Poetic Justice - Criminals "Stealing" Illegals' Jobs

"You'll never get rid of the illegals! Even if you try and crack down there are just too many!" So say the liberal and the misguided conservative alike. Somewhat contradicting themselves they also say, "If you get rid of all of the illegals our economy will collapse without their cheap labor."

Conservatives have long stated in rebuttal to the first argument that you wouldn't really need to round up every illegal in the country to get rid of them. All you need to do is crackdown on those that would hire them and remove their access to welfare in all its forms. Once you remove the incentive for the illegal to be here, they'll go where they can find work - somewhere else.

As to the second point, conservatives have long understood that in the absence of a cheap labor force the market will adjust and compensate through innovation like it always does. Another great solution is to kill two birds with one stone, and that's what they're doing in Colorado:

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.

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.”

What an idea. We want (notice, I didn't write need) cheap labor. What sector of the population is largely worthless, and a pariah on society?