Angry shoppers are boycotting Tyson Foods products as the $53 million meat company closes plants in Iowa and elsewhere and hires thousands of asylum seekers at job fairs in New York.
Campaigners are urging consumers to stop buying Tyson products amid a wave of poultry and meatpacking plant closures in Iowa, Virginia, Arkansas, Indiana and Missouri.
They point to Tyson’s efforts to hire thousands of asylum seekers in New York, offering wages of $16.50 an hour and free immigration lawyers. The company has been accused of dumping U.S.-born workers for cheaper migrant labor.
America First Legal, a conservative activist group founded by former Trump administration officials, warned Tyson that it could be breaking the law by favoring foreign-born workers over Americans.
Tyson wants to double the number of immigrant workers to 84,000 this year, including positions at this Springdale, Arkansas plant
Tyson Foods says it plans to hire 42,000 immigrants this year, offering ‘job-and-lawyer’ packages to newcomers in New York
“Under federal law, it is ILLEGAL to discriminate against U.S. citizens on the basis of their citizenship status in favor of noncitizens of any kind when it comes to employment,” the legal action group posted online.
Springdale, Arkansas-based Tyson Foods, which earned $52.881 million in sales last year through its Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Ball Park, Wright, Aidells and other brands, did not respond to DailyMail.com’s requests for comment.
The boycott raises tough questions for Tyson’s $13 million-a-year CEO Donnie King, who has led the company since 2021, during which time it has bankrolled the campaign coffers of President Joe Biden, Nikki Haley and others, according to Open Secrets.
The case highlights fears about migration across the U.S.-Mexico border, and asylum seekers replacing Americans, especially in meatpacking and other undesirable jobs amid record low unemployment.
Tyson said this week it would close its pork plant in Perry, Iowa, this summer, putting 1,276 people out of work in a town of just 8,000.
According to local news sources, about half of the workers at the plant are believed to be Latino.
Last May, Tyson Foods closed two locations in Virginia and Arkansas, which employed more than 1,600 people. In April, the company announced plans to cut 10 percent of corporate jobs and 15 percent of executive positions.
Plants in North Little Rock, Arkansas; Corydon, Indiana; and Dexter and Noel, Missouri will cease operations in the first half of 2024, following a 0.8 percent decline in company revenue from 2022 to 2023.
Tyson has since moved to hire more asylum seekers who left for New York and other cities after entering the U.S., in an effort to fill unwanted jobs amid a low 3.9 percent unemployment rate.
Tyson’s $13 million-a-year CEO, Donnie King, has led the company since 2021
Conservatives on social media called for a boycott of Tyson and its various food brands
Tyson is America’s largest meat and poultry company by revenue, which fell 0.8 percent last year to $52,881 million
Tyson’s pork plant in Perry, Iowa, is the latest to be mothballed, with 1,300 jobs lost
The meatpacker already employs about 42,000 immigrants among the 120,000-strong U.S. workforce, and is trying to boost that by working with the Tent Partnership for Refugees, a nonprofit organization, among other things.
“We’d like to hire another 42,000 people if we can find them,” Garrett Dolan, who leads Tyson’s social efforts, recently told Bloomberg.
In recent weeks, the company has hired dozens of asylum seekers from Venezuela, Mexico and Colombia at a job fair in New York City. They traveled to the poultry plant in Humboldt, Tennessee to work.
According to Dolan, asylum seekers fill the gaps in factories with high turnover; the company needs to fill 52,000 jobs this year.
Executives offer salaries starting at $16.50 per hour, with paid immigration attorneys and other benefits.
A large portion of the new hires “will come from refugees and immigrants, so we’re in the process of thinking about that strategically,” Dolan said.
Asylum seekers cannot work once they enter the U.S. and are typically not granted authorization until 180 days after applying for legal status.
Many wait years before their first immigration court hearing to review their asylum claim, during which time they can work.
Workers, including many Latinos, have protested Tyson plant closures, such as this one in Van Buren, Arkansas, in April 2023
Tyson Foods brands include Tyson, Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Ball Park, Wright and Aidells
In an effort to help his migrant workers, Tyson has spent millions of dollars on immigration lawyers and is offering paid time off to attend court hearings.
Many also benefit from temporary housing, on-site childcare, transportation and English lessons.
Tyson agreed in 2022 to employ 2,500 refugees under the Tent program.
The company increased that last year by 150 employees, including 50 Afghan refugees who went to work in Arkansas, including in Fayetteville, Springdale and Bentonville.
The boycott underscores fears that Americans are losing jobs to economic migrants from abroad, driving down wages.
Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that there was a staggering drop of 1.2 million native-born workers in the labor force between July and August 2023.
In stark contrast, some 688,000 jobs were secured by foreign-born workers, underscoring the difference in President Joe Biden’s pro-migration policies versus Donald Trump’s tough border policies.