Last week, the Supreme Court upheld Arizona's "Legal Workers Arizona Act" (LAWA) enabling the state to revoke the business licenses of employers who hire undocumented workers. The ruling on the state's version of an "employer sanction" law passed in 2007 (not to be confused with the state's broader anti-immigrant SB 1070 passed last year and also headed for the high court) may backfire big time for the state.
In March, the Arizona state senate voted down five aggressively anti-immigrant bills (including an attack on birthright citizenship for children born in Arizona). A major reason was push back from the business community. Some 60 Arizona-based CEOs (including U.S. Airways, Ernst & Young, Wells Fargo Bank, and Cox Communications) penned a letter to lawmakers, urging them to stop passing harsh anti-illegal immigrant laws. The Arizona business community has been devastated (to the tune of $200 million) by boycotts and other backlash caused by the national attention SB 1070 has garnered. That means fewer jobs and less tax revenue. This is the result of citizens and residents across the nation pushing back with their wallets against SB 1070.
The effect on the state's convention and tourism industry after SB 1070 was immediate. Corporations and event planners, troubled by Arizona's anti-immigrant image, canceled convention reservations in Phoenix -- ordinarily a popular convention site. The Arizona Hotel and Lodging Association cite data on bookings showing Phoenix's ranking had dropped from the top four destinations nationwide to 23rd.
The fact that other states are mimicking Arizona's anti-immigrant strategy is foolish for them as well. Eliminating the undocumented workforce without providing an avenue for their labor to be utilized in the United States would have devastating economic consequences throughout the country. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce offers important data. Although immigrants account for 12.5 percent of the U.S. population, they make up about 15 percent of the workforce. They are overrepresented among workers largely because the rest of our population is aging: Immigrants and their children have accounted for 58 percent of U.S. population growth since 1980. This probably won't change anytime soon. Low U.S. fertility rates and the upcoming retirement of the baby boomers mean that immigration is likely to be the only source of growth in what we call the "prime age" workforce -- workers ages 25 to 55 -- in the decades ahead. As record numbers of retirees begin drawing Social Security checks, younger immigrant workers will be paying taxes, helping to ease the financial pressures on the system.
Moreover, immigrants tend to be concentrated in high- and low-skilled occupations that complement -- rather than compete with -- jobs held by native workers. And the foreign-born workers who fill lower-paying jobs are typically first-hired/first-fired employees, allowing employers to expand and contract their workforces rapidly. As a result, immigrants experience higher employment than natives during booms -- but they suffer higher job losses during downturns, including the current one.
Immigration also stimulates growth by creating new consumers, entrepreneurs and investors. As a result of this growth, economists estimate that wages for the vast majority of American workers are slightly higher than they would be without immigration. Economists also estimate that for each job an immigrant fills, an additional job is created.
Arizona stands to see very negative effects if a massive exclusion of the undocumented workforce occurs. Before the state's enactment of LAWA in 2007, the state experienced decades worth of growth, boosted by its estimated 12 percent undocumented labor force. The new law caused many headaches and loss of production for Arizona employers who need workers.]
Increased ICE raids, stepped up border enforcement, and employer sanctions have not reduced undocumented immigration to the United States. We are wasting billions of dollars at home in what has become a war on immigrants. But undocumented workers continue to migrate. The failure of these harsh efforts must teach us something. The enforcement-only approach has resulted in human tragedy, increased poverty, and family separation. This is a challenge that requires us to understand why workers come here and to address the challenge in a more sensible manner.
It's time to come to our senses and realize that the enforcement-only approach has failed. The rise of employer sanctions enforcement causes hardship for our fellow human travelers who only seek an opportunity to work to feed their families at an honest day's wage. Undocumented migration is the result of factors and phenomena way beyond the control of intimidation, guns, and militarization. The time to get smart has arrived; we must begin considering more creative approaches by understanding the forces at work.
Our current economic policies like NAFTA produce displaced people in Mexico, criminalize them once they arrive in the United States, and view them simply as a source of cheap labor for employers. We need to see migrants as human beings first and then formulate a policy to protect their human and labor rights, along with those of other working people in this country. Arizona's victory at the Supreme Court won't help the state's economy or its image.
Follow Bill Ong Hing on Twitter: www.twitter.com/immprof
Meanwhile, the U.S. Trade deficit with Mexico for the last year surpassed $45 billion.
Hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are using bank accounts in this country to send those remittances home, and many U.S. banks are now aggressively helping illegal aliens open those accounts. Those banks refer to the practice in the political correct vernacular as banking the unbanked.
Your aren't bias are you ?LOL - SB 1070 has nothing to do with "immigrants" it is about ILLEGAL ALIENS - there's a bg difference.
"Eliminating the undocumented workforce without providing an avenue for their labor to be utilized in the United States would have devastating economic consequences throughout the country."
I'm sure slave owners made the same argument. It didn't work then and it doesn't work now.
ILLEGAL ALIENS have come here ILLEGALLY and they are taking jobs that AMERICAN CITZENS and LEGAL immigrants have had and want to have again. We spend BILLIONS to educate and provide health care to people who don't belong here. We need this money for our own CITIZENS and LEGAL immigrants. We need to start enforcing our FEDERAL laws and stop having to make new STATE laws to protect ourselves.
AZ should have the right to pull the license of businesses who are knowingling using undocumented labor as a regular business practice. I can see a business hiring a couple workers every now
Here is a credible study done by credible source.
Judith Gans
Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy
The University of Arizona
The bottom line
Based on this study, the total state tax revenue attributable to immigrant workers was an
estimated $2.4 billion (about $860 million for naturalized citizens plus about $1.5 billion for
non-citizens). Balanced against incremental fiscal costs of $1.4 billion for education, health
care, and law enforcement, immigrants in Arizona generated a net 2004 fiscal contribution
of about $940 million toward services such as public safety, libraries, road maintenance,
and other areas. Because the incremental costs incurred by immigrants in these areas are
difficult to measure directly, they are not included in this report.
The 2004 total economic output attributable to immigrant workers was about $44 billion
($15 billion for naturalized citizens and $29 billion for non-citizens). This output included
$20 billion in labor and other income and resulted in approximately 400,000 full-timeequivalent
jobs.
http://www.udallcenter.arizona.edu/immigration/publications/impactofimmigrants08.pdf
NONE of these jobs can be exported from the USA. ALL of these jobs would continue even if every Illegal Immigrant left the USA. Crops still need to be harvested, Buildings still need to be cleaned, and you cannot build buildings outside of the USA and import them on trucks or ships. You cannot cook food in kitchens outside of the USA and import it and sell it in restraints as fresh.
Plus this data means that 75 percent of all agricultural jobs, 83 percent of office and house cleaning positions, 86 percent of construction jobs and 88 percent of the food preparation jobs are done by U.S. Citizens and Legal Residents. These are the professions where unemployment is highest for American Workers.
Thus such economic studies that claim an economic loss due to enforcement of our laws are a joke because of the facts they must ignore to prove their contrived point.
In fact, the group most vocal about enforcing our immigration laws, the so-called Tea Partiers got its name from an event that defied an unjust legal law.
In 1773, a group of colonists in Boston boarded three English merchant ships and dumped the tea they carried into the harbor, the so-called "Boston Tea Party."
This was certainly an illegal act. However, the protest was about opposing a series of laws that the colonists felt were unjust. Furthermore, the colonists had no legal pathway to challenge the laws, as they were denied representation in the English government.
Another piece of illegal law breaking which we revere today was perpetrated by British citizens who openly disobeyed the laws of Parliament and king, refused to pay taxes, and formed an insurgent army in 1776. Ironically, today’s self-styled patriots who have taken it upon themselves to protect our borders from the illegal hordes call themselves The Minutemen.
That's an interesting claim. The Valley / State section of the Arizona Republic today has a headline that reads "Strong summer for conventions" and the exact quote from the director of the Phoenix Convention Center is: "This summer of 2011 is going to be our best on record...." Of course, that's just the convention center in Phoenix and it's just the hottest and most uncomfortable part of the year, but the fact is that, according to the Republic, "Records show the center's revenue has increased 46 percent in the past two years...."
As we learned in the 86 amnesty - until we can effectively enforce our laws and control the situation, any discussions are moot! At current rates, 1.5 million illegals will enter the US this year. So even if we felt inclined to legalize all illegals today - we would be back to square one tomorrow!
Employer sanctions are great - but till we can succesfully get past the argument of plausible deniability, we will not see many succesful employer prosecutions. I think it is great that Obama wants to put photo ID and driver's license information in E-Verify to strengthen it, but it will probably take a biometric ID system to make it strong enough to be meaningful.