A special immigration status helped Mills Manufacturing, which makes parachutes for the U.S. military, keep its workforce fully staffed. But last week, an order from the Supreme Court allowed the Trump Administration to revoke temporary protections for about 500,000 immigrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, and Nicaragua. WSJ’s Ruth Simon explains why companies like Mills are scrambling. Annie Minoff hosts. Further Listening: - A New Phase in Trump’s Immigration Fight - How Frog Embryos Landed a Scientist in ICE Detention Sign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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A couple months ago, our colleague Ruth Simon took a trip to Asheville, North Carolina to tour a factory there.
I've got a five-minute tour and a five-hour tour and everything in between.
Okay, I'll take the in-between. Ruth is being led around the factory by John Oswald, CEO of Mills Manufacturing. Mills isn't just any factory. They make crucial equipment for the U.S. military, specifically parachutes. When a soldier jumps out of a plane, whether on a training mission or in combat, there's a good chance they're trusting a Mills parachute to carry them safely to the ground.
And if you have any questions or you're curious about anything, don't hesitate to stop and ask me.
I'm fascinated. I'm just trying to take it all in. Overhead, fluorescent lights illuminate rows of workstations covered with fabrics, straps, and thread. There are hundreds of sewing machines in the Mills factory, operated by employees who painstakingly cut and stitch each piece of each parachute. So how many steps to make a parachute?
Oh, so in this particular one, there's 27 steps.
A single skipped stitch among thousands is considered a major defect. Throughout the factory, signs spell out the company's mission — to bring troops safely to the ground 100 percent of the time.
And it's and your signs are all in English. Oh, you have it. Wait. So you have multiple languages. So English, Spanish, Moldovan and Russian.
But we also speak Ukrainian and Romanian.
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