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The Dallas Morning News reported on November 19-21, 2006 that 10 to 20 percent of workers employed in meatpacking plants are injured each year, but that many of the injuries are not reported, both because of changes in reporting requirements and because a high share of workers are unauthorized migrants. EEOC data report that only about half of US meatpacking workers are Hispanic, but anthropologist Donald Stull, author of Slaughterhouse Blues, says that up to 80 percent of the workers in many Midwestern plants are foreign born.

About 20 percent of meatpacking workers reported injuries in 2001, but that dropped to 12 percent in 2003 when new record-keeping rules omitted a special category for repetitive-motion injuries.

An unauthorized Guatemalan worker employed in a Swift plant in Cactus, Texas (near Amarillo) reported earning $12 an hour and sending home $1,000 a month. The plant job was a step up from his first job working in North Carolina fields. A week after Swift plants were raided on December 12, 2006, 18 former employees of the Swift plant in Cactus sued Swift, alleging that Swift sought to "depress and artificially lower the wages of its workers by knowingly hiring illegal workers." According to the suit, wages at the Swift Cactus plant fell from $20 to $12 an hour, in part because Swift hired unauthorized workers.

Tyson Foods Inc, the largest meatpacker, reported that 40 percent of its employees are white, 35 percent are Hispanic, 20 percent are Black, and five percent are Asian. However, in the so-called Golden Triangle of the Kansas meatpacking industry, Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal, about two-thirds of the children in K-12 schools are Hispanic.

Most House Republicans are considered tough-on-immigration, while most House Democrats support legalization and a new guest worker program. Some Democrats in the Midwest and South campaigned against amnesty and legalization in November 2006 elections, as their polls showed that many middle-class voters favor tougher immigration-control policies.

States and Cities. States are taking different approaches to newcomers. A Missouri state House Special Committee on Immigration Reform in November 2006 concluded that "liberal social welfare policies" discourage Americans from working and encourage foreigners to cross the border illegally to fill US jobs. Republican chair Edgar G.H. Emery wrote that: "The lack of traditional work ethic, combined with the effects of 30 years of abortion and expanding liberal social welfare policies, have produced a shortage of workers and a lack of incentive for those who can work."

Neighboring Illinois in December 2006 announced a New Americans program that increases the number of English-as-a-second-language programs and adds bilingual staff members at state agencies. The measures were developed by a new state agency with responsibility for integrating immigrants.

Similarly, cities are taking different approaches to unauthorized residents. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order to prevent Hazelton, Pennsylvania from enforcing its Illegal Immigration Relief Act Ordinance on November 1, 2006 as planned. A third of Hazelton's 31,000 residents are immigrants from Central America; immigration increased the population from 23,000 in 2000.

The Hazelton ordinance, which would fine landlords who rent to unauthorized foreigners, has been a template for similar laws enacted by cities around the US. More than 60 local governments in 21 states considered and 15 passed ordinances based on Hazleton's, although many are waiting to implement their ordinances until courts clarify their constitutionality. In December 2006, the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch, which approved a Hazelton-type ordinance, was sued by the ACLU and MALDEF.

At the other end of the spectrum, 50 cities and counties have enacted sanctuary policies that forbid police and city officials from asking people they encounter in the course of an investigation about their immigration status (Alaska, Maine and Oregon have similar state policies). These laws may come under attack- a narrowly defeated amendment to a Homeland Security bill would have denied federal funds to state and local governments with sanctuary policies.

In Fall 2004, a Hmong hunter named Vang killed six white hunters in northern Wisconsin; he is serving six consecutive life sentences. In January 2007, an unrelated Hmong hunter named Vang was killed while hunting in northern Wisconsin, prompting fears of a retaliatory killing. Most of the Hmong resettled in the US after the Vietnam war settled in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and many are struggling to find jobs and become self supporting.

Susan Saulny, "Hmong, Shaken, Wonder if a Killing Was Retaliation," New York Times, January 14, 2007. Sudeep Reddy, "Processing plants' dangers don't scare off migrants," Dallas Morning News, November 21, 2006. Jan Biles, "Employers face quandary about hiring immigrant workers," Topeka Capital-Journal, November 19, 2006.