It's a Swift Miracle... Americans Do Want To Work!

Swift & Co, the meat packer caught by ICE last December for having some 1,300 illegals in its employ, has managed to fill all the positions previsiously filled by illegal aliens (news story). Let's call it a Swift Miracle.

It took just five months to fill all the positions, bringing into question one of the main fallacies of the "open borders/amnesty" advocates -- that there are zillions of jobs Americans simply will not do.

Well, apparently we thought Americans didn't want to work in meat-packing, but come to find out at least 1,300 Americans do. Of course, Swift is complaining that the raids cost the company $50 million. Let's put that into perspective. That $50 million cost is about 6 tenths of one percent of Swift's sales. And we can assume that much of that cost was the loss in productivity and additional expense of having to recruit and hire a large number of people in a short amount of time -- costs Swift only incurred because it looked the other way and hired illegal aliens in the first place.

The picture gets even rosier when we look at Swift's own Q3 Report:

"The widely reported government raids on our domestic production facilities early in the third quarter reduced the sales and profitability of our US Beef and Pork segments in the period," said Sam Rovit, Swift & Company's president and chief executive officer. "But thanks to the tremendous efforts of our 15,000 domestic employees, we are well on our way to a full recovery. Our pork business returned to normal production levels in March and our beef business is expected to do so by summer. At the same time, multiple operational and cost position improvements are under way, and we are beginning to realize the benefits of those programs."

So let's review. Swift hired hundreds of illegal aliens at cheap-labor rates. We're told companies like Swift simply must do this to stay afloat. Plus, Americans don't want to do those jobs. ICE raids Swift and 1,300 illegals are rounded up. Amazingly, Swift manages to fill those positions with Americans and legal residents. In about six months, business has "returned to normal production" and Swift hints that "operational and cost position improvements" (i.e. business efficiency) are going to make up for any additioanal wage expense. So stockholders can rest assured that Swift's future is bright.

The next time someone used the "jobs Americans won't do" excuse to justify the flood of illegal aliens in our country, let's remind them of the Swift Miracle.

Grassfire.org News Release 

(photo credit)