrants and working conditions

I wrote the following letter in response to this piece in the WSJ by Thomas Frank:

After reading Thomas Frank’s recent piece (“Captives of the Meatpacking Archipelago”, August 6), I couldn’t quite tell if his criticism of conservatives was directed toward its policies about immigration or labor. (After all, the only way the “hellish conditions” he described even existed in the first place was because, the bosses had the workers, being illegal, “over a barrel”.) Though I concur with any immigration criticism, Mr. Frank also provides a fine example of how relatively un-”hellish” those conditions actually were.

The illegal immigrants who were working at the AgriProcessors plant (children included, which is unfortunate) were not forced to work under those conditions but chose to do so because of a lack of better options. When presented with a choice between returning to their home countries and working for little money on a dangerous job, we can see how they decided. While Mr. Frank has pretty good career options writing columns for The Wall Street Journal, those who risk so much to immigrate here illegally and work under those conditions, obviously don’t. It might make him feel good to help these workers make more money, for example, but when many of them lose their jobs due to increased competition for those higher wages from American-born workers and are then forced to take the next relatively more “hellish” job (or maybe even return home), I don’t think they will be so grateful.

Matt Hutchison
Atlanta, Georgia