The new immigration law in Alabama —one of the toughest in the United States— has been categorized as counterproductive based off of early statistics which indicate it’s failure to create jobs for legal citizens.
Promoters of the law said that its implementation would create jobs by taking them away from illegal immigrants thereby opening positions for local, legal citizens. However, as of last week many people within the labors of construction and farming -often rejected by local U.S. citizens- have been abandoned by immigrants.
Today, few of the abandoned positions have been filled by legal citizens, which could surely provoke a downfall on the economy of the state and will put a damper on the reconstruction of Tuscaloosa and other cities that have been damaged by tornados.
Employers feel like the appropriate thing to do is move on under the mandates of the new law, but fear that there will be nobody to employ in areas of manual labor. Many hispanic men with legal status in Alabama are now fleeing the state in fear that their friends or other family members will face deportation if they stay.
Although an exact number of hispanics that have left the state of Alabama is unknown, a preliminary calculation showed that up to one fourth of the construction labor force has fled since the law was put into effect last week.
