"We're the ones cooking the food, growing the food, picking the food..."

January 4, 2023 6:14 AM

The Food Industry's Backbone (The Nib)

The Sofrito Project
Mexican Made Easy
Alejandra Ramos
ROC United
No Us Without You (LA)
The Migrant Kitchen (NYC)

posted by box (7 comments total)

Direct link to The Nib if anyone wants it.
posted by TedW at 7:29 AM on January 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

I've only looked at the Nib comic so far, but wow, that was great. (Kind of longer than I expected, but really great.)

The couple of people I've known who have run restaurants have been effusive in their admiration for their Mexican staff.

The thing that most struck me was the panel about midway through that said:

Research from the National Immigration Law Center has shown that a path to citizenship would:
* increase GDP by up to 0.9% over 10 years (an additional $90 to $210 billion)
* reduce the federal deficit by $25 billion over 10 years
* spur wage increases and unemployment decreases

I wanted to know more, so I found the NILC page about The Economic Benefits of Legalizing Immigrants’ Presence - which is actually from 2014, so I bet those numbers are significantly higher by now.

It made me go try to find that graphic I saw once, a sort of cartoony flow chart, about how long it actually takes to become a citizen - I'm pretty sure it was this illustration, What Part of Legal Immigration Don't You Understand? (Reason, Mike Flynn and Shikha Dalmia, illustration by Terry Colon).

We have GOT to fix the utterly broken immigration process in the US.

I love to eat out - heck, I love to eat in general, and I know the food I get at the grocery store is picked and processed by immigrants - and I try to be mindful of all the people involved in making it possible for me to enjoy delicious food.

Thanks very much for bringing these people back to the very front of my mind this morning, box. This is a great post, and I appreciate getting to read all this.
posted by kristi at 8:30 AM on January 4, 2023 [11 favorites]

Direct link to The Nib if anyone wants it.

The formatting is a lot better there.
posted by Artw at 8:57 AM on January 4, 2023

I follow United Farm Workers on Twitter. It's a good look at how hard these people work in often terrible weather for low pay.
posted by neuron at 10:20 AM on January 4, 2023 [4 favorites]

The population of the farm community where I grew up felt like it doubled in the summer, when the migrant workers came to town, usually from Mexico or Columbia. They worked their butts off, and even from the road you could see that their housing would be considered unliveable by most Americans. The one year my neighbor messed up and didn't get his paperwork to hire laborers in on time, the cabbage crop sat in the field and rotted, which you can imagine smelled wonderful.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:38 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]

I follow United Farm Workers on Twitter. It's a good look at how hard these people work in often terrible weather for low pay.

Further reading: "They Leave Their Kidneys in the Fields"
posted by aniola at 5:00 PM on January 4, 2023 [3 favorites]

Thank you for that introduction to the nib!
posted by manageyourexpectations at 6:23 AM on January 5, 2023