March 3, 2007
REAPING WHAT WE'VE SOWN
Critics of liberal immigration policies that either turn a blind eye towards illegal migrant workers who come to the U.S. to work or would reinstate a Braceros program that would formalize and screen temporary foreign workers contend that this incoming population serves only to depress wages for native U.S. workers. Without the downward pressure on wages exerted by foreign workers, domestic employers would be forced to pay U.S. workers more, or so the logic goes.
The shortcomings of this argument are multi-fold. The first is the assumption that U.S. producers would continue their efforts stateside with higher labor costs. In the case of agriculture, a farm can't up and move to another country, but owner/operators could decide to mechanize or simply stop farming altogether. More than likely, the large costs of mechanization and the higher input costs of domestic labor would serve to force smaller farms to either shut down or sell out to larger corporate farming interests. Secondly, agricultural work is almost by definition seasonal and requires a transient population of workers who are willing to travel to where the work is currently located. Such populations tend to be rootless and without property--not generally the profile of a U.S. citizen. Restrictive immigration measures may gain some politicians votes and the support of die-hard nativists, but they could also serve to choke the life out of some farming communities unable to attract laborers willing to harvest crops.
Colorado finds itself in just such a predicament after it passed strict immigration rules that target migrant laborers necessary to the state's farmers. These workers are now fleeing the state and farmers are desparate for hands in the fields. How desperate has the situation become? Colorado is reinvigorating the prison farm concept, where the state sells the labor of its prisoners.
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.
Under the program, which has drawn criticism from groups concerned about immigrants’ rights and from others seeking changes in the criminal justice system, farmers will pay a fee to the state, and the inmates, who volunteer for the work, will be paid about 60 cents a day, corrections officials said.
Concerned about the possible shortage of field labor, Dorothy B. Butcher, a state representative from Pueblo and a supporter of the program, said, “The workers on these farms do the weeding, the harvesting, the storing, everything that comes with growing crops for the market.”
“If we can’t sustain our work force, we’re going to be in trouble,” said Ms. Butcher, a Democrat.
The program will make its debut in Pueblo County, where farmers have been hit hard by the labor shortage. Frank Sobolik, director of a Colorado State University extension program that works with farmers in Pueblo County, said he expected that about half of the 300 migrant workers employed by area farms might not return this season.
“There’s a feeling, a perception that these laborers won’t be back because it’s safer for them to find work in other states,” Mr. Sobolik said. “The farmers are really concerned. These are high-value crops we’re talking about here with a high labor requirement.”
Forget the fact that the quality of labor by prisoners likely working against their will will probably be substandard; there are more serious concerns about such programs. Aligning economic interests of the state and private businesses in a way that has them benefit from the cheap forced labor of imprisoned citizens presents incentives to abuse the criminal justice system in horrible ways. This occurred in the South after Reconstruction, when emancipated slaves who found themselves unemployed were often arrested on charges like "vagrancy" and sent to prison farms or chain gangs, where their labor was contracted out and they were essentially re-enslaved. Given the disproportionate number of minorities in our current prison systems, do we really want to send them out into the fields?
Appearances aside, it provides a much more insidious and invisible tilt to the criminal justice system where everyone but the accused benefits by having him sent to jail. Labor shortages will quickly be responded to by get-tough-on-crime campaigns. Decriminalization or tolerance of otherwise non-destructive behavior towards others will be met with increasingly draconian penalties. It will never appear as dramatic or as obvious, but it's a dangerous system to put into place.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at March 3, 2007 9:36 PM
| Politics & PolicyTrackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.lexiphane.com/mt/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/1104