What happens when migrant workers in Alabama decide that the state’s labor laws make it too risky to keep doing the grueling work nobody else is willing to do? Answer: They leave.

As Stephen Colbert put it on Wednesday’s “Colbert Report,” while noting how remarkably prescient and correct he had been about this issue but a year ago before Congress, “Yes, Hispanic farmworkers have fled Alabama, stealing yet another thing Americans would like to do.” Meanwhile, the tomatoes are rotting on the vine down in the Heart of Dixie. That there’s some good legislatin’! –KA

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