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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGeorgia To Use Cheap Prison Labor To Harvest Crops For Second Year In A Row
When Georgia Republicans passed an anti-immigration law last year, Hispanic farm workers fled the state in droves, leaving farmers with no one left to pick the crops. Republicans said that they were creating new jobs for Americans by clearing out undocumented workers, but as it turns out, the law also scared many legal workers away as well and Americans arent crazy about working in the fields all day picking crops for little money. As a result, crops rotted, costing farm owners millions of dollars. Georgia Republicans then had an idea. Replace the field workers with dirt cheap prison labor.
According to 11 Alive News in Georgia, the state is using transitional prison inmates to work in south Georgias Vidalia onion industry this spring. The program is an update of a failed program introduced in 2011, in which the state sent probationers into vegetable fields to help ease a labor shortage that followed the passage of a tough new immigration law. Growers complained that probationers were unreliable and slow compared to migrant workers who have historically worked in vegetable fields.
Read more: http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/04/20/georgia-to-use-cheap-prison-labor-to-harvest-crops-for-second-year-in-a-row/
freshwest
(53,661 posts)This should be a lesson for the rest of the GOP, what they have planned for your kids' future. Yup...
aquart
(69,014 posts)I'd be wary about spitting on the sidewalk near harvest time. They may have picking quotas to fill.
NuttyFluffers
(6,811 posts)all those drug war, driving while black, police harassment, voter disenfranchisement upon felony conviction, etc. has led to the ultimate racist wet dream. we are back to slavery. welcome to USA in 2012.