Arizona's S.B. 1070: Shutting Out Migrants at the Expense of Our Humanity?

To immigrant rights activists, "S.B. 1070" is shorthand for racial
profiling and anti-immigrant backlash. For others, the controversial
Arizona law, which essentially compels police to arrest anyone of
questionable immigration status, is a symbol of defiance against the
invading hordes of cheap labor.

On either side, the law has spurred frenzied speculations that
ultimately distract us from the core ethical question about how this
country treats its newcomers. While the legislation wends through an ongoing legal battle, the
actual impact of S.B. 1070 has proven tough to measure. Anecdotal
news reports suggest that some families are retreating from public view, terrified of
being targeted by police. Business owners serving the Latino
community worry about losing

business.

Some Arizona schools have seen a drop in Latino enrollment, suggesting that some undocumented parents are leaving, probably due to a combination of
police-related fears and the dismal economy.

The speculation reached new heights recently when a
business-oriented think tank declared that S.B. 1070 had sent
Latinos fleeing Arizona en masse. But the report's contention that
tens of thousands of migrants have "gone back" is based on misleading data from a single program, which
repatriates border-crossers after they're caught on the Arizona
side.
As Media Consortium's Catherine Traywick and the Arizona Daily
Star's Brady McCombs point out, this data focuses on
migrants in transit, not those who find their way into the workforce
and put down roots north of the border.

Calculating the monetary cost of the law's political fallout is somewhat more
straightforward. According to the Center for American Progress, now that the law
has "triggered a fierce, national public-opinion backlash against
the state" and spurred boycotts nationwide, the law comes
with a hefty price tag. The loss of revenues from canceled events
and conferences will include:

$141 million in lost direct spending by convention
attendees

• 2,761 lost jobs
• $86.5 million in lost earnings
• $253 million in lost economic output
• $9.4 million in lost tax revenues

There's also the long-term cost of social services and lost income
for immigrant households specifically when breadwinners get arrested
or deported. Other studies outline the potential effects of such a
drastic crackdown. According to a research brief by the Immigration Policy Center:

If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from
Arizona, the state would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity,
$11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140, 324
jobs, even accounting for adequate market adjustment time,
according to a report by the Perryman Group.

But the political meaning of S.B. 1070 isn't just about taxes and
profits. The law's most disruptive impact so far has been on the
discourse surrounding immigration reform. The law is already inspiring copycat legislation
providing a model legal scaffold for politicians' opportunistic
immigrant bashing and reactionary rage.

While it may not be a good starting point for a demographic
analysis, the real controversy around SB 1070 is about labor and
economic anxieties. Ironically, economic volatility is a far more relevant
factor shaping migration rates in and out of the country, as we've
seen with the recent declines. When studies overemphasize law enforcement as an influence
on people's decisions to migrate, they downplay the reality that no
amount of mass deportations would alter the structural forces that
exploit the migrant workforce.

The exodus argument may in fact inadvertently validate
anti-immigrant groups' belief that a harsh crackdown is an effective
"solution." The restrictionist organization FAIR, for instance,
calls for reducing undocumented population through "attrition," which combines the
deportation-enforcement dragnet and withholding of any social
support like education or health care. Their logic is that if you
can't deport them all at once, you can wipe them out by making their
lives in America intolerably miserable.

Marc Rosenblum, a policy analyst with the centrist think tank Migration
Policy Institute, noted that a rigid enforcement-only approach
is unsustainable in a dynamic economy. Even if get-tough immigration
policies do push people to leave Arizona, he told In These
Times:

We know that immigrant labor markets and regional labor
markets are very dynamic. ... [A]t some point, the economy's going
to recover, and job growth is going to resume, and families will
have money to finance their relatives' trips. So the underlying
demand for addressing structural flaws in the immigration system
remains in place. Even if we put [in place] an enforcement
infrastructure... that reduces immigration in the current
economy, that wouldn't be a meaningful prediction of how system's
going to work in the future economy.

The dangerous thing about this perverse "starve-the-beast" approach
is that it while it's nearly impossible to prove its effectiveness,
it allows the right to frame the debate with rhetoric that is
polarizing, dehumanizing and terrifying to immigrant workers.

Why does every debate on immigration revolve around forcing migrants
to justify their very existence against a rhetorical war of
attrition? When immigration reform again resurfaces again on
Capitol Hill, in an even more challenging political landscape, there
will be a chance to start over with the premise that no one deserves
to be displaced and dispossessed by the abusive enforcement of
broken laws.

Sure, it may be useful in some cases to show that anti-immigrant
laws are "bad for business." But they're also bad for our humanity,
because they force us to judge neighbors and coworkers in sheer
material terms. Whether its one immigrant or a thousand who flee,
what does that departure say about the integrity of our communities?
Fewer tax dollars? One fewer construction worker? Or one fewer ballot cast, or a child's missing
playmate, or another vanished domestic violence victim?

No community ever grows stronger by pushing people out when it could
include them instead. How many are we willing to lose?