TalkBaja.com » Baja Mexico Forums » Baja News Wire

Illegal immigrants plan to leave over Arizona law


By Amanda Lee Myers
Wed Apr 28, 8:44 pm ET

PHOENIX – Many of the cars that once stopped in the Home Depot parking lot to pick up day laborers to hang drywall or do landscaping now just drive on by.

Arizona's sweeping immigration bill allows police to arrest illegal immigrant day laborers seeking work on the street or anyone trying to hire them. It won't take effect until summer but it is already having an effect on the state's underground economy.

"Nobody wants to pick us up," Julio Loyola Diaz says in Spanish as he and dozens of other men wait under the shade of palo verde trees and lean against a low brick wall outside the east Phoenix home improvement store.

Many day laborers like Diaz say they will leave Arizona because of the law, which also makes it a state crime to be in the U.S. illegally and directs police to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are illegal immigrants.

Supporters of the law hope it creates jobs for thousands of Americans.

"We want to drive day labor away," says Republican Rep. John Kavanagh, one of the law's sponsors.

An estimated 100,000 illegal immigrants have left Arizona in the past two years as it cracked down on illegal immigration and its economy was especially hard hit by the Great Recession. A Department of Homeland Security report on illegal immigrants estimates Arizona's illegal immigrant population peaked in 2008 at 560,000, and a year later dipped to 460,000.

The law's supporters hope the departure of illegal immigrants will help dismantle part of the underground economy here and create jobs for thousands of legal residents in a state with a 9.6 percent unemployment rate.

Kavanagh says day labor is generally off the books, and that deprives the state of much-needed tax dollars. "We'll never eliminate it, just like laws against street prostitution," he says. "But we can greatly reduce the prevalence."

Day laborers do jobs including construction, landscaping and household work for cash paid under the table. Those jobs have been harder to find since the housing industry collapsed here several years ago.

Standing near potted trees and bushes for sale at a Home Depot in east Phoenix, Diaz, 35, says he may follow three families in his neighborhood who moved to New Mexico because of the law. He says a friend is finding plenty of work in Dallas.

Diaz says he has too much to lose by staying — he's supporting a wife and infant son back home in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across the border from El Paso, Texas.

"They depend on me to survive," he says. "I'm not going to wait for police to come and arrest me."

Jose Armenta, a 33-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico's western coast, is already planning to move to Utah within the next 20 days because of a combination of the economy and the new law.

"A lot of people drive by," he says as he watched nearby cars speeding past, "and they yell, 'Hey, go back to Mexico!'"

Analysts say it's too soon to tell what lasting effects the law will have on the state's underground work force, which also includes baby sitters, maids and cooks.

A study of immigrants in Arizona published in 2008 found that non-citizens, mostly in the country illegally, held an estimated 280,000 full-time jobs. The study by researcher Judith Gans at the University of Arizona examined 2004 data, finding that they contributed about 8 percent of the state's economic output, or $29 billion.

Losing hundreds of thousands of unskilled laborers wouldn't hurt the state's economy in the short term, but it could limit the economy's ability to grow once it recovers, says Marshall Vest, director of the Economic and Business Research Center at the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management.

Legal workers who are willing to take any available job now will become more choosy if the unemployment rate falls back to low levels seen before the recession hit.

"That's really the question, as to whether the existing population is willing to work those (low-level) jobs," Vest says. "I think economics provides the answer. If job openings have no applicants, then businesses need to address that by raising the offered wage."

Some illegal immigrants, however, intended to stick around.

Natalia Garcia, 35, from Mexico City, says she and her husband — a day laborer — will stay so their daughters — both born in the U.S. — can get a good education and learn English. The couple have been living in Arizona illegally for the last 10 years.

"Mexico doesn't have a lot of opportunities," she says. "Here, we work honestly, and we have a better life."

Olga Sanchez, 32, from southern Mexico, lives in Phoenix illegally with her two brothers, who are 21 and 17. While the youngest boy is in high school, all three work and send money back home to their parents.

"This law is very bad for us," says Sanchez, who gets about $250 a week cleaning three houses. "I'm afraid of what's going to happen."

She says the family is going to wait and see if the law takes effect and what the fallout will be before deciding whether to leave. The law is certain to be challenged in court; Phoenix, Tucson and Flagstaff already are considering lawsuits.

"All I ask from God is a miracle for us to stay here and work," she says.



More...

"That's really the question, as to whether the existing population is willing to work those (low-level) jobs," Vest says. "I think economics provides the answer. If job openings have no applicants, then businesses need to address that by raising the offered wage."
-------------------

BRILLIANT.....Are they just now coming to this conclusion? If industry had been paying a living wage from the beginning, we wouldn't be having problems today.
But....they know that, don't they.

