Monday, May 3, 2010
Economic Impact of the Arizona Boycott
An Arizona hotel association has announced that since Governor Jan Brewer signed now famous SB 1070 into law, 19 conferences in the state have been canceled, which implies the loss of 15,000 hotel rooms. That probably translates into roughly $1 million, which isn't a huge amount in the scheme of things (Arizona's annual GDP is more than $200 billion), but its just one industry and it's barely been a week.
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The real flaw in the logic here is that some folks believe that the violence and illegal activity is due to undocumented workers. In reality, violent crime is down in Arizona but the media and the hard-liners in AZ make sure that if an undocumented worker is involved, it's big news, but the facts are that violent crime has slowed in the last few years in AZ. The law passed isn't going to stop the real problem which are drug runners and smugglers, It isn't even going to slow them down.
There was a great article in the LA Times featuring an interview with an ex-Phoenix cop who had to deal with these issues. (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/immigration/la-me-0502-lopezcolumn-20100502%2C0%2C2732982.column)
And he said it very plainly after a white cop was killed: "I told people that it's not whites or Hispanics who killed Marc," he said back then. "It's drug-dealing cop killers. The issue isn't ethnicity — it's crime and drugs."
And this is the real problem with this law is that it doesn't address the real issue, at all.
Yeah i think that's exactly right. You have a lot of people justifying the illegal immigration stance wtih arguments about Mexico's security problems, which makes very little sense. Two completely separate phenomena. As far as insecurity in Phoenix, I'm not in the least bit convinced that it has that much to do with the city's proximity to Mexico. It's like the cop says, it's crime and drugs, which exist in cities far from the Mexican border and with a relatively low presence of illegal immigrants.
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