Alabama's Immigration Law Throws State Economy Into Chaos

Alabama’s harsh new immigration law is wreaking havoc on the state’s economy, showing the flaws in the conventional “they’re taking our jobs” argument. Leonard Pitts Jr. writes in his new column, “The Jobs Crisis Is Over!”

Good news. The jobs crisis is over.

You read that correctly. There is plenty work available for downsized, furloughed and involuntarily separated laborers whose inability to land jobs in a rugged economy has driven the unemployment rate past 9 percent. You probably didn’t hear about it in your lamestream media, but the problem has indeed been solved — and it didn’t take some fancy pants economic stimulus package to get ‘er done, either. No, all that was needed was some old-fashioned American ingenuity.

Meaning the recent Alabama law (toughest in the nation, they say) cracking down on illegal alien workers. Ever since it was passed, Hispanic farm laborers who had been taking jobs from hard-working Americans have been fleeing that state like a foreign language film with subtitles. As a result, there is now lots of work available in the exciting field of…

Well, fields. As in fields of vegetables and fruit.

For the last month, newspapers have been reporting an agricultural labor shortage as Hispanic workers — legal and illegal — have abandoned Alabama to escape a law that, if it survives legal challenge, would have police and schoolteachers checking the immigration status of traffic violators and kindergarteners. According to growers, this has left them trying to get through harvest time without harvesters. The result: berries and tomatoes rotting in the fields and a projected $40 million loss to the state’s economy. But this is bigger than ‘Bama. Even states that have not passed crackdowns are seeing labor shortages. Some growers say they will have to go out of business.

This is great news! Now that those darn Hispanics are no longer hogging all the work, there are jobs available for real Americans.