NPR is reporting that Arizona's "papers please" anti-immigration law was secretly conceived and promoted by the private prison industry. You know, those wonderful guys that have no problem bribing judges to send them more "customers."
NPR spent the past several months analyzing hundreds of pages of campaign finance reports, lobbying documents and corporate records. What they show is a quiet, behind-the-scenes effort to help draft and pass Arizona Senate Bill 1070 by an industry that stands to benefit from it: the private prison industry.
But rather than state their case openly, the companies sent Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce to a bogus "think tank" called the American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC obliged by drafting the law that will potentially send many thousands of detainees to privatized prisons in the state. At the taxpayers' expense, of course.
The law passed virtually word for word, as written by and for the industry.
Read the whole story. If you have a strong stomach.