State law and guest workers
Fascinating stuff. Republican members of the House are criticizing the Utah immigration bill because it contains a guest worker provision. As I've noted, the Georgia bill that seems likely to be signed into law also contains such a provision. For these reasons, we need to be careful about lumping all such laws together as the same as SB 1070 (something I have to admit I have tended to do). Here is an interesting quote from that article:
But Utah legislators said the state needed a bill that covered enforcement as well as the state’s need for immigrant labor.
"Being reasonable and being conservative are not mutually exclusive,” Herbert said in a statement to a local Utah television station. “Part of being conservative is being practical.”
Again, very interesting. Conventional wisdom is that Republicans must play to an enforcement-minded base. Is there room in there for "practical" and "reasonable"?
I have not bothered to go into the hypocrisy of criticizing state laws while also refusing to pass federal law. It is like shooting fish in a barrel.
2 comments:
Professor Weeks :
Thanks for your information and research. I copied this page of you in these two urls :
http://milenials.blogspot.com/2011/04/professor-greg-weeks-hypocrisy-of.html
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474979252591
and I also added this title and preamble :
Title :
"Professor Greg Weeks : "The hypocrisy of criticizing state laws while also refusing to pass federal law" - "Republican members of the House are criticizing the Utah immigration bill because it contains a guest worker provision"."
Preamble :
"Professor Greg Weeks of Political Science and Director of Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He is the editor of the academic journal The Latin Americanist. His blog is excellent and very high quality. That is why I visit the Professor's blog every day, very informative, rational, moderate, judicious and non-partisan."
Thanks again - I hope you don't mind
Vicente
"The dirt and filth that does not kill you, makes you stronger"
"Todd Landfried, a spokesperson for Arizona Employers for Immigration Reform, a group of more than 250 businesses in the state, says companies are realizing that SB 1070 drove away consumers and taxpayers, made it harder to find labor, and gave Arizona a bad reputation as a place to do business".
New America Media,
News Report
One Year After SB 1070, Arizona's Immigrant Networks Are Stronger
April 22, 2011
http://newamericamedia.org/2011/04/one-year-after-sb-1070-arizonas-immigrant-networks-are-stronger.php
Some excerpts ;
"There's a general concensus that [passing anti-immigrant legislation] has been a bad strategy for Arizona," Landfried says.
A study released this past March by the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank in Washington, D.C., contrasts the economic effects of massive deportation with the effects of legalization of Arizona’s estimated half a million undocumented immigrants.
An enforcement-only approach could lead to a loss of 17.2 percent of total employment in the state and shrink the state's economy by $48.8 billion, according to the report. Legalizing undocumented immigrants in the state, meanwhile, could increase employment by close to 8 percent and increase state tax revenues by $1.68 billion.
As of last November, a boycott against the state had cost convention centers $141 million in cancellations, according to another CAP study.
Alfredo Gutierrez, a former Democratic state senator and editor of the bilingual online newspaper La Frontera Times in Phoenix, says that businesses turned against SB 1070 in the wake of the boycott and the efforts by pro-immigrant groups to exert political pressure, through civl disobedience demonstrations and behind the scenes.
The pro-immigrant movement in Arizona "is maturing politically—it was being pushed to the brink,” Gutierrez says.
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