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Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Truly Unbelievable!

Last summer, the Colorado General Assembly passed some of the nation's most rigorous anti-immigrant policy laws. While lawmakers congratulated themselves on their foresight immigrants began to flee Colorado. And now the state's large-scale farms, which are almost comically reliant on immigrant labor for profitability, are begging the state government to help them find workers for the growing season. Thus desperate policymakers are turning to another despised population to fix their mess: prison inmates. The state's Department of Corrections recently announced an experimental program to make "low-risk" inmates available for work as farmhands. 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.) Hmmmmmmm....more here.

posted by CASFS 2006 @ 9:29 AM

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