News Jul 29, 2010 at 10:11 am

Comments

1
"...and the law isn't just driving out illegal immigrants, I suspect, but legal immigrants and native-born-but-brown American citizens..."

I grew up in Arizona, and if you think that's not totally intentional, then you really don't know Arizona.
2
Adding this to the well-underway effects of their state economy's incredible overexposure to real estate deflation really has done the state no favors. Idiots. House-proud, increasingly jobless idiots.
3
Seriously, right now you can buy condos in Phoenix for $125,000 that would cost more than twice that much in the Seattle market.

But of course, you'd have to live in Phoenix...

(No offense to my family members who do live in Phoenix - it's a beautiful place to visit, but wouldn't want to live there.)
4
So, I wonder how long the bigots who support this will have to mow their own lawns before they decide the law "isn't working" ?
5
A good friend of mine from high school just moved her family out of Phoenix, AZ. She is Native American, not Mexican, and her family has lived in AZ much longer than any of the white moronic Russell-Pearce-Jan-Brewer-racists. However, after issues at her kid's school, multiple traffic stops for no reason, and people who think it's OK to walk up to her and her family on the street and yell "illegals go home!" just because she has a darker skin tone, she's had enough. This is a college-educated woman (NAU!) who owns her own business and made good money. She is now moving her business to California. Her parting gift to AZ was a sizable donation to the leading Democratic candidates there, as well as several F*** YOU letters to various business and political organizations in AZ who have refrained from speaking out on this racist law. Silence is acquiescence.
6
Did you know that President Obama has arrested and deported more illegal aliens per month than Comrade Bush did?

Did you know that he's cracked down on businesses that hire illegal aliens?

Not if you listen to Fox News ...
7
Yeah, but that just means all these jobs will open up for Real Americans! Who will all be happy to work for the wages that the illegal aliens were! Or, failing that, all the Real Arizonans will be happy to see the prices of those goods and services go up!
8
@7 Yeah, I can just imagine the REAL AMERICANS who will be down in Yuma, desperate for a job to pick lettuce.....
9
If Nevada was any smarter, given their bottomed-out economy, they'd be preparing a "welcome our Latino neighbors" PR campaign. I do not believe they're any smarter.
10
People need to be careful what they ask for.
11
@7/8:

What?!? You mean REAL AMERICANS WON'T do back-breaking manual labor in 110 degree heat for $3.00 an hour?

Or that REAL AMERICANS WILL object to paying $10 a pound for strawberries or for a head of lettuce?

I just don't understand - I thought that's what all this anti-illegal immigrant legislation was INTENDED to do: create more low-wage employment opportunities for REAL AMERICANS, or conversely, pay them living wages, resulting in a corresponding inflation of the cost of agricultural products.

Oh, wait. You mean the AZ bigots didn't think of those consequences when their knees jerked spasmodically in their haste to kick all the brown people out of their state?

I am shocked - SHOCKED! - to find this to be the case...
12
This has fucking made my day. The cognitive dissonance that erupts from this will be epic. I can't wait to watch the freepers' poor little noggins spin. The market has spoken Repubs! And your tears taste so sweet! Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha!
13
@11 - Thinking would require that the AZ GOP legislators actually have a brain....
14
You didn't pullquote the best part:

Bob Dane, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, in Washington, argues for stricter immigration standards and estimates that illegal immigrants cost Arizona taxpayers $2.5 billion annually.

The people for the law say that immigrants cost $2.5 billion annually. Driving away the same people is causing a loss of $29 billion annually.

That math is muy simple.
15
Thanks, @1 - that's all I came here to say.
16
@3,

And you still need to have a job to pay the mortgage. There are no good jobs down there for anyone without an advanced degree or who wasn't specifically recruited to move there. And I have to disagree about it being a nice place to visit. Sedona is okay, but Phoenix is a shit hole.
17
I think that there's more to the exodus than this. The economy in AZ is complete crap right now. So much of their economic basis was due to unsustainable growth in housing and construction, and we know how well that worked out for them. Immigrants (legal and otherwise) are leaving not because they're scared of SB 1070 (even the prospect of being hassled by The Man is, in good times, often better than can be found from wherever they've come), but because there's just not enough work for which to stick around.

