Getting Paid 93 Cents a Day in America? Corporations Bring Back the 19th Century

[pampango]

15. Great article in the Nation last week: Importing illegal immigrants - into Georgia's prisons

"Even as Georgia and Alabama passed harsh new immigration laws last year designed to keep out undocumented immigrants, documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that politicians from both states were lobbying hard to bring immigrant detainees in."

http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider-jim-galloway/2012/04/11/importing-illegal-immigrants-%E2%80%93-into-private-georgia-prisons/

Now we know why. The labor that doesn't now get done because so many Hispanic agricultural workers fled those states or were incarcerated can now be contracted out by the prisons for less than the workers were being paid before.

The new republican motto: The only good Hispanic immigrant is an incarcerated Hispanic. That's when they really do contribute to our state economy but working for whatever wages we tell them to work for.

This importation of incarcerated illegal immigrants has the added benefit that, when the next election rolls around, republican politicians can cite the resulting increased cost of incarcerating them in their prisons to show how bad immigration is for their states budgets.

Got to admit the GOP ain't stupid. You can arrest a Hispanic who has been working in the fields one day, then bring the same guy back as a prisoner a few days later and put him to work for even less. And their politicians can take a bow to teabaggers who are happy that minorities have been driven from the state (if they are brought back as prisoners, that's OK) and from farmers who benefit from the cheaper and even more exploitable labor. Win-win for the GOP.