when racist idiots get what they want
Most of the shopping center on the corner of 43rd Avenue and Thomas Road in Phoenix is vacant. Merchants blame a law intended to drive illegal immigrants out of Arizona. (Nicholas Riccardi / Los Angeles Times)
here’s some news of the utterly predictable: Phoenix Arizona’s economy is collapsing because they chased away all the Latinos:
Every time a customer buys some of the large fabric tote bags from the Dollar Store at 43rd Avenue and Thomas Road, Najmuddin Katchi sees another piece of his business vanish.
The purchase of the briefcase-sized shoulder bags means that another one of Katchi’s customers, mostly Latino immigrants, is packing to leave the state before what is touted as the nation’s toughest law against illegal immigrants takes effect July 29.
Katchi’s store isn’t the only business suffering. The vast shopping center that holds his small shop is almost empty. The Food City supermarket closed this spring. Then the furniture shop. Then the pizzeria.
gee, who could have predicted that chasing away the people who make up 30% of the state’s population and 34% of Phoenix’s population would have an economic impact. Not the geniuses at the white supremacist organization Federation for American Immigration Reform:
“As long as there are legal Arizona residents scrambling for jobs, a slow, steady attrition of low-wage, government-educated illegal aliens is a beneficial facet of the law,” said Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, in Washington, which argues for stricter immigration standards and estimates that illegal immigrants cost Arizona taxpayers $2.5 billion annually.
Riiight. And there’s going to be a flood of applicants to pick cotton in the brutal Arizona sun for minimum wage, right? And lots of people are going to line up to pick lettuce for a similar wage right?
Please. American workers would demand much higher wages to this kind of work, including benefits, driving up prices for everyone. As for the argument that illegal immigrants are a drain on our social services, that seems to be hogwash (which you’d expect from white supremacist idiots):
Even people whose families use more government services than they pay in taxes still help the economy, said Judith Gans of the University of Arizona’s Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy. In a 2008 study, she found that Arizona immigrants contributed $29 billion annually to the state economy, representing about 8% of its activity.
When immigrants leave, Gans said, “stores experience dramatic drops in sales. Apartment owners who rent to immigrants have high vacancy rates and risk losing their buildings. Legal workers or renters or consumers don’t generally step in quickly enough to prevent these businesses from experiencing real additional hardship.”
The rest of the article is simply hilarious, an ongoing description of people whose businesses have closed, dead malls, and abandoned homes (driving down property values and blighting the community).
Oh yes, it’s very sad for the individuals involved, but it’s funny because anyone with a brain could have, and did, predict this. In 2006, Riverside New Jersey decided to pass ordinance that drive out the Brazilian immigrants who settled there:
The downtown streets of this working-class town — usually filled with many of the immigrants who have made this place home — were unusually empty the day after the Township Council approved an ordinance banning employers and landlords from hiring or housing illegal immigrants.
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.
Honey, I ruined the economy!
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.”
HA! HA! HA! I am laughing AT xenophobes, not with them!
So here is what i hope happens in Arizona. I hope every single “illegal immigrant” leaves. I hope every US-born Latino leaves too, which isn’t much of a stretch considering hostile behavior like this:
Some of those leaving are U.S. citizens or legal residents who believe that all Latinos in the state are already being targeted by police. [Edgar] Vela, for example, said he had been stopped by police while driving to his restaurant “more times than I can count.”
Faviola Davenport, 42, owns 3Girlz Retail across the street from Vela’s restaurant. Davenport, who emigrated legally from Mexico 23 years ago, expects she will close the shop next month. In the small space, crammed with phone cards, mattresses and purses, Davenport said that if the law takes effect she will probably abandon Arizona as well. Her three adult daughters and their families — all U.S. citizens — are thinking of following her.
SB 1070’s supporters say legal residents like Davenport have nothing to fear from the law, which bans racial profiling.
But earlier this year, Davenport said, she was stopped by a police officer on her way to work. She said the officer did not believe she was in the country legally and warned that he could refer her to immigration authorities for deportation.
I hope there’s no one available to harvest Arizona’s big cash crops of cotton and lettuce, and they rot. I hope more businesses close down, and I hope entire neighborhoods become empty wastelands. i hope the population shrinks so much that arizona loses representatives as Congressional redistricting gets underway.
In short, I hope Arizona goes totally, 100% bankrupt, and becomes entirely unlivable. That’s obviously what they want, and now hopefully they will get their just desserts.
