Colorado Farmers Turn to Prisoners to Do Work of Illegal Immigrants, page 1

Originally posted by xpert11
I will leave the issue of inmates earning an wage for another thread.

I couldn't speak for all States about this, only the State I live in...At least on the County level, inmates are required to spend some money for their "accomodations." Several years ago, a friend of mine was so jailed for a month or two...But they also let him out on "work release" so he could still go work at his job.

IMO, allowing inmates to work (if they're not the obsessively violent types, of course) is a positive thing. If the jail facility does charge some money for the inmates term, then they can at least keep up with that cost & still save some money aside while they're in the slammer (Kind of hard to go spend your money at the tavern when you're cooped up in a jail cell

).
At the very least, those prisoners working on the farms (as posted earlier) are taking some effort with their own rehabilitation too.

In reply to most of PieMan' posts...
You say that the inmate workers don't contribute to the local economy? You can bet they still do!
You should consider that the jail facilities won't being hauling inmates a very long way to work at the farms...The vast majority of such workers will be coming from the most local jails.
As I stated above (at least in my State, at the County level; it's likely other levels do the same), inmates do have to contribute to help defray the cost of their incarceration.
Also, depending when they're released, they're likely to go back to their (mostly local) homes & start spending that earned money for a celebration (Let's hope that they don't wind up having so much fun that they get arrested again...

)!
Also, even though inmates still on their jail time have their homes (with utility hookups, telephone service, etc), they still have most (if not all) of their bills to pay to maintain their homes. Think of it as if you went on vacation for some time; You'd still have bills to pay even while you're not at home.
As for the increase in payment for the consumer? Every time you see products being advertised (on TV, in newspapers, even those junk-mail ad fliers they stuff in your mailbox) have all been paid for by the consumers...You don't think that the company that manufactures those products take the cost of advertising out of their own pockets, do you? They take it out of the pockets of consumers. Why else do you see name-brand products costing more than generic brands, even in the same store?
Banks target everybody for mortgages & credit cards, not just illegals. The vast majority of banks in the USA follow the same lead as the Federal Reserve & that is a bank operating illegally anyway. So of course, local branches of large banks are going to try to suck out as much money as they can from illegals anyway...At least, up until the point when the illegals get caught & deported (or legally Naturalized), that is.

Originally posted by ThePieMaN
The only threat is outsourcing. The illegals are keeping our costs down and keeping us competitive with outside sources/countries.

Actually, outsourcing is only part of the threat...It's the combination of outsourcing & hiring illegals that is the real threat. The "domino-effect" you describe only moves faster when these two problems are combined. It's not just the fact that illegals are getting hired (not to also mention the fact that it's illegal to hire illegals in the first place), but it's that the amount of jobs available decreasing that makes the problem worse.

Even after the inmates are released, some may stay with the farm jobs...At least until they find work more to their liking & can get hired elsewhere. In short, the idea of hiring inmates is a temporary solution, until other economical factors can be addressed & action taken.

Originally posted by jsobecky

Originally posted by ThePieMaN
You would rather pay a few cents more for corn then see Illegal immigrants make a living to pay for their American childrens needs?

Yep. Let their own gov't take care of them.

Ummm...I'd have to agree with jsobecky on this one. According to the Congressional Journals at the time that the 16th Amendment was legislated, use of the so-called "anchor baby policy" is Unconstitutional. At least one of the parents of an American-born child must be a legal American Citizen for the child to be also automatically granted Citizenship. It has to do with the fact the this nation must be able to consider the parent as being "under the jurisdiction of" the State or Federal law structure. If both parents are illegal aliens, so then is the child. This is because Congress (at the time) considered such people as foreign diplomats (& alien immigrants until they've been "naturalized") as being "under the jurisdiction" of their home nation and therefore not granted Citizenship.

Originally posted by ThePieMaN
so does the average american get to sock away more then 20% of their earnings every month into savings by the time the end of the month rolls around?

Inflation & massive debt (at both Government & Public levels) has more to do with the illegality of the Federal Reserve Bank & Corporate lobbying in Government than it has to do with illegal immigrants & the outsourcing of jobs...This is a problem that's been around a lot longer than the past decade or so when illegal immigration became such a big problem. The illegals & outsourcing is one of the "domino effects" of those already-existing problems.