The economic shutdown imposed by government bureaucrats and their "science advisors" in the name of controlling the recent virus outbreak has already devastated millions of people in all regions. Forced unemployment is now at record levels and many businesses, large and small, may never recover. However, some people are complaining more loudly than others, including one illegal migrant working at a meat packing plant:

"How am I going to survive? It’s a question without an answer.... I don’t feel safe going to work. I worry about getting sick and bringing the virus home to my three children... Fortunately I work in an area where we have a good amount of space... I stand at one of three conveyor belts where 120 chickens pass per minute... I look for the ones that look purple or still have feathers and take them off of the belt. I make $16 per hour doing that...

At [this plant], the majority of us are Latinos. For those of us who are unauthorized immigrants, in reality, there are very few jobs we can do... If we didn’t go to work, you wouldn’t have those products in the store... I’ve been in the United States for more than 10 years... The government is giving money to a lot of people but as an unauthorized immigrant, I don’t qualify for anything... A lot of people in the plant are saying, if the coronavirus kills us, who are the ones who are going to die of hunger?"

-- BuzzFeed article

Here's a better question: Who allowed these employers to get away with using illegal migrant workers instead of American citizens? How many are living on government handouts without working? Who pays for the schools and the healthcare for their kids? How much do they siphon out of the local community to support their paisanos in Latino land every month? Why shouldn't they all be deported immediately?

This is one "social distancing" policy that is long overdue. The overall cost to American society for maintaining these low-skilled illegal migrants and their extended families is far greater than the cost of shipping them back home. If industry executives cannot manage to run critical production facilities without them, then a change of ownership and management of those facilities should also be a national priority.

Meanwhile, a similar situation is happening across Europe, where illegal migrants continue to receive preferential treatment at the expense of ordinary European citizens. Who benefits from this?

"European governments are using the coronavirus pandemic to grant mass amnesties to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. While Europe is experiencing an economic shock without precedent, and tens of millions of Europeans have lost their livelihoods, migrants in Europe illegally are being showered with free housing and healthcare...

In Italy, the left-wing coalition government has announced a plan to grant amnesty to at least 600,000 migrants in the country illegally. They would receive residency permits that could be renewed in perpetuity... In Portugal, migrants were granted access to the national health service, welfare benefits, bank accounts, and work and rental contracts. The move by Portugal has spurred similar calls for mass amnesties in other European countries... In the United Kingdom, the government released more than 700 migrants from Immigration Removal Centers (IRC) because they cannot be deported due to the coronavirus pandemic... The aim of both migrants and smugglers is now to be "intercepted" by British authorities and taken to a UK port where a large majority of those arriving will claim asylum."

-- Soeren Kern article