23 August 2011

of immigration and cacao

If there are two fairly unrelated things in this world for which I have a deepened appreciation, I confess freely that they are chocolate, and the immigrants arriving to our country with whom I work on a daily basis, often hearing stories which at once depress me and inform my views on such an uncomfortable subject to a degree which well accounts for any discomfiture I may personally suffer.  In point of fact, I have been known to keep a stock of good chocolate in my desk to safely guide me through some of the more strenuous moments of my workday.

So, it properly takes the chocolate enchantment cake that Hershey finds itself the subject of protests by a class of students, here on a J-1 visa, supposedly established to permit foreign exchange students to come and work while they experience American culture (lay aside my predilection for my native French-Spanish-Indian-whoever your grandmother fancied in the 1800s-culture) but in this instance turned into an anti-immigration activist's wet dream gone horridly wrong:  no, they have not come to steal your jobs, at least not permanently -- only for as long as they are exchange students!

A few thoughts on the subject, which I have sent to Hershey's somewhat gleefully (it was a cold day in Hell the last I bought a Hershey bar):

As not only a chocolate consumer but also a social worker for the citizen and immigrant communities in my state, I must take double issue with this situation. 
Not only had I abandoned any purchase of Hershey's chocolate eons ago, once introduced to much more richly endowed products, I have also firsthand witnessed the horrid abuses of persons permitted lawful entry into our land for various reasons, be it in search of a possible better life for themselves and their children, or in pursuit of a better education, or to simply immerse themselves in the curious richness of our people.

For this reason, I am made ill at the revelation of the abuses taking place at this packing plant, not solely that of the deception and mistreatment of young people having come here for a taste of America (if somewhat ironically represented by the cheap, base, waxy taste of Hershey's chocolates), but also of the dismissal of local workers in order that Hershey may better avail itself of a cheap influx of unusual tourist labor, to the detriment of those whose roots are far closer to this country.

Though it is not surprising that a company producing such dreck for chocolate would resort to heinous methods to guard its (understandably beleaguered) bottom line, it stands to clear reason that the makers of a far less criminal chocolate and the possessors of a far fairer morality would scarcely need employ such brigand means as have been witnessed to maintain themselves in the world.

A sad and cheap taste, indeed, which you have left in the mouths of these students, the former workers, and indeed all America such as can still palate your "chocolate" without a grimace.


Though in all honesty, I can only begin to guess what sort of intrigues several of my favorite chocolates' producers have engaged in throughout their long histories (one is located in a country with a tortuous political history).