Tough laws passed last year against illegal immigration have created a need for farmworkers.

Ever since passing what its Legislature promoted as the nation's toughest laws against illegal immigration last summer, Colorado has struggled with a labor shortage as migrants fled the state. This week, officials announced a novel solution: Use convicts as farmworkers.

The Department of Corrections hopes to launch a pilot program this month - thought to be the first of its kind - that would contract with more than a dozen farms to provide inmates who will pick melons, onions and peppers.

Crops were left to spoil in the fields after the passage of legislation that required state identification to get government services and allowed police to check suspects' immigration status.

'The reason this [program] started is to make sure the agricultural industry wouldn't go out of business," state Rep. Dorothy Butcher said. [...]

Prisoners who are a low security risk may choose to work in the fields, earning 60 cents a day. They also are eligible for small bonuses.

—Colorado to Use Inmates to Fill Migrant Shortage, Los Angeles Times, Thursday 01 March 2007

Mmmm. Small bonuses. How groovy! They're even spending more on this than they paid for the migrant workers, the article goes on to say. Hey, it's all by the books, right? I bet the fatcats over at the Department of Corrections feel pretty clever. And shouldn't Mexican-haters everywhere rejoice these days? It's all so efficient, when you look out over everything that is happening. Put the Mexicans in jail, take their social security contributions, move inmates onto farms. Solutions like this are excellent, because they really address that whole Indian problem that keeps dragging on and on. All that that entails. Of course, there is progress, I can't paint it all...White. Most of the Indians on the northern part of the continent were killed back when Murka was a bit less mature, and the whole Hate the Indigenous movement a tad less sublimated. Now it's the southern ones that need to be dealt with.

Either way, it's a good idea to steal the maize for good. Get that the hell out of their hands. That little symbol of debt and obligation and original habitation has really proven to be an annoyance.

Next, fences. More border type enforcements. The reservoir angle worked good to the north. Now you just need to erect a giant wall or fence along the "southern US border," and get that ghetto called Mexico under control! Get the Mex off the crops one way or another. You know...it makes the rest of America look so...dependent! As if there should be gratitude or something. And we already got ONE damn "Thanksgiving," so that's that. Hell, send 'these hardworkin' brownies to fight our Petroleum Wars against the A-rabs, and you're killing all kinds of birds with one, monstrous, toxic stone. That's American ingenuity at work!

It's really amazing all the ideas people will shift around to avoid recognizing Mexicans as indigenous peoples. It's stunning, the array of programs created and dollars spent in America to avoid treating Mexicans like human beings. Or even seeing at them that way. Anything else is preferable.

But you know. Love and War. It's all good. Anyway, between how many American Mexicanos get arrested on the streets and Mexican families are getting caught up in the ICE sweeps, now they can all end up in jail and later united on the fields. One big happy Mexican family working together.

But under the whiphand of the warden. How it oughtta be.