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I was listening to the radio while I got ready for work today, and the Congressman who proposed the immigration bill that makes illegal immigrants felons was on, discussing his bill, this idea of amnesty being bad and such.
Now, I was blow drying my hair and brushing my teeth so I didn't catch the whole interview, but at some point this phrase came up: "Let the prisoners pick the fruit"
Which scared the hell out of me.
I mean, when I connect the dots here, what I'm seeing is, we round up the illegal immigrants who are here doing jobs Americans refuse to do, largely, and so to somehow make white America feel better, we'll round them up and stick them in jails, then *use them as slave labor* to continue to do those jobs.
Am I completely off the mark, here? I intend to go looking for more information on this idea of using prisoners to fill the jobs illegal immigrants now do. I want to see who's saying it and how often/loud. Because I find this just stunning.
March 31 2006, 19:22:03 UTC 6 years ago
I didn't hear the interview but I'm fairly sure that your interpretation is correct. Penal labor is coming back to America in a big way. As we increasingly become a penal country -- we already have as many people in prison as the old Soviet Union ever did, and the number is going up -- we're having to face the increasing huge burden of expense that comes with those millions in prison. Penal labor is seen as a way to defray the expenses of running prisons, and is being increasingly used. During the 60s and 70s, penal labor became unpopular in most places because it was seen as a form of indentured servitude, and the practice was massively corrupt with prison officials taking kickbacks and skims, things like that. So the "chain gang" and "making license plates" went out of fashion. The modern incarnation of penal labor is far more capitalized; before, prisons were run by the state and the labor done was done to benefit the state -- stuff like tarring roads and clearing brush. Nowadays, it's being done for private labor; factory workforces, for instance. I mean, a free person you have to pay minimum wage -- but a prisoner? You can pay them wages people in China wouldn't envy.
So, yeah, he was saying to arrest the immigrants and put them to labor doing the jobs they would have been doing before, but for the profit of the state and business interests - at the expense of the actual prisoners, of course, who will earn, and be able to keep, even less money. Possibly none at all.
March 31 2006, 22:14:23 UTC 6 years ago
Not that this is the worst thing about this, by a long stretch, but it IS another example about how conservatives are... not actually conservative, but instead pro-business.