economic consequences of cracking down on illegal immigration

[Universe Prince]

Yes, this information does come from the dreaded The New York Times, but try not to let that influence you.

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.

   [...]

Rival advocacy groups in the immigration debate turned this otherwise sleepy town into a litmus test for their causes. As the television cameras rolled, Riverside was branded, in turns, a racist enclave and a town fighting for American values. Some residents who backed the ban last year were reluctant to discuss their stance now, though they uniformly blamed outsiders for misrepresenting their motives. By and large, they said the ordinance was a success because it drove out illegal immigrants, even if it hurt the town's economy. "It changed the face of Riverside a little bit," said Charles Hilton, the former mayor who pushed for the ordinance. (He was voted out of office last fall but said it was not because he had supported the law.) "The business district is fairly vacant now, but it's not the legitimate businesses that are gone," he said. "It's all the ones that were supporting the illegal immigrants, or, as I like to call them, the criminal aliens."

   [...]

Numerous storefronts on Scott Street are boarded up or are empty, with For Sale by Owner signs in the windows. Business is down by half at Luis Ordonez's River Dance Music Store, which sells Western Union wire transfers, cellphones and perfume. Next door, his restaurant, the Scott Street Family Cafe, which has a multiethnic menu in English, Spanish and Portuguese, was empty at lunchtime.

Whole article at The New York Times.

Nothing says "American values" like boarded up store fronts and empty businesses. Just wait until we can do this for all of America. Won't it be glorious!

(For those of you who might be unsure, yes, that is sarcasm.)

[BT]

Small town mainstreets are being boarded up because people no longer shop there. Been that way as long as farms are turned into subdivisions and strip malls and box stores move closer to where the people live.

Perhaps the town fathers should rent out store fronts to drug dealers, as long as criminal activity is good for the economy and alll.

[Michael Tee]

Hilarious.  Racists are so stupid, they always end up shooting themselves in the foot, or worse. 

I remember in Albert Speer's memoirs, at some point he regrets the regime's extreme anti-Semitism, this time not on "moral grounds" but because it cost Germany the scientists and mathematicians who could have given the atomic bomb to Germany instead of the U.S.A.

BT's sarcastic response, too, was priceless, comparing the illegal immigrants to a wave of drug dealers.  When you're a conservative, you can't see shades of gray - - law-breaking is law-breaking is law-breaking.  Oy.

[kimba1]

The business district is fairly vacant now, but it?s not the legitimate businesses that are gone," he said. "It's all the ones that were supporting the illegal immigrants, or, as I like to call them, the criminal aliens."

nothing racist about that.

we`re in a very tricky world today
which harmless words do sound racist
ex. articulate

[Xavier_Onassis]

we`re in a very tricky world today
which harmless words do sound racist
ex. articulate
===========================================
Could you use the word "articulate" in a way that sounds racist?

I guess you could say "The Mexicans were inarticulate in English".

"Pepe and Felipe articulated all over nice Officer Friendly."

The US cannot throw out 12 milllion people. There must be some way of making them citizens over a period of time, and at the same time insuring that a much higher percentage of immigrants enter the US legally.

We need more educated and qualified people and fewer unsuccessful farmers.

[kimba1]

I was thinking about clinton talking about barrack obama.
he said the word articulate and the people are brought the race issue about it
because only a racist will call a non-white person articlulate.
pretty much some folks cannot give a compliment without sounding racist

[Universe Prince]

Small town mainstreets are being boarded up because people no longer shop there. Been that way as long as farms are turned into subdivisions and strip malls and box stores move closer to where the people live.

Perhaps so, though I think there might be a difference between a natural move away from an agrarian society and shooting the local economy in the foot to achieve some sort of moral victory over illegal immigrants.

Perhaps the town fathers should rent out store fronts to drug dealers, as long as criminal activity is good for the economy and alll.

My cynical mind immediately wonders if you would respond so were the issue, say, laws against black migration to white towns. Not because I think you are racist, but because, while you seek to make this about the law, I think the law itself is unjust. And I don't just mean laws in townships against doing business with illegal immigrants, as the article is about. But we've been over all this before.

Something that should not be illegal is illegal, and while people suffer the unjust consequences of the law, our society wonders how to enforce the law, how to increase the penalty for breaking the law, how to make more laws of the same kind. And for this they take pride. Business suffers, the means of providing food and clothing and shelter suffers, but at least we have found a way to run off the "criminal aliens". At least we have preserved our values by punishing those who have broken law that should not be.

Seems to me, our values would be better served by ejecting not the people but the unjust law.

Perhaps the town fathers should rent out store fronts to drug dealers, as long as criminal activity is good for the economy and alll.

Perhaps the town fathers should rent out store fronts to segregationists and the John Birch Society since separating ourselves and protecting American virtue is so important and all.

[Michael Tee]

Mexico must be living under a cruel and evil Communist dictatorship which denies freedom to all its citizens, otherwise why would so many Mexicans want to leave their sunny, palm-shaded lands and come to seek freedom in America?  Why doesn't Bush declare an embargo on Mexico so that its leaders will change their evil communist ways?

[Universe Prince]

nothing racist about that.

Perhaps not. I still think he is wrong though.

[BT]

Perhaps the town fathers should rent out store fronts to segregationists and the John Birch Society since separating ourselves and protecting American virtue is so important and all.

Or we simply decriminalize drug dealing.

[Universe Prince]

Or we simply decriminalize drug dealing.

That seems like a separate issue.

[BT]

That seems like a separate issue.

How so?

[Universe Prince]

As best I can tell, discussing the "war on drugs" would not do much to address the issue of illegal immigration and the laws pertaining thereto. Do you have some reason to think otherwise?

[BT]

The common denominator seems to be that you have problems with both sets of laws and their prosecution.

[Universe Prince]

The common denominator seems to be that you have problems with both sets of laws and their prosecution.

Perhaps, but that hardly makes them the same issue and gives no reason to conflate them.