War on Immigrants Impacts Availability of Kosher Meat

Another chapter for the textbook on the law of unintended consequences: An immigration raid on one meatpacking plant leads to a shortage in Kosher meat.    Via the newswires:

"Normally, this, on a Monday, this would be stacked up to here," he said, pointing to a mark on the wall above his head.

But the cardboard boxes of beef in the freezer mostly reached his knee. It’s a scene being repeated in the freezers of kosher butchers and their customers across the nation.

The shortage is the result of the collapse of Agriprocessors Inc., formerly the largest kosher meatpacking company in the nation. In May, nearly 400 workers were arrested in an immigration raid at the company’s Postville, Iowa, slaughterhouse.

Since then, the company has struggled, and the plant has closed. It stopped shipping beef about three weeks ago and chicken in the last week, customers said. Since there are only a handful of processors nationwide who slaughter animals according to Jewish law and under the supervision of rabbis, the shutdown has cut the kosher meat supply to the bone.

I realize that what I’m about to say is not going to be popular during an economic downturn, but doesn’t an incident such as this – where a business is shut down due to the deportation of a large portion of its workforce and its ability to restaff with documented laborers – highlight the message that there is apparent demand for such labor in the country, and that our immigration laws ought to be reformed to reflect that reality.

Of course, another possible interpretation is that there’s a structural inefficiency in our labor market –- potential workers aren’t aware of or live too far away from potential jobs, potential workers aren’t fond of the nature of those potential jobs, and/or the larger market apparently won’t tolerate the costs associated with raising wages to better attract staff – but that line of thought quickly leads down a path towards the sort of economic philosophy that always gives me a headache.