But hey, let's not let a little common sense and further examination get in the way of an opportunity to bash those racist Republicans, amirite??? Any way we can throw in a union blow job and a courtsy to Mike McGinn while we're here?
18
AZ is full of pathetic closet-racists who don't have the balls to admit the real reason for their unconditional support for 1070.

At least in places like Idaho and the south they unambiguously wear arm-bands and hoods. In AZ they hide behind 1070 and pseudo-economic anecdotal faux-evidence to support their views.

Jan Brewer=Arapaio=Tzvi Segal=Bill White. It's all the same motivation. But at least Bill white has the cojones to admit it.

#16 is right PHX is a shit-hole. It's fucking uglier than Tijuana. It is the armpit of the entire southwest. It's only redeeming quality is its proximity to Sedona.
19
@16:

Oh, don't be too hard on Phoenix, there are a couple of nice urban hikes there, although apparently nobody walks anywhere else (including the $tarbuck$ two two blocks away) .

(I'm sure there must be other reasons to like Phoenix, but, um, I'll have to think on that some more.)
20
It doesn't have anything to do with picking lettuce or mowing lawns. Immigrants, and the children of immigrants, and other brown people who've been in AZ longer than AZ has, are THE economic engine of the state. When the brown people leave, the economy of the white people is going to cave in too -- their shops, their schools, their tax base. AZ has a ton of problems right now, and they in their wisdom have decided that the best way to address them is to commit suicide.

Bonus for the other states to which these unfortunate people emigrate. I hope some of them come here.
21
Everyone,

next time a robottebaggatard starts whining about the economic impact of all the illegals, send them here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/busine…

or here:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets…

Or, better yet, remind them of two of our tax dollar-inhaling, real-not-imagined, crippling black holes:

1. The war on drugs (and privatized prisons supported by this "war").

2. The top 2% and the corporations they run.

22
Don't forget the "Prop 187" effect. CA passed a similar initiative a while back. At the time it was a "swing state" (neither red nor blue, reliably). Prop 187 was struck down on constitutional grounds, but it didn't matter. Latinos abandoned the GOP in droves, and never looked back. And now CA is solidly blue (overall).

I predict the same thing in places like AZ, NV and even TX if they try something similar.

Republicans can shrink their tent all they want in the name of ideological purity, for all I care. The party's bankrupt on so many levels I couldn't care less if Democrats become the sole party for a while.
23
"Republicans can shrink their tent all they want in the name of ideological purity"

I think "ideological" is not the only kind of purity they are seeking.
24
The delicious irony here is that the underground economy that exists around illegal immigrants sounds so much like the kind of tax-free, barter-friendly, unregulated "Free Market" that so many on the Right can't stop enthusing about.

Employers set the price of labor (because the labor can be arrested and deported if they complain), pay no payroll or unemployment taxes, offer no medical benefits or paid leave, are subject to virtually no workplace safety or environmental standards, and the workers themselves must engage in virtually all their economic activity "off the books."

It's a Free Market Paradise!
25
@21, those are both terrific articles. Whites in AZ are waking up to find out that when the immigrants leave, they take their grocery stores and everything else with them, leaving a bunch of stupid white people driving around in SUVs wondering if the Rapture came and left them -- no place is open. Until they run out of gas.
26
@24,

Libertarians are largely pro-immigration, at least Reason magazine is. The freaks in Arizona are only libertarians when it suits them.
27
...and when the Invisible Hand of the Market.... wait, what are we talking about again?
28
@19,

It's an okay place to sit by the pool and drink cocktails in January, but that's about it as far as I can tell.
29
You can buy condos in a LOT of places for 250k that are tons nicer/bigger/whateverer than they are in Seattle. It's a fucking expensive city to live in. Doesn't make it any better.
30
@28 And breathe in the smog? Growing up in Phoenix, we used to have just a few days out of the year with the "brown cloud" hanging over. Now it's pretty much all winter.

