Todo Tiene Su Como-Se-Llama

As a denizen of Iowa, you get to hear a lot about this from both sides. I agree that this documentary is compelling, but I think it definitely glosses over the fact that the city of Postville was a lot like New Orleans pre-Katrina. They KNEW that continuing down the path that they were on (and when you consider the percentage of illegals in the town, there's no way that it wasn't apparent to everyone) was eventually going to lead to trouble. But nobody wanted to do the hard things and face the problem head-on, preferring instead to pretend that it wasn't a problem. And then when the consequences did come home to roost, everyone acts as though this was an unavoidable catastrophe.

Obviously, nothing I've said addresses the moral question of immigration, deporting illegal immigrants or separating families in the process... not to mention the notion of protectionism and mistreating illegal aliens... that's really played out on a national level in my mind. But to me, what's really peculiar about Postville is that this was a case where everyone involved knew what was going on to some degree or another and proceeded either in willful ignorance or complicity. I would be interested to attempt to draw some parallels with other small towns that have played host to massive raids on relatively victimless criminals like moonshine distillers or marijuana farmers.