• zephorah@lemm.ee
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    6 days ago

    This is real.

    It affects more than that. A friend of mine works for a small business, with immigrants. One does have a criminal conviction in his past, 50s, left gang life 2 decades ago to clean up his act and be there for his children. Likely gone after the orange potato is sworn in.

    After analyzing the 20% increase to component costs due to tariffs and possibly having her work visa staff expelled, she told my friend to get a side job, because she wasn’t sure what was going to happen. That was last week.

    This week I get a furious wall of text about imminent job loss because ALL orders from this small Business were put on hold “to wait and see”. There is a paycheck to paycheck factor with small businesses pushing to get ahead. They also lost production, materials, and savings when meth heads broke into the business, stole, and started a fire. Insurance, yes, but it still cut in. So cushion is gone.

    So this week, it’s I can’t pay anyone if I have no orders for the next 2 months, so find a new job, I’m filing bankruptcy at the end of the month.

    Immigration IS one piece of this puzzle. And now, people are losing their jobs, one small business is going bankrupt, and the orange potato isn’t even sworn in yet. All the ripple effect of anticipation.

    Also, this business owner is Conservative. Not MAGA, there’s a difference. Fiscal conservative type, voted Kamala because it was in favor of her business. Tariffs and immigration were all the talk, I’m told, pre election.

    Food production business btw. No farm fields, indoor production.

    Normally I like collecting stories, but in less than a week it’s been pretty depressing fare.