The Prison Industrial Complex and Immigration
Story by Christopher Patrick Nelson
Photo by De-bug

In the US, locking people up is big business, and now we are told Congress wants to make it a felony to give an illegal immigrant so much as a ride in one's car. This bill, HR4437, could make a lot of prison wardens very rich.   Even if provisions that directly criminalized immigrants and those that aid them have been taken out of the bill, that intention is certainly still present in Washington DC power circles.

The United States of America puts more people in prison than almost any other nation. Our prisons are overcrowded, so we are constantly building more jails. This is to house the prisoners we already have. However,   lock-up facilities require expensive carpenters and contractors. Employees require equipment. The guards, who possess one of the country's most powerful unions, need housing, so towns spring up around places like the cells of Folsom, California. Inmates have very few rights, so they are used as sweatshop laborers by corporations. All of this together is what is called the “prison-industrial complex” and it needs more and more prisoners, so more and more human behavior is being declared illegal.

As the movie A Day Without A Mexican pointed out, white people may be the heads of state, but the Latinos   do the gut-work,   here illegally or otherwise. Though workers who are not citizens, they pay their taxes as honest citizens, yet are not eligible to get any of it back through Social Security or tax refunds. This bill is aimed at Latinos. The General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs, (GATT) The North American Free Trade Agreement, (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) force South Americans to move to the U.S. or die. (All of Bolivia's water is owned by the Bechtel corporation, not the Bolivians.) In a cruel and not-so-accidental irony, corporations will make a profit out of first ruining their lands, then getting low-paid immigrant workers (who dare not ask for more), and finally,   filling chain-gangs who cannot escape. The long story made short is that if   HR4437 passes, the U.S. will go past the Police State stage and right to the Prison State stage.

Lock-up is there business. Business is good.

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