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Practically speaking, the idea will likely be a bust. Colorado farms typically hire 10,000 workers per season; analysts expect a shortfall of 4,000 this year. The prison program is voluntary, and inmates will receive 60 cents a day for their labor. (Farmers will pay the state a rate roughly equal to the going wage for farm labor: about $9 per hour.) As the Los Angeles Times editorialized last week, "not too many inmates will do backbreaking field work for 60 cents a day." In other words, you can't even get native-born prisoners to do farm work these days.
What, then, will happen? Most likely, the state will quietly ease up enforcement of its severe laws. Farm owners aren't the only ones lamenting the drying up of a cheap, hardworking, and ready labor supply. Typically, 150,000 migrant workers stream into Colorado each year, the great bulk of them working in construction and food service. Once those industries register their dismay over the laws, policymakers will face even more pressure to let up on immigration.
Indeed, that already may be happening. The Post delivered a wan report last week on the failure to deliver promised savings to the state's taxpayers. "Colorado's new law banning state spending on illegal immigrants has cost more than $2 million to enforce -- and has saved the state nothing," the article opens, before quoting several deflated lawmakers and state-agency officials. "The Colorado crackdown," the Post concludes, "is falling apart."
Thus the prison-labor idea represents a limp and largely symbolic policy response to the state's farmworker crisis. But the symbology is powerful -- and it provides a stark view into our nation's relationship to food, agriculture, and physical labor.
In short, Colorado's brilliant idea suggests that farm labor has become so degraded that the only people willing to do it have to be led to the fields at gunpoint, shackled together: farm labor as punishment.
The USDA reports that 30 million people, about a quarter of the U.S. population, lived on farms in 1930. By 2000, that number had dwindled to 3 million people, representing 1 percent of the population. And many of them are "farm operators" who never get their hands in the dirt, instead managing vast labor forces -- largely foreign-born.
I saw a story about this on tv last night and the inmates make $4 an hour, the money they make is given to them when their sentences are up. Every inmate interviewed seemed happy to be doing the work. The inmates that were interviewed did say that some inmates got out of the program, but for the most part I did not here any of them complaining.
"Buckham, incarcerated for embezzlement, is one of 15 prisoners at Pueblo's minimum-security La Vista Correctional Facility who plant crops and pull weeds as part of a new prison farm-labor program.
Buckham, who spoke with reporters Tuesday on an onion farm outside Avondale, is so happy to leave prison each day that she doesn't mind rising at 3:30 a.m. and working in 100-degree heat."
"Kaedra Peterson, 32, in prison for drug possession, said her pay increased from 60 cents a day for prison work to $4 a day at the farm. She used to rely on money from her grandmother to buy basic necessities such as toothpaste and soap. Now, she can pick up that tab as well as pay more toward restitution.
Butcher said farmers pay $9.60 an hour per inmate for the labor. The money covers all the program's expenses, including the supervisor's salary and transportation to and from work."
The above are from the article. So much for the lies "No Americans will do these jobs.", "The prisoners won't even do it." "It's so back-breaking only Mexican illegals will do it."
It's incredible the excuses and lies illegals come up with.
Colorado's new law banning state spending on illegal immigrants has cost more than $2 million to enforce - and has saved the state nothing.
Less than a year after politically charged debates on illegal immigration, officials are reporting high costs, no savings and unexpected problems with the new laws.
Once touted by statehouse Republicans and Democrats as the toughest anti-immigration package in the nation, the Colorado crackdown is falling apart.
"We're finding very few of the departments where these bills have a major effect," said state Sen. Abel Tapia, D-Pueblo, chairman of the legislature's Joint Budget Committee.
The centerpiece of the get-tough effort was House Bill 1023, which prohibits spending taxpayer money on illegal immigrants except in cases required by the federal government.
To figure out whether the law is working, the Joint Budget Committee asked each department to report how much it was spending to enforce the law and how much the department was saving as a result.
The result: Eighteen departments reported adding $2.03 million in costs while not saving any money. None of the departments could say how many, if any, illegal immigrants were being denied state- funded services. Lawmakers expressed mixed views about the report.
To those who think we don't have enough workers in the US to do all the jobs cheaply for corporations, here is what the smart state of Colorado did.
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It's slave labor.
Some choice. Sit in jail all day or work for FOUR DOLLARS AN HOUR?
I guess minimum wage is out the window if you have a deal with the government?
I'm glad these people are working, don't get me wrong, but I'm concerned with who is benefiting from it. Somehow, there are many boobs out there who think of farmers with these romantic notions of poor hardworking men, pushing a plow through a field all day for barely enough money to put food on the table. That's because all the movies and tv you see about farming have to do with failed, broke farmers. Bull
Farmers are generally loaded. That combine they're driving costs almost $250,000.00. The LAND, c'mon. This is not a business you start-up with a couple thousand dollars and a dream. Why are they getting these people so cheap?
I saw a story about this on tv last night and the inmates make $4 an hour, the money they make is given to them when their sentences are up. Every inmate interviewed seemed happy to be doing the work. The inmates that were interviewed did say that some inmates got out of the program, but for the most part I did not here any of them complaining.
Yes, the rate of pay for the inmates is between $4 and $9 a day. The inmate also gains "time served 'bonuses' " for working. This means they will stay in prison less.
From working in criminal law for almost 2 years, I can say people are HAPPY to be doing stuff outside prison, to save some money for the future, to have a work history and in the future move into a small community to help with farmwork (which by the way pays something like $15/h). These inmates will do a better job than the illegals, will contribute to the country, will get work history, will get released earlier, will have some money saved up. It will save the state funds and will reduce willgal immigration.
It is a win-win situation for everyone. But the hard left won't like it.
"Buckham, incarcerated for embezzlement, is one of 15 prisoners at Pueblo's minimum-security La Vista Correctional Facility who plant crops and pull weeds as part of a new prison farm-labor program.
Buckham, who spoke with reporters Tuesday on an onion farm outside Avondale, is so happy to leave prison each day that she doesn't mind rising at 3:30 a.m. and working in 100-degree heat."
"Kaedra Peterson, 32, in prison for drug possession, said her pay increased from 60 cents a day for prison work to $4 a day at the farm. She used to rely on money from her grandmother to buy basic necessities such as toothpaste and soap. Now, she can pick up that tab as well as pay more toward restitution.
Butcher said farmers pay $9.60 an hour per inmate for the labor. The money covers all the program's expenses, including the supervisor's salary and transportation to and from work."
The above are from the article. So much for the lies "No Americans will do these jobs.", "The prisoners won't even do it." "It's so back-breaking only Mexican illegals will do it."
It's incredible the excuses and lies illegals come up with.
I am sooooo happy we are ridding ourselves of illegals and putting US workers to work. That is what reabilitation of criminals is, not the liberal idea of giving child rapists probation and letting them re-offend.
Put them to work and we will have less inmates.
Hey in Alabama, all inmates are FORCED to work in chain-gangs, clearning trash off the sides of roads and having to mow down side bushes. Did you know 'Bama has a low illegal alien problem (well, much lower most other states).
Hey in Alabama, all inmates are FORCED to work in chain-gangs, clearning trash off the sides of roads and having to mow down side bushes. Did you know 'Bama has a low illegal alien problem (well, much lower most other states).
Do inmates really work in chain-gangs in Alabama?
Non-violent inmates work on the side of the road here in Florida (not in chain gangs!), but I am not exactly sure of the effect that has here on illegal immigration.
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