When the meatpacking giant, Tyson Foods, announced plans last month to shutter its pork plant in Perry, Iowa and lay-off all 1,200 employees, it brought rare attention to one of the most influential, less scrutinised, dynamics of America’s mass migration debate. That is, the role played by large, politically connected corporations seeking to blunt wage growth.

For this isn’t a time of crisis for Tyson. The same day the company made the announcement, Bloomberg News quoted Garrett Dolan, an executive, as saying that the firm had been actively recruiting from the waves of migrants who have ended up in cities such as New York seeking asylum. Tyson Foods, which already employs some 42,000 immigrants, said it had placed some of the migrants to work at its plants in Tennessee. “We would like to employ another 42,000 if we could find them,” Dolan said. The dual headlines caused a storm on social media, with many calling for a boycott over claims that the company was replacing Americans with immigrants who will work for less. Ohio Senator J.D. Vance described the company’s actions as the “decimation of the American Dream”.