Originally Posted by DENNIS

"That's really the question, as to whether the existing population is willing to work those (low-level) jobs," Vest says. "I think economics provides the answer. If job openings have no applicants, then businesses need to address that by raising the offered wage."
-------------------

BRILLIANT.....Are they just now coming to this conclusion? If industry had been paying a living wage from the beginning, we wouldn't be having problems today.
But....they know that, don't they.

Most in the business community will argue that if they have to pay higher wages they have no choice but to raise prices. Higher prices for their goods/services makes them less competitive in this global market economy. Business will respond by outsourcing abroad when possible and where cheaper labor is available. A better solution in their business plan is to simply hire undocumented workers, which is where we are today. If every illegal alien went back home tomorrow, we will be dealing with a new set of problems day after tomorrow IMHO.

I spoke with a neighbor last night whose son owns a small business south of Phoenix. He has a green card but has decided to sell everything he has up north, close up shop and come back to Mexico to start over. He told his dad that the extra money he is able to earn NOB is not enough to justify the struggles he faces day to day as a brown skinned young man in Arizona.

This is more complex than many believe and I suspect that the coming months are going to be very interesting to see how this all pans out.

Originally Posted by Noticias

...Supporters of the law hope it creates jobs for thousands of Americans.

"We want to drive day labor away,"...

...The law's supporters hope the departure of illegal immigrants will help dismantle part of the underground economy here and create jobs for thousands of legal residents...

...construction, landscaping and household work for cash paid under the table...

...Diaz, 35, says he may follow three families in his neighborhood who moved to New Mexico because of the law. He says a friend is finding plenty of work in Dallas...

...Armenta, a 33-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico's western coast, is already planning to move to Utah...

...Losing hundreds of thousands of unskilled laborers wouldn't hurt the state's economy in the short term, but it could limit the economy's ability to grow once it recovers, says Marshall Vest, director of the Economic and Business Research Center at the University of Arizona...

...Legal workers who are willing to take any available job now will become more choosy if the unemployment rate falls back to low levels...

..."That's really the question, as to whether the existing population is willing to work those (low-level) jobs...If job openings have no applicants, then businesses need to address that by raising the offered wage."...

We're finally down to BRASS TACKS: It's all about money.

Various parts of the equation scurry about fervently acting in what they hope are their best interests.

The problem with that is that the problem is so ENORMOUS(not to mention chock-full of the ugliest political horseshit imaginable), and we have put off any rational approach to dealing with it(PRECISELY because business wants cheap labor) we will now shoot ourselves in the foot with the results.


Good. Luck. Arizona; with the enormous financial ass-kicking coming your way, as the Greater Depression intensifies.

We'll have a short respite now; kinda like the eye passing over.

Meanwhile, by kicking the can on this and Debt, the results get much, much worse when the eyewall/other half of the storm hits.

Nirvana erupts as much-higher wages are paid, full employment returns, and businesses/individuals are delighted to pay much higher labor costs, because that is what will bring the Recovery.

I don't care if a slice of apple pie costs two hundred bucks. I just can't stand the thought of a foriegn government, through it's ground troops, dictating policy and law interpretation in our country.
Perhaps they would do better job of that than our own government, but that's not the point.

"Hispanic is a demographic group, not a race, and Hispanics may be of any race."


March 30, 2001
Non-Hispanic Whites a Minority, California Census Figures Show

By TODD S. PURDUM
Correction Appended
LOS ANGELES, March 29— For the first time in the modern era, non-Hispanic whites are officially a minority in California, amounting to a little less than half the population of the most populous state, compared with nearly three-quarters only a decade ago, according to census figures released today.

Hispanic residents now make up nearly one-third of the state's population.

The change was long expected, the result of high Hispanic birth rates and decades of immigration, but combined with a 43 percent increase in the state's Asian population, it confirmed California's status as the nation's most diverse big state and was viewed as a harbinger of changes in other populous states like Florida, New York and Texas.

California easily remained the most populous state, home to nearly one in 8 Americans, and its highest rates of population growth came in the inland valleys least associated with swimming pools and movie stars. The fastest-growing county was Placer, a picturesque area in the Sierra Nevada foothills northeast of Sacramento that was the scene of the gold rush in 1849 and that recently became a commuter haven; its population grew 42 percent in the last decade.

Over all, California gained slightly less than three million people, for a total of 33.9 million, compared with adjusted figures from the 1990 census, a growth rate of a little less than 10 percent. The state's increase in people was more than the individual populations of about half the states in the union.

More than 43 percent of Californians younger than 18 are now Hispanic, compared with about 35 percent a decade ago, the figures show.

Hispanic is a demographic group, not a race, and Hispanics may be of any race.

