Colorado farm owners replace immigrant labor with 'chain gangs'

[BayCityProgressive]

http://www.workers.org/2007/us/colorado-0322/

Colorado legislators passed some of the most restrictive immigration laws in the country following the massive mobilizations for immigrant rights in late March and on International Workers Day, May 1, 2006. One of the laws, H.R. 1023, denies all who have no documentation, that is, all undocumented workers and their families, any “non-emergency” public benefits.

In the wake of these repressive laws and a series of workplace raids, farm owners in Southern and Eastern Colorado are having difficulty finding workers to plant and harvest crops. Last year many crops spoiled in the fields and the agricultural industry across the country suffered major losses.

The Colorado farm owners’ answer to this crisis in the agricultural industry is to find even more exploitable labor than immigrant workers—prison labor.

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Where are all those Americans who would jump at the jobs?

[C_eh_N_eh_D_eh]

2. In the cities, probably.

[eShirl]

4. looking for wages they can live on

I wonder if chain gang labor is cheaper than immigrant labor?

[no_hypocrisy]

3. It's slave labor no matter who's doing it. n/t

[eShirl]

5. look for a lot more of this in the future

[Skink]

6. If you pay poverty wages immigrants tend to freelance in the meth trade.

They make it. Sell it. That sort of thing.

[ret5hd]

7. So now immigrants are the cause of failing Social Security, failing schools,

falling wages, exposing our children to wanton laziness, AND THE METH TRADE!!!

Maybe those college republicans are right...we need a "catch a immigrant day", kinda like "Whacking Day" on the Simpsons.

[whistle]

8. Colorado is just following the Nazi Germany model of forced labor camps

....no surprise given the power elite which runs the State of Colorado

[nealmhughes]

9. 100 Years ago "convict contracted labor" was a huge issue for the Progressives.

Convicts were shackled and used in coal mines in Alabama, leased by corporations, put into camps throughout the Pine Barrens of the SE and made to tap turpentine.
It was a moral outrage, complete with sweatboxes, balls and chains, etc. Worse than "I Am a Fugitive from a Chaingang" or "Coolhand Luke" by far.
It, along with child labor, were mainstays of the Roosevelt/Wilsonian reforms that swept the nascent Progressive South (Bibb Graves governorship in Alabama, for example).
To those who know New South history, this is especially outrageous, and frankly, as a Tennesseean who lives in North Alabama, I am only too glad that this is happening in Colorado, since it would be so easy for a huge southern bashing thread to have constant life here.
Jails are not money-making ventures. Repeat, rinse, jails are not money-making ventures. It is immoral to make profit from a ward of the state/county.

[Solo_in_MD]

10. What is Sherriff Joe going to do...he sets the standards for inmate abuse, and this is clearly

beyond pink underwear and living in tents.