At one point in time Phoenix did have some redeeming qualities. Then the developers were allowed unrestricted building permits - without controls on growth/sprawl, proper design for a desert climate, not to mention the infrastructure improvements that were needed to handle the growth, thus #16 is right - it is now a (cookie-cutter) shit-hole. Tucson and Flagstaff are much better than Phoenix is now. Plus they are far away from the racist dick Sheriff Joe and his minions in the Maricopa County gov't.

Unfortunately the AZ GOP and their racist constituents won't learn anything from this. Once the brown people are gone, they'll simply transfer their hatred and fear and find another scapegoat - like Obama (oops - he's brown too) and the feds, or the Dems. There always has to be someone (else) to blame.
31
"The freaks in Arizona are only libertarians when it suits them. "

Very true.

The only individual liberty most of them consider worth protecting is that of non-latino/non-hispanics.

What kind of libertarian would support a law demanding that whites show their papers every time a cop says hello to them.

They're just a bunch of pathetic, racist pussies.
32
5

moving to California?

Really?

did she book passage on the Hindenburg to get there?

(cause the Titanic doesn't serve that route.....)
33
gee, Dan, you've hit on the solution to our economic CRISIS.

OBVIOUSLY uneducated manual laborer illegal aliens are the economic engine that will drive us to PROSPERITY and BOOM TIMES.

More illegals to build more houses!

It's JUST WHAT WE NEED!

Damn, Dan- you're BRILLIANT!- don't waste your time lecturing frat boys about buttsex- your NATION CRIES OUT FOR LEADERSHIP!
34
1

totally.

does Dan think Arizonians will be sorry to see this happening?
35
HAHAHA DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK COCKS!!!
36
@ 3 - You can actually buy a huge nice house for that price. With a pool.

@ 30 - They actually have a website that takes pictures of the smog and tells you if it's safe or not to go out. You're right about Sheriff Joe though. His raids have completely destroyed what was left of Maryvale. Blocks of empty houses rotting, like Detroit. It's a dying city, and it's super depressing living here.

It's not like we didn't realize this would destroy our economy. There are groups that have been trying to pass this law for years. The only thing that has changed is our governor, who left us to become Homeland Security Secretary. Brewer is a crazy hateful bitch that no one here voted for. On our local NPR station people were begging Napolitano not to leave us. It's awful.


37
@22 - Yes, excellent point. But that only helps if Latinos stay in Arizona. If they move to California, Arizona will only get redder and redder (and smaller and poorer). Of course, if Latino citizens re-register in California, maybe we'll defeat Meg Whitman.
38
Defenders of the law have said that you don't need a passport, green card, or work visa to prove legal residency -- a simple driver's license will suffice. The argument is that only citizens and legal aliens can get a driver's license in Arizona. But that doesn't make sense to me. A driver's license might show that the person was here legally at the time, but the green card or visa may have subsequently expired. The acceptable proof doesn't actually prove anything.

And what about vacationers? If I visited France for a week, couldn't I rent a car? And if I got pulled over for a broken tail light, I'd have my US passport and US driver's license, but that doesn't mean I was there illegally. Now, someone could argue that they'd look at the passport stamp to see how long they've been here, but how reliable is that? My passport doesn't have stamps showing that I went to Italy and France in 2004, but I did. (Perhaps it's because I had a layover en route in Germany, which is stamped, and perhaps EU rules makes that sufficient for all of Europe that particular visit.)

The whole law is a mess, not the least of which is because the proof doesn't prove anything.
39
I'm getting tired of Dan's stupidity on this issue. Federal law requires that non-citizens carry their visas, passports, green cards, etc with them at all times. If you don't like this law and believe that anyone from any country can just come here and stay, then you should be advocating the repeal of federal law just as vociferously as you do DADT and DOMA.
40
@39, federal law may require that, but that is for federal immigration officials to determine and check. You don't want to have a system in which a sizable portion of your citizenship cannot interact with the normal local police-- that's just a recipe for disaster.
41
I live in Arizona (Tucson, not Phoenix thankfully), and Dan's headline says it all. Our state budget is heavily dependent on sales tax revenue, which illegal immigrants pay just like everyone else. We have a massive state budget crisis, the housing market is busted, our economy is dependent on tourism almost as much as the housing market and we're driving people out and making others not want to come in. All because of a law that will not solve any problems whatsoever. Yeah, we're fucked.
42
@40 That argument is a cop-out used by those who know very well the federal goverment has no intention of enforcing the law on the scale needed. How many average citizens come into contact with a federal agent vs. a local police officer? If you are here legally you should have no qualms about calling local police if necessary.

