According to the Center for American Progress, Alabama's harsh "Papers Please" immigration law may in fact be having the opposite effect of what its progenitors intended. Or so one would assume.
The Center for American Progress is out with a new report on the devastating effects of Alabama’s harshest-in-the-nation anti-immigrant law. Among other things, Alabama’s already-fragile economy could contract by $40 million if just 10,000 undocumented immigrants stopped working in the state as the result of H.B. 56. Undocumented workers are the backbone of Alabama’s agriculture industry, and many farmers say they will be out of business by next season without those workers. The exodus of immigrants has already created a labor shortage, and crops are rotting in the field. Additionally, the state could lose up to $130 million in tax revenue from the exodus of undocumented immigrants, which is the amount they paid in state and local taxes in 2010.
Yeah! The free-loaders are leaving!
Oh. Wait. They paid $130 million in taxes in 2010? And now the state economy is going to shrink by roughly $40 million or more? And the price of Pecans is going to skyrocket?
The biggest crop in the state of Alabama during November and December is Christmas trees. Are the Republican sponsors of H.B. 56. the true masterminds behind the War on Christmas?
Maybe we should have thought this whole "papers please" thing through a little more thoroughly before jamming it through the legislature.