Servis Advertising Blog Space

It’s important for everyone who cares about his or her small town communities to read Methland. Although the book is about the meth epidemic in small town America, it makes strong connections between the illegal drug trade, illegal immigration, and corporate slave labor, perhaps the three most destructive illegal activities in modern day America. More specifically, everyone in Branson, Missouri should take a close look at this book, as the small town of Oelwein, Iowa is very similar to any given town in Southwest, Missouri, many of which are micro-burbs of Branson.

Written by Nick Reding, a traveling journalist, Methland portrays the plight of Olwein, Iowa, a once bustling small town with a meatpacking pant, Iowa Ham, that once paid its workers eighteen dollars an hour. However, after being sold to a large food corporation, Gillette, pay was cut to $6.20, resulting in workers working longer hours to earn a living wage. This new culture, according to Reding, paved the way for the meth epidemic—workers quickly realized that meth provided the stimulation needed to make a long workday tolerable.

Many of the workers after getting addicted to meth at Gillette realized in the mid nineties that making and selling meth was far more profitable than working long hours. It was then that meth spread incessantly.

In light of the slave labor wages, the town began to shrink and the meatpacking plant resorted to hiring illegal immigrants from Mexico. In addition to the illegals working the low paying jobs, Mexicans would come up from Mexico and sell enough meth for them to go back to Mexico and retire within a year. The Mexican drug trafficers are clever and are able to easily evade the police. In one instance of the book, the trafficers call the DEA and taunt them: the DEA was able catch the trafficking in process by using intelligence. However, the intelligence they receive is often planted as a decoy so a much larger transport can be made incognito. It appears that the federal police are inadequate in stopping drugs from crossing the borders.

I talked with a Branson visitor from Ottumwa, Iowa, a similar town to Oelwein. Although he hadn’t read the book, he was familiar with Tom Arnold’s sister, Lori Arnold, who was a major player in Mexican drug trafficking. The visitor’s wife was a teacher, and she stated that more and more resources are going to bilingual services because of the high illegal immigrant population in the area. The visitor also stated that there are signs on the borders directing the illegal immigrants to the towns where they can find work.

Methland is important to Branson because of its excess restaurant and hotel jobs. Because businesses are not required to run background checks on employees; anybody with a fake ID can get a job in Branson. Background checks are not expensive either—but it seems that many businesses in the Branson area do not want to know if an employee is illegal. Thus, when ICE asks them why they hired an illegal immigrant, the business cannot be held accountable, claiming ignorance and referencing the fake ID.

The easy answer might be that Branson should require businesses to run background checks on new hires. However, this will only push the illegal labor trade underground further. But perhaps that is a good thing. Whatever the case may be, businesses and managers should be held accountable. If a business uses illegal immigrants, it should not be doing business in Branson. They need to be held accountable.

As for Methland, I suggest everyone who lives in a small town to read this book, because if small town American continues to turn a blind eye to this problem, the problem of corporate greed, America will fall apart.

And corporate greed is the route problem here. That is more apparent now than ever in light of the massive oil spill in the gulf, which is a direct result of the government’s lack of regulation on corporations. Such lax regulations are the result of special interest groups, which bombard the government daily to keep regulations minimal. And so far it has been working. Corporations in American are not held accountable for their actions, and it is these corporations that are cutting corners by hiring illegal aliens and claiming ignorance when they are caught. For citizens in America, ignorance is not a plead in court, but rather an admission of guilt. Corporations should be subjected to jail time in the same manner as citizens—if a manager fails to run a background check, that manager should go to jail, not the illegal immigrant.