Colorado to use inmates to fill migrant shortage

Tough laws passed last year against illegal immigration have created a need for farmworkers.
By Nicholas Riccardi, Times Staff Writer
March 1, 2007

DENVER — Ever since passing what its Legislature promoted as the nation's toughest laws against illegal immigration last summer, Colorado has struggled with a labor shortage as migrants fled the state. This week, officials announced a novel solution: Use convicts as farmworkers.

The Department of Corrections hopes to launch a pilot program this month — thought to be the first of its kind — that would contract with more than a dozen farms to provide inmates who will pick melons, onions and peppers.

Crops were left to spoil in the fields after the passage of legislation that required state identification to get government services and allowed police to check suspects' immigration status.

"The reason this started is to make sure the agricultural industry wouldn't go out of business," state Rep. Dorothy Butcher said. Her district includes Pueblo, near the farmland where the inmates will work.

more -> http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-inmates1mar01,0,1429575,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines

legal slave labour. This is, I believe, the reason for a lot of "minimum sentencing" laws. It allows the police state to use these felons in manufacturing and food production. China does this too.

I thought people were allowed to do highway cleanup and things of this nature IF they want to and IF they are well behaved.

Now any connection to min. sentencing laws is certainly problematic.

edit: the migrant workers are closer to slaves - most don't really have an option but to work for so little.

giving prisoners something other to do than watch cable, lift weights and rape, but theoretically, wouldn't the market say that the growers have to start raising the wages and the workers will come? Even from other states?

Other states will still allow use of illegal immigrants and their crops will be cheaper, causing these farms to be shut down. The playing field has to be leveled.

While Jobs in the US is the "Pull" on illegal immigration what is the "Push"? Why do you have people looking for work and thus having to go to the US for that work? The people coming to the US in recent years have been mostly poor farmers from Southern Mexico and Central America. Why are they coming? The push was the DROP IN CORN PRICES DO TO NAFTA. The US just dumped corn onto Mexico, below the cost to produce by these small farmers. Once the farmers could NOT sell their crop they had no other way to make money except to look for work in the US.

This has been REVERSED in the last year do to Bio-fuels. Corn prices are UP in Mexico as while as the US as more and more US corn is set to become Bio-fuels. This is giving more money to the small farmers in Mexico who can again sell Corn at a profit in Mexico and Central America.

In simple terms it is probable that the reason they is a shortage of migrant workers is that you have less people crossing the Border.

As to the immigrants already in the US, many will return to Mexico (This is the historical norm for most immigrants), but many have moved to better paying jobs in Construction and other jobs. Thus farmers who rely on immigrant labor are caught in a bind, people are being drawn away from migrant work by better paying jobs while less new immigrants are crossing the borders. Something has to give and right now that is the Farmers who rely on migrant workers.