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

[BumRushDaShow]

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

[Whip-poor-will]

1. Let the republican owners work those fryers themselves

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

[Igel]

3. Because no (D) is allowed to own a business?

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. Maybe if MacDonald's lost enough workers, Rump would do something about immigration reform. And I still want to know

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?

[Fullduplexxx]

4. Raise the wages and the help will come

[maxsolomon]

17. Seattle has that experiment underway. $15 minumum wage.

Restaurant failures are frequent and "service charges" are running 20%.

[Angleae]

19. You're a little behind. Seattle's minimum wage is now $21.30

https://www.seattle.gov/laborstandards/ordinances/minimum-wage

[maxsolomon]

20. Oh, right.

And the last Service Charge I paid was 22%.

[GenThePerservering]

21. Restaurant failures are always frequent

it's a very tough business.

Curiously, the higher wages have not impacted the fast food industry - people stay on longer (retraining is a big expense), small product price increases, increased efficiency, etc. tend to equalize.

If anything is causing problems, it's people's shifting tastes from fast food dumps to slightly more expensive, but higher quality 'casual dining'.

[maxsolomon]

22. I know they're frequent.

But Seattle is outdoing itself since the Pandemic. It's the "slightly more expensive, but higher quality 'casual dining'" options that are disappearing.

[DallasNE]

5. All Of The Predicted Things Are Happening

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

[ananda]

6. More fuckin FAFO.

Isn't this fun.

[Matthew28]

7. Probably going to have to use

Robots pretty soon if they keep doing this deportation thing.

[Wonder Why]

8. Free whine with your food, a**holes?

[flvegan]

9. It's like Texas got exactly what it voted for. Imagine that. n/t

[Klondike Kat]

10. Let's say that they received the work permits that they requested

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

[SidneyR]

11. Please, please don't make us pay American workers.

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

[Farmer-Rick]

12. Companies and corporations are not entitled

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]

13. Companies & Corporations just send their stuff

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

[Farmer-Rick]

16. Yeah, that use to be illegal

It was called union busting.

There are a lot of ways to bust up unions, but this way particularly promoted by "free" trade agreements, allows foreign corporations to use our markets to sell their crap. It forces local workers to accept less in order to compete with foreign labor.

But since the US thinks cheap labor is a must for any corporation, we are in a race to the bottom.

[Aussie105]

14. Who would have thought?

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.

[OldBaldy1701E]

15. It's called 'FAFO' you stupid little shits.

And, now you are in the 'FO' part.

My heart bleeds... but that is because of a heart condition, not because of these idiots.

I have nothing for those people, except being nice enough to call them 'people'.

[Bengus81]

18. What BAIL them out like farmers? BULL fucking SHIT!