''The Anglo hegemony was only an intermittent phase in California's arc of identity, extending from the arrival of the Spanish,'' said Kevin Starr, the state librarian and author of cultural histories of the state.

''The Hispanic nature of California has been there all along, and it was temporarily swamped between the 1880's and the 1960's,'' Mr. Starr said, ''but that was an aberration. This is a reassertion of the intrinsic demographic DNA of the longer pattern, which is part of a California-Mexico continuum.''

The state's black population declined by 3 percent, to 2.3 million when some of the residents who listed themselves as mixed-race are counted as black, while the black population of the most populous county, Los Angeles, declined by 12 percent, to 920,899.

The state's white population declined, too, by about 8 percent over the decade. Because that figure was so high, blacks maintained almost the same percentage of the population, roughly 7 percent, as in 1990.

A comparison of census data by The New York Times used adjusted figures for 1990 provided by the United States Census Bureau that added an estimate of residents, mostly members of minorities, who were believed to have been missed in that count. The figures for 2000 have not been adjusted for those people, but last year's census is considered more accurate.

The national increase in the Hispanic population was 58 percent, significantly higher than the 33 percent increase in California. But the number of new Hispanic residents here dwarfs the number in other states; nearly a third of all Hispanics in the nation live in the Golden State.

''California certainly represents what many states are moving toward,'' said Dr. Paul Ong, director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and a professor of urban planning at the University of California at Los Angeles.

''I don't think most states will end up at the same level of diversity,'' Dr. Ong said. ''The truth of the matter is the rest of the country is going in this direction, but it won't become this, in the same way that New York at the beginning of the last century represented an important trend, but the rest of the country didn't become New York.''

Of California's 2.7 million new Hispanic residents, the majority were the result of births outpacing deaths among Hispanic residents, state demographers said. Less than one-fifth of the growth was from immigration, recent state figures indicated. As a jurisdiction where non-Hispanic whites are in the minority, California joins New Mexico, Hawaii and the District of Columbia.

By contrast, most of the growth in the Asian population was because of immigration. Asians account for almost 12 percent of the state's population, or 3.9 million residents, compared with 9 percent a decade ago. Some of the largest percentage increases for this group, too, came in the cluster of north-central counties known as the Gold Country, where Chinese immigrants once flocked to the pan for gold.

With coastal California already heavily settled from San Diego to San Luis Obispo, and with many localities passing ordinances to limit growth or suburban sprawl, it was hardly surprising that some of the highest rates of population growth came in counties like Riverside and San Bernardino, the so-called Inland Empire east of Los Angeles, and in counties of the Central Valley, where farmland is increasingly giving way to affordable tract housing. Even in those areas, the Hispanic population rose, though not as swiftly.

The cross-cutting demographic trends of coastal urban populations that are increasingly Hispanic and Asian, groups that in recent years have trended strongly Democratic, and more white, moderate-to-conservative residents inland, are posing new challenges for politicians.

''It means that either party to be successful statewide has to be able to appeal to the moderate to conservative voters that seem to be constituting much of the growth in California's inland areas,'' said Garry South, chief political adviser to Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat. ''And Republicans are not going to be successful statewide unless they can come up with some way to rebuild and repair the damage they've done among Asian and Latino voters with the anti-immigration crusades of the 1990's.''

