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BumRushDaShow

(170,669 posts)
Sat Apr 18, 2026, 04:38 AM Yesterday

So many food service workers are being deported that restaurants are now begging lawmakers for help

Source: The Independent

Friday 17 April 2026 17:29 EDT


Restaurants in deep red Texas are making an unlikely call for immigration reform as the Trump administration’s deportation campaign continues to rock the industry nationwide. A group of businesses and food-industry groups came together last month to form Seat the Table, which is lobbying for work permits for immigrant food and agriculture workers.

“I think the vast majority of Americans recognize that there is a large group of undocumented immigrants who have been literally keeping food on our tables,” Kelsey Erickson Streufert, chief public affairs officer at the Texas Restaurant Association, a coalition member, told The New York Times. “And if we remove those people, it is going to hurt everyone in terms of higher prices.”

Restaurateurs and labor organizers alike say the Trump administration’s immigration agenda has sent chills across the industry, with businesses losing workers to deportations and even legal employees staying away for fear of being picked up.

“We have created networks of people that are driving, observing, and guarding our spaces in shifts morning and night,” an anonymous restaurant owner told the industry news site SevenFifty Daily about his employees in Minneapolis during this winter’s mass federal immigration operation in the state. “We moved team members from riskier areas and secured rent-free places for them to live in safer neighborhoods.

Read more: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-deportation-immigrants-restaurant-industry-visas-b2960138.html

14 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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So many food service workers are being deported that restaurants are now begging lawmakers for help (Original Post) BumRushDaShow Yesterday OP
Let the republican owners work those fryers themselves Whip-poor-will 23 hrs ago #1
Because no (D) is allowed to own a business? Igel 19 hrs ago #3
Maybe if MacDonald's lost enough workers, Rump would do something about immigration reform. And I still want to know LaMouffette 22 hrs ago #2
Raise the wages and the help will come Fullduplexxx 18 hrs ago #4
All Of The Predicted Things Are Happening DallasNE 13 hrs ago #5
More fuckin FAFO. ananda 13 hrs ago #6
Probably going to have to use Matthew28 13 hrs ago #7
Free whine with your food, a**holes? Wonder Why 13 hrs ago #8
It's like Texas got exactly what it voted for. Imagine that. n/t flvegan 13 hrs ago #9
Let's say that they received the work permits that they requested Klondike Kat 11 hrs ago #10
Please, please don't make us pay American workers. SidneyR 11 hrs ago #11
Companies and corporations are not entitled Farmer-Rick 10 hrs ago #12
Companies & Corporations just send their stuff bobalew 9 hrs ago #13
Who would have thought? Aussie105 9 hrs ago #14

Whip-poor-will

(329 posts)
1. Let the republican owners work those fryers themselves
Sat Apr 18, 2026, 06:32 AM
23 hrs ago

Or how about their children work instead of getting a education , paid for from profits off of immigrants.

Igel

(37,565 posts)
3. Because no (D) is allowed to own a business?
Sat Apr 18, 2026, 10:03 AM
19 hrs ago

Hardly. A lot of businesses are owned by Democrats. And some even by Progressives.

When you're facing a real thin profit margin and you can pay your employees high wages and feel good while you're running yourself into a hard bankruptcy--and maybe taking your dependents on it--you do things that maybe don't sit quite right. Esp. that don't sit quite right with others.

LaMouffette

(2,646 posts)
2. Maybe if MacDonald's lost enough workers, Rump would do something about immigration reform. And I still want to know
Sat Apr 18, 2026, 07:30 AM
22 hrs ago

why they are punishing the undocumented workers but not the American business owners who hired them. I mean, I know why: because undocumented migrant labor has been an accepted, albeit illegal, way for businesses to lower their labor costs for a hundred years, and making obscene profits are all that matter to the wealthy class and Repub politicians.

But if they would fine a business $50,000 for each undocumented worker, and actually enforced it, there would be very few hired.

Hmm . . . I bet Rump hasn't thought of this potential stream of income! Or maybe he has. He probably is accepting bribes from business owners to not send ICE to arrest their workers.

Will this ever end?

DallasNE

(8,018 posts)
5. All Of The Predicted Things Are Happening
Sat Apr 18, 2026, 03:43 PM
13 hrs ago

And now we are having to live with the inevitable. Who would have thought?

Klondike Kat

(943 posts)
10. Let's say that they received the work permits that they requested
Sat Apr 18, 2026, 06:07 PM
11 hrs ago

What makes them think ICE wouldn't disregard those documents like they do any other documents?

SidneyR

(216 posts)
11. Please, please don't make us pay American workers.
Sat Apr 18, 2026, 06:26 PM
11 hrs ago

American workers want a livable wage. We can't afford that. Give us back out slave laborers.

Farmer-Rick

(12,716 posts)
12. Companies and corporations are not entitled
Sat Apr 18, 2026, 06:51 PM
10 hrs ago

To cheap labor.

What makes businesses think they have to have cheap labor? If you have to have cheap labor to make a profit, there is something wrong with your business model.

bobalew

(447 posts)
13. Companies & Corporations just send their stuff
Sat Apr 18, 2026, 07:53 PM
9 hrs ago

to China, India, Mexico, Singapore, or Vietnam....
Where Labor is cheaper.

Aussie105

(8,029 posts)
14. Who would have thought?
Sat Apr 18, 2026, 08:04 PM
9 hrs ago

Who would have thought that the American way of life depended so heavily on the mostly invisible and low paid workers who slaved away in the fields, the factories, the restaurant kitchens and even in their own back yards, maintaining their picture perfect gardens, and nannying their children?
Not to mention the guys who renovate your house, and never show their faces on camera if someone is filming.

Who?
Just about everyone with a few working brain cells!

Go the same setup here in Australia.
Package delivery drivers, Uber, chicken boners.

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