Posted on 03/04/2007 1:24:23 PM PST by backtothestreets
DENVER, March 3 — As migrant laborers flee Colorado because of tough new immigration restrictions, worried farmers are looking to prisoners to fill their places in the fields.
In a pilot program run by the state Corrections Department, supervised teams of low-risk inmates beginning this month will be available to harvest the swaths of sweet corn, peppers and melons that sweep the southeastern portion of the state.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
We just have too many people on welfare and sitting in prison eating on the government dime to have to import cheap labor.
Tie it in with parole hearings. Hard work + good behavior cuts your time.
And our own president didn't think it could get done without his precious illegals.
Another untapped labour source are the people sitting on their butts collecting welfare checks. They could catch a bus from the inner city to fields and I'd be willing to pony up tax money to pay for the bus.
I wonder how many of the prisoners are illegal aliens?
>> Inmates Will Replace Migrants in Colorado Fields
Or...
"Individuals Under Rehabilitation Will Replace Illegal Immigrants in Colorado Fields"
Oh my, what'll they think of next? Teenagers?
Remind me again why the school year is as it is. Couldn't be because it revolves around the agricultural growing seasons, huh?
We've got 2 prisons locally and I farm. I could use them. My father had German POW's help pick potatoes back in the mid 1940's. Why not now? Should have been done for years.
My Norwegian friend did this as a teen, but says that nowadays the Norwegian kids don't want to do it and the farmers have to hire eastern Europeans.
Yeah, teens aren't taught the value of a day's hard work. It's not the teens' fault but their pampered parents who don't want junior to get too hot and dirty and who knows what sort of germs might be found in the soil.
Where do you think your food comes from? Oh, the grocery store, that's right. I busted my butt on the farm BEFORE I was a teenager, and thank GOD I did.
Aren't a lot of illegals in prison? So what's the difference; except they will try to escape and nothing will be done.
"Inmates Will Replace Migrants in Colorado Fields"
What took them so long?
We have millions in prison in this country. Time to make 'em work for their keep , instead of them just eating free food, and sleeping.
Works for me. Solves at least two problems.
And here I thought summer vacation was in the UNION contract...
They should've been doing this anyway.
It happened here too:
The sleepy farming community of Aliceville, Ala., was almost 5,000 miles from the front lines in World War II. But when 300 stone-faced German prisoners of war marched into town on June 2, 1943, the residents of Pickens County turned out in droves to see the “devils” who had terrorized Europe and plunged the world into conflict.
Oddly enough, many of the prisoners also recalled their time in Aliceville as some of the happiest days of their lives. The camp is where many of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps, Germany’s elite troops, spent their captivity after being thoroughly defeated by the Americans and English at Tunis.
About 1,000 U.S. military and civilian workers were employed at the Aliceville camp. Its existence and the workers who lived in the town pumped much-needed cash into the local economy. As for the prisoners, many worked at various jobs outside the camp under strict military supervision. Local employers could apply to the camp for POW labor.
The camp ran like a city within a city. POWs gardened, held classes and even ran their own printing press and published a camp newspaper titled “Fenced Guests.” Many were outstanding artists, sketching and painting scenes of camp life and memories of their homeland.
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