Arizona’s much-maligned immigration law, SB 1070, hasn’t yet been implemented until tonight beginning at 12:01 am, Pacific coast time, but it’s already working. Illegal immigrants are leaving by the droves, heading either to other more hospital states suckers or back to Mexico.
Imagine what would happen if the Obama administration’s Departments of Justice and of Homeland Security actually enforce the federal government’s immigration laws!
~Eowyn
I hope the illegals fleeing from Arizona are taking their garbage with them
Migrants sell up, flee Arizona ahead of crackdown
PHOENIX (Reuters) – Nicaraguan mother Lorena Aguilar hawks a television set and a few clothes on the baking sidewalk outside her west Phoenix apartment block. A few paces up the street, her undocumented Mexican neighbor Wendi Villasenor touts a kitchen table, some chairs and a few dishes as her family scrambles to get out of Arizona ahead of a looming crackdown on illegal immigrants. “Everyone is selling up the little they have and leaving,” said Villasenor, 31, who is headed for Pennsylvania. “We have no alternative. They have us cornered.”
The two women are among scores of illegal immigrant families across Phoenix hauling the contents of their homes into the yard this weekend as they rush to sell up and get out before the state law takes effect on Thursday.
The law, the toughest imposed by any U.S. state to curb illegal immigration, seeks to drive more than 400,000 undocumented day laborers, landscapers, house cleaners, chambermaids and other workers out of Arizona, which borders Mexico. It makes being an illegal immigrant a state crime and requires state and local police, during lawful contact, to investigate the status of anyone they reasonably suspect of being an illegal immigrant.
The U.S. government estimates 100,000 unauthorized migrants left Arizona after the state passed an employer sanctions law three years ago requiring companies to verify workers’ status using a federal computer system. There are no figures for the number who have left since the new law passed in April.
Some are heading back to Mexico or to neighboring states. Others are staying put and taking their chances.
In a sign of a gathering exodus, Mexican businesses from grocers and butcher shops to diners and beauty salons have shut their doors in recent weeks as their owners and clients leave.
On Saturday and Sunday, Reuters counted dozens of impromptu yard sales in Latino neighborhoods in central and west Phoenix. “They wanted to drive Hispanics out of Arizona and they have succeeded even before the law even comes into effect,” said Aguilar, 28, a mother of three young children who was also offering a few cherished pictures and a stereo at one of five sales on the same block. She said she had taken in just $20 as “everyone is selling and nobody wants to buy.”
Arizona straddles the principal highway for human and drug smugglers heading into the United States from Mexico.
The state’s Republican governor, Jan Brewer, signed the law in April in a bid to curb violence and cut crime stemming from illegal immigration. Polls show the measure is backed by a solid majority of Americans and by 65% of Arizona voters in this election year for some state governors, all of the U.S. House of Representatives and about a third of the 100-seat Senate.
Opponents say the law is unconstitutional and a recipe for racial profiling. It is being challenged in seven lawsuits, including one filed by President Barack Obama’s administration, which wants a preliminary injunction to block the law. A federal judge heard arguments from the lawyers for the Justice Department and Arizona on Thursday and could rule at any time.
The fight over the Arizona law has complicated the White House’s effort to break the deadlock with Republicans in Congress to pass a comprehensive immigration law, an already difficult task before November’s elections. While the law targets undocumented migrants, legal residents and their U.S.-born children are getting caught up in the rush to leave Arizona.
Mexican housewife Gabriela Jaquez, 37, said she is selling up and leaving for New Mexico with her husband, who is a legal resident, and two children born in Phoenix. “Under the law, if you transport an illegal immigrant, you are committing a crime,” she said as she sold children’s clothes at a yard sale with three other families. “They could arrest him for driving me to the shops.”
Lunaly Bustillos, a legal resident from Mexico, hoped to sell some clothes, dumbbells and an ornamental statue on Sunday before her family heads for Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Monday. “It makes me sad and angry too because I feel I have the right to be here,” said Bustillos, 17, who recently graduated from high school in Phoenix.
who wants to bet that in arizona now that a portion of the illegals are leaving that the crime rate is going to go down as well as the unemployment rate. what i would like to see after an illegal has been caught and deported once or twice already is that they be sent to something like a gulag (the russian prisons in siberia) a real punishment instead of the typical slap on the hand.
Well Eowyn, I was thinking about what might happen if they enforce the law nationwide. I think the “Sociopath” would have to leave, not having papers of his own.
Well said, Terry! LOL
Send those illegals back to Mexico and start building their corrupt country.
unfortunately u.s. district judge susan bolton in a federal court has ruled in favor of opponents of the bill. the provisions that angered illegals will not take effect… i think ive said it before but i’ll say it again i think its time for a revolution… we were told by clinton in 1994 that NAFTA would save american jobs and keep mexicans in mexico. at the same time h. ross perot said that with NAFTA you will hear a giant sucking sound and that will be your job being sucked out of the country.
For left/liberals, it’s all about the politics– who cares what the “racist” law and Constitution they don’t like say?
For many years we have aided Mexico, poured only God knows how much money into their economy. Companies moved to Mexico to be able to pay lower wages. NAFTA was supposed to be this big boost for Latin America. None of this has done a damned thing, and you know why? Because the government is so corrupt that nothing ever changes.. and you knwo why? Because the mentality in those countries is still in the “Don and Peon” mode. Nothing we ever do is going to change things. This idea of allowin gevery Juan, Abdullah, and Kwame into the country legally or illegally is ever going to make a drop in the bucket of difference.. What is happening is tantamount to the Cockroaches taking over new territory. Nothing more or less. And they are doing it with the blessing of a president who is a communist, and who has surrounded himself with communists. Take a close gander at the people surrounding Obama. Listen to MIchelle, again say that we are goihg to have to change our traditions, our history, and move to a new place. YOu didn’t think she meant a nice new house did you? (maybe for herself and the rest of the elitist communists. As long as this man is still in office, millionhs of illegals will continue to pour over the border like locusts and rape this country of its wealth; while Obama and company plot to destroy it utterly.
p.s. and some of those who clandestinely enter this country are counting on a government who ignore their entrance and their presence…………..BY DESIGN