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But when you expel all the immigrants from your town, it turns out the economy suffers.
A little more than a year ago, the Township Committee in this faded factory town became the first municipality in New Jersey to enact legislation penalizing anyone who employed or rented to an illegal immigrant.
Within months, hundreds, if not thousands, of recent immigrants from Brazil and other Latin American countries had fled. The noise, crowding and traffic that had accompanied their arrival over the past decade abated.
The law had worked. Perhaps, some said, too well.
With the departure of so many people, the local economy suffered. Hair salons, restaurants and corner shops that catered to the immigrants saw business plummet; several closed. Once-boarded-up storefronts downtown were boarded up again.
Meanwhile, the town was hit with two lawsuits challenging the law. Legal bills began to pile up, straining the town’s already tight budget. Suddenly, many people — including some who originally favored the law — started having second thoughts.
So last week, the town rescinded the ordinance, joining a small but growing list of municipalities nationwide that have begun rethinking such laws as their legal and economic consequences have become clearer.
“I don’t think people knew there would be such an economic burden,” said Mayor George Conard, who voted for the original ordinance. “A lot of people did not look three years out.”
I don’t think they looked 10 minutes out. They listened to their basest, most nativist desires and decided to make their township hostile to furriners. But their typically 21st-century America service-based economy couldn’t find the workers, and their unnecessarily cruel mindset was subject to court challenges. If we stopped to understand how to work with the system that’s in place and come up with a broad-based solution, this problem couls be easily solved. But know-nothings like Tancredo would rather shriek about the cost to the economy of illegal immigration, when he has it exactly backwards.
5 Responses to “Don’t Tell Tom Tancredo”
This is a great post and a very clear illustration, one of the clearest I’ve seen, of the so-called lump of labour fallacy that anti-immigration advocates inevitably fall into. If immigrants would just leave, supposedly there would be all these jobs for Americans to snap up. The economy just doesn’t work that way. Take away productive labour, which is how wealth is created, and it contracts, hurting everyone.
But all illegals are bad! The gov’mnt should round up every single one of all 20 million of them and kick them out of the country! Jesus don’t like brown!
All joking aside, it being a gargantuan task notwithstanding, why do you think the government has not captured and deported the estimated 20 million people living here undocumented? It is not for lack of money or law enforcement resources, that’s for sure. It is nothing but hypocrisy! They need the cheap labor provided by millions of people living in the shadows in the richest country on earth! Once again proving that love of the dollar is stronger than right-wing racism!
[…] Right’s Field (via Oliver Willis) posted this hilarious piece about how the Township of Riverside, New Jersey, shot itself in the foot by passing a tough […]
Legal bills began to pile up, straining the town’s already tight budget
So was the economic hit primarily the result of the costs of fighting ACLU-backed lawsuits, or due to the loss of illegal immigrants? Let’s look at the economic balance sheet: On one side, we have illegal immigrants making $8 - $10 hour, many of whom are paid cash under the table paying little in local, state or federal taxes. On the other side of the equation are the costs of illegal immigrants in every community - school taxes for all their children at $8,000+ per year per pupil, “free” healthcare, law enforcement and other government services and benefits which they consume.
Why it must be pure “right wing racism” why anyone would object to a situation like that being foisted upon them by illegal immigrants. What other explanation could there be?
Something to say?
A clearer view of the article and the backstory at the link.
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September 26, 2007 at 7:15pm