“A conservative radio talk show host in Iowa wants to turn undocumented immigrants into “property of the state” and forced into labor. “Put up a sign that says at the end of 60 days, if you are not here with our permission, can’t prove your legal status, you become property of the state,” Jan Mickelson said during his show on Monday. “And then we start to extort or exploit or indenture your labor.” Audio of Mickelson’s segment was posted online by Media Matters. When a caller said “it sounds an awful lot like slavery,” Mickelson asked: “Well, what’s wrong with slavery?”

“He also claimed that Americans are “indentured” to undocumented immigrants by supposedly being forced to pay for their expenses. Mickelson said the undocumented immigrants could be housed in tents, similar to the “Tent City Jail” set up by Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio. “Put up a tent village, we feed and water these new assets, we give them minimal shelter, minimal nutrition, and offer them the opportunity to work for the benefit of the taxpayers of the state of Iowa,” Mickelson said. “All they have to do to avoid servitude is to leave.”

However, Mickelson found it hard to stop there. He went on to claim how reinstituting slavery was “the only way to pick up the fallen American economy and allow it to be competitive once again on the world market.”

“The problem today with jobs in America can be summed up with one simple word – China,” Mickelson opined. “They’re killing us on the job market because the Chinese are willing to work for small change and that’s just something we cannot allow here. Or, we couldn’t up until now.”

The conservative radio show host stated that “no one in their right mind would accept the kind of wages they have in China, but on the other hand, that’s exactly the reason why the Chinese are pulling in all the big jobs and companies.” He added that “we need to fight fire with fire. Instead of trying to lower the wages of highly-trained American workers, we need to come up with some sort of workforce that would be satisfied with much lower wages.” Hence the “what’s wrong with slavery?” comment.

“If you really think about it, it’s almost ideal,” the xenophobic host opined. “We battle low wages with even lower, borderline non-existent ones. And at the same time, we don’t owe our new employees anything except minimal shelter, food and protection. And if that goes well, we can even add gays to the equation; they’re not good for much else, anyway. I mean, it’s worked for the Chinese immensely. Why not copy them for a change, instead of continuing to allow them to do the same to us?”