Chart: ''The Changing Face of Los Angeles'' Proportion of Los Angeles County residents by race and ethnicity. Racial groups do not include Hispanics, who may be of any race. Graph shows figures on race from 1950-2000. CALIFORNIA 1990 CENSUS: 30,888,075 2000 CENSUS -- NUMBER LISTING JUST ONE RACIAL CATEGORY: 33,871,648 Non-Hispanic White 1990 CENSUS: 17,280,076 2000 CENSUS -- NUMBER LISTING JUST ONE RACIAL CATEGORY: 15,816,790 2000 CENSUS -- NUMBER LISTING THIS RACE WITH OTHER RACE(S): 721,701 Black 1990 CENSUS: 2,340,857 2000 CENSUS -- NUMBER LISTING JUST ONE RACIAL CATEGORY: 2,181,926 2000 CENSUS -- NUMBER LISTING THIS RACE WITH OTHER RACE(S): 188,441 Asian or Pacific Islander 1990 CENSUS: 2,800,406 2000 CENSUS -- NUMBER LISTING JUST ONE RACIAL CATEGORY: 3,752,596 2000 CENSUS -- NUMBER LISTING THIS RACE WITH OTHER RACE(S): 466,406 American Indian or Alaska Native 1990 CENSUS: 189,155 2000 CENSUS -- NUMBER LISTING JUST ONE RACIAL CATEGORY: 178,984 2000 CENSUS -- NUMBER LISTING THIS RACE WITH OTHER RACE(S): 204,213 Other 1990 CENSUS: 57,249 2000 CENSUS -- NUMBER LISTING JUST ONE RACIAL CATEGORY: 71,681 2000 CENSUS -- NUMBER LISTING THIS RACE WITH OTHER RACE(S): 296,487 Multiracial (not an option in 1990) 2000 CENSUS -- NUMBER LISTING JUST ONE RACIAL CATEGORY: 903,115 Hispanic (may be of any race) 1990 CENSUS: 8,220,332 2000 CENSUS -- NUMBER LISTING JUST ONE RACIAL CATEGORY: 10,966,556 BY COUNTY 2000 POP. % CHG. Alameda 1,443,741 9.1% Alpine 1,208 6.2% Amador 35,100 14.9% Butte 203,171 8.1% Calaveras 40,554 24.2% Colusa 18,804 11.0% Contra Costa 948,816 15.0% Del Norte 27,507 14.5% El Dorado 156,299 23.3% Fresno 799,407 15.4% Glenn 26,453 3.3% Humboldt 126,518 3.6% Imperial 142,361 22.7% Inyo 17,945 -4.8% Kern 661,645 16.9% Kings 129,461 22.6% Lake 58,309 12.7% Lassen 33,828 20.0% Los Angeles 9,519,338 2.5% Madera 123,109 34.1% Marin 247,289 6.6% Mariposa 17,130 17.3% Mendocino 86,265 4.5% Merced 210,554 12.8% Modoc 9,449 -4.7% Mono 12,853 25.1% Monterey 401,762 8.6% Napa 124,279 9.6% Nevada 92,033 14.9% Orange 2,846,289 15.3% Placer 248,399 42.1% Plumas 20,824 3.3% Riverside 1,545,387 26.6% Sacramento 1,223,499 14.4% San Benito 53,234 38.4% San Bernardino1,709,434 14.7% San Diego 2,813,833 9.2% San Francisco 776,733 2.7% San Joaquin 563,598 13.0% San Luis Obispo 246,681 10.6% San Mateo 707,161 6.4% Santa Barbara 399,347 4.3% Santa Clara 1,682,585 9.0% Santa Cruz 255,602 7.3% Shasta 163,256 8.4% Sierra 3,555 5.0% Siskiyou 44,301 -0.5% Solano 394,542 11.5% Sonoma 458,614 14.9% Stanislaus 446,997 16.9% Sutter 78,930 18.8% Tehama 56,039 10.2% Trinity 13,022 -2.3% Tulare 368,021 13.5% Tuolumne 54,501 10.3% Ventura 753,197 8.4% Yolo 168,660 15.6% Yuba 60,219 -0.8% Chart: ''Diverse, Yet Distinct'' Though the population of Los Angeles County as a whole is diverse, its neighborhoods are racially and ethnically distinct. The clear separation of groups along color lines has played a significant role in some of the area's watershed moments. 1950 Blacks, moving from the South, settle in two areas with already high concentrations of blacks. Discriminatory housing practices make it difficult for blacks to live elsewhere. 1960 Increasing segregation around Watts and tension between blacks and the police fuel riots in 1965, which leave 34 dead and more than 1,000 injured. 1970 In 1973, as the concentration of blacks in South Central Los Angeles reaches its peak, the city elects its first black mayor, Tom Bradley. 1980 While black areas are becoming less concentrated, Hispanic neighborhoods are becoming more so. 1990 In 1992, 45 are killed in riots after the acquittal of white police officers who were videotaped beating a black motorist. 2000 Chinese make up most of the Asian majority in Rowland Heights. Areas with Hispanic majorities are spreading eastward. *The census did not provide a separate category for Asians until 1980. However, most ''other race'' respondents who were not Hispanic were Asian in Los Angeles. NOTE: Hispanic data from 1950 to 1970 are derived from origin and surname tabulations by the Census Bureau. 2000 data are mapped by census block groups. Data for earlier years are allocated and mapped to 2000 census tract boundries. (Sources: 1950 and 1960 data are compiled by Philip J. Ethington, University of Southern California history department. 1970 data are from the California Finance Department. 1980 to 2000 data are compiled by Andrew A. Beveridge, Queens College sociology department. All data are compiled from Census Bureau publications or files. Riot information is from David Halle and Kevin Rafter, U.C.L.A. LeRoy Neiman Center.)(pg. A18)

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Back to Top

Actually, I recall back in my youth that Mexicans were considered Caucasian. Somewhere in the 60's the Census Bureau decided to get fancy and break things into sub-categories. I recently read that approximately 17% of Hispanics in the US would be considered to be non-white.

Yes, right around 1964... when the Bracero Program was discontinued and the signing of the Civil Rights Bill, (and the foundation of which was based on interstate commerce, rather than RACE)

The Border | Interactive Timeline