Harsh anti-immigrant laws enacted in communities across the country – promoted by national nativist organizations that want to severely limit immigration – have burdened taxpayers with millions in legal expenses, inflamed racial tensions and devastated businesses, according to a report issued today by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
The report – When Mr. Kobach Comes to Town: Nativist Laws & the Communities They Damage – examines the impact of these laws, which have been promoted and defended by former law professor and newly elected Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Kobach also played a leading role in drafting Arizona's controversial anti-immigrant statute, S.B. 1070.
The SPLC report was released simultaneously with a report by the Center for American Progress, Unconstitutional and Costly: The High Price of Local Immigration Enforcement, which focuses more specifically on the monetary costs to the communities.
Millions of dollars have been spent by local governments to defend these laws in court, and almost every judicial decision so far has gone against them. One community, faced with skyrocketing legal costs, had to raise property taxes. Another was forced to cut personnel and special events and even outsource its library. Only one had even a small part of its ordinance upheld in the courts.
http://splcenter.org/get-informed/news/splc-report-nativist-laws-cost-communities-millions-inflame-racial-tensionThere is another cost to this, hearing the hate these laws are brewing and reading about how 1/5 to 1/2 of the business in Hispanic parts of the towns are now gone. That's just depressing.
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