@41 You should have caught Anderson Cooper last Thursday where a Mexican-American who supports the law took a reporter on a little tour. At a Wal-Mart shopping mall scores of illegal immigrants harass citizens and ask for work. When hired, they are paid under the table so no income tax is paid. Yet they can use emergency rooms for healthcare and their children go to school for free. Plus they qualify for food stamps and other assistance. Any sales tax lost if they go home is a wash at worse. It is still wrong to be here illegally.
43
@42: Yes, I'm familiar with how illegal immigrants can act. I've lived in Arizona for 15 years. I love how people who don't live here suddenly care about problems we've had for years because it's politically expedient to do so. I supposed I should be touched that you all suddenly care, but I find myself not giving a fuck since both sides are treating my home as a political football. Shouldn't you be worrying about your own state's illegal immigrant problems first?

I never said it wasn't wrong to be here illegally; of course it is. I never said they don't get some services for free. I clearly said that Arizona is heavily dependent on sales taxes; our income taxes are some of the lowest in the nation. The wages they're making, they wouldn't pay any state income tax anyway. They do not qualify for food stamps or any other state assistance; we've passed laws here in the years leading up to this circus that require proof of citizenship when applying for assistance, and requiring state workers to report illegals who do apply. They do qualify for some federal programs, but we don't pay for it out of state dollars. Finally, it's not just the illegals leaving that's the fiscal problem- it's also the legal people who do pay taxes leaving and the tourists and business groups who won't come here for the same reason (which means that people in the tourism industry now have less income to pay income taxes on and to buy things to pay sales taxes on). I hope I'm wrong, and we won't know until the slow summer season is over, but from an economic standpoint, I'm guessing this law is not going to serve Arizona well. The moral standpoint is an entirely different argument.
44
@39 Yes, if you have a green card, you have to carry it at all times. Now what if you are asked for proof of citizenship when you're a citizen?
45
Someone uninformed said:

If you are here legally you should have no qualms about calling local police if necessary.

In an ideal world, illegal immigrants would ALSO have no qualms about calling the police if necessary. I've got a great idea! Let's try to make illegal immigrants EVEN LESS LIKELY to call the police to report things like auto theft, assault, rape, and murder. No worries there.

P.S.: If illegal immigrants are getting paid under the table, avoiding income tax and thus letting those freeloader kids of theirs be educated for free (horrors!), why not TARGET THE EMPLOYERS?

Thanks SunGirl for a voice of reason from AZ.
46
I'm sorry but this article is hardly reflecting reality. I live in Arizona and do not support the law at all, but its not like things have changed at all. Illegals were illegal before this and could be deported then too. Its not like cops go around hitting up every mexican they see for papers. I understand the point of the law, its still bullshit, but everyone here seems to think that mexicans do every single low class job in arizona. Since the economic problems, people have been looking for any sort of job. a lot of kids out of high school that did not pursue college are looking for that exact thing, so its better that money stays in AZ than get sent to mexico to support families there. its all a really shitty situation but if you were at a concert and there were people that snuck in for free and people who payed to be there, and 100 people had to be there, would you want to people who payed to leave or the people who snuck in for free to. i don't support the law because people should not be able to control other people like that at all unless they are causing a notable amount of direct harm. Life > government control. and whoever that kid was that said shit about brown clouds in phx??? what?? our polution is not even very harsh, and we don't even get clouds really. majority of the days are clear blue skys, and then we get a beautiful sunset. all you guys are trying to find reasons to hate on this state because our voting population (old douchey cowboys and businessmen) produced a shitty law.

Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.