Where have you gone, George M. Pullman?

Allah needs you more than you may know...
(whoa whoa whoa)

An interesting religious accomodation case featured over at Volokh, re. Somali poultry processors working in Minnesota.

If you recruit foreign workers en masse for year-round agriculture jobs, it's expected that the community -- and especially the employers -- will step up to work with newcomers to adjust. To the weather, the schools, the federal holidays, our cultural norms. You can't just extract workers from one culture, then expect them to make it here without an assimilation program, of sorts.

Whether or not you agree with the (minor) decision in the link above, nobody should want disgruntled workers at a meat plant -- natives or non. Nor do you want newcomers out of work, isolated and not assimilating, if the job that brought them here is gone.

Immigration, employment practices, health and safety, community resources ... it's all related these human incentive policies. Nobody wins when you think small or short term, saving a (labor) buck for Peter Employer by passing associated (social) costs onto Paul Taxpayer.

That's why some say a rational immigration policy should come before any big reform of federal and state social programs. Makes sense to me.