The corporate profiteering Laura Wides-Munoz and Garance Burke won't tell you about (AP, immigration, private prisons)

Laura Wides Munoz and Garance Burke of the Associated Press offer "Immigrants prove big business for prison companies" (link).

It's similar to several other stories printed by both the establishment media and by those on the left, and like those it's very ironic and it also might be very misleading for many people.

Here are the first two paragraphs:

The U.S. is locking up more illegal immigrants than ever, generating lucrative profits for the nation's largest prison companies, and an Associated Press review shows the businesses have spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying lawmakers and contributing to campaigns.

The cost to American taxpayers is on track to top $2 billion for this year, and the companies are expecting their biggest cut of that yet in the next few years thanks to government plans for new facilities to house the 400,000 immigrants detained annually.

What you won't hear from Wides-Munoz and Burke is the far, far larger corporate profiteering from illegal immigration itself.

Whatever private prison companies make from immigration detention, it's dwarfed by how much other corporations make from illegal immigration itself. Corrupt chicken processors want to lower wages by hiring illegal aliens, major banks want deposits from illegal aliens, want to give them loans, and want to help them send money out of the U.S. Those banks get help with that from the Federal Reserve, which also has its hands out. And, all those entities profiting from illegal immigration donate to and lobby politicians to look the other way. For more on the general topic, see US Chamber of Commerce, National Restaurant Association, Western Growers, Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, immigration agriculture, National Association of Manufacturers, Linda Chavez, Frank Sharry, and dozens more.

Yet, you'd be extremely hard pressed to find the media following the money on all those trying to profit from illegal immigration or their helpers (one very rare example is here, and that's from 2007).

Instead, the media tries to distract people by offering articles like this. Yes, there are issues with private detention, and those should be addressed.

But, that's not the purpose of such stories. Those behind such stories being published want those who are prone to oppose corporate profiteering to think that detention is the key profit center of illegal immigration, when it is clearly is not. Stories like these help other corporations to gain much larger profits from illegal immigration itself.

For more on this topic, see How Occupy gets tricked on private immigration detention prisons.

And, if you want Burke and Wides-Munoz to follow the real money, let them know: @lwmunoz and @garanceburke