Thread: Alabama’s immigration reform again cuts unemployment

dailycaller.com
By Neil Munro
Updated: 6:51 PM 01/20/2012


An undocumented immigrant captured by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents is handcuffed (Photo: AP)

Alabama’s unemployment rate continues to drop amid state-wide enforcement of a new immigration law, despite Democratic efforts to block and stigmatize the popular reform.

December’s unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent, down from 8.7 percent in November and 9.8 percent in September.

“In the last three months alone, we’ve seen an unprecedented drop of 1.7 percentage points,” noted Alabama Republican Gov. Robert Bentley in a Jan. 20 statement.

“Our rate is once again below the national average, and over 41,000 more Alabamians are employed now than at the beginning of the year… but we still have work to do,” said Bentley.

The drop began after a bipartisan 2011 law toughened the state’s immigration enforcement policies.

The reform prompted many low-skilled illegal immigrants to leave the state, and was slammed by advocates for illegal immigrants, including Tom Perez, the chief of the Justice Department’s civil regulation division.

Many established media outlets have highlighted the departing illegals and controversial portions of the law — which forced schools to verify the immigration status of students, while downplaying the employment gains and the law’s popularity.

Perez and immigration advocates have sued the state to halt enforcement of the apparent employment-boosting measure.

The Democrats’ focus on immigration is largely intended to rally Hispanic voters behind President Barack Obama.

Multiple polls show that Hispanic-American voters believe that jobs and education are their top political issues.

But the polls also show that heated controversies over immigration tend to rally Hispanic support for Democratic candidates.

Democratic politicians and activists try to create controversies over the issue, partly by portraying bipartisan efforts to curb illegal immigration as racist.

For example, numerous Democrats have declared that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s call for immigration enforcement is “extreme.”

Romney “would become the most extreme presidential nominee of our time,” Florida Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch declared in a joint Jan. 12 press conference with fellow Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the head of the Democratic National Committee.

Alabama’s unemployment rate is now the 28th lowest in the country. In September the state placed near the bottom of the national list, at number 42.

The state has also added 35,400 new jobs since January 2011.

Still, many counties have very high unemployment rates. For example, the formal unemployment rate in majority-black Wilcox County is 16.3%. It is 13.7 percent in Bullock County, and 13.5 percent in Perry County and Lowndes County.

The unemployment rate in next-door Georgia is 9.7 percent, down from 10.3 percent in September, according to Georgia’s department of labor.

In neighboring Mississippi, the December data has not been released. In November, the unemployment rate was 10.5 percent, slightly down form 10.6 percent in September.

Nationally, the unemployment rate is 8.5 percent. However, that rate only counts people who have look for jobs in the last four weeks. Since January 2009, millions of workers have given up looking for jobs or remain stuck in part-time jobs.

Read more: Alabama | Immigration Law | Unemployment | Robert Bentley | The Daily Caller

By Dan Murtaugh, Press-Register
Updated: Friday, January 20, 2012, 6:26 PM

MOBILE, Alabama -- Unemployment rates plummeted in south Alabama in December, as Mobile County's rate fell below the national average for the first time since 2009.


Mobile County's unemployment rate was 8.4 percent, down from 9.1 percent in November and 9.7 percent in December 2010.


It's the lowest unemployment rate for the county since January 2009, and it's the first time since February 2009 that Mobile County has had a lower rate than the national average, which is 8.5 percent.


Baldwin County's unemployment rate fell to 7.2 percent from 7.4 percent in November and 8.5 percent in December 2010.


Statewide, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent from 8.7 percent in November and 9.1 percent in December 2010.


The figures, released Friday by the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations, represent good news, said Keivan Deravi, an economics professor at Auburn University Montgomery. But optimism over the employment figures should be guarded, he said.


The unemployment rate can fall for two reasons -- either more people get jobs, or fewer people are actively looking for work. It was the latter reason that drove unemployment rates down throughout Alabama in December, he said.


For example, in Mobile County, only eight more people where employed in December than November, but about 1,300 people dropped out of the labor force, resulting in a 0.7 percent drop in the rate.


In Baldwin County, there were actually fewer people working in December than November, but the labor pool dropped by a larger number, so the unemployment rate fell.


Deravi said he does not think the falling labor force has anything to do with a new state law that went into effect last year, making it more difficult to employ illegal immigrants. The data is compiled by a telephone survey, he said, and "how many illegal immigrants do you think are in the database?"


A more likely explanation is that people who have been out of work for a long period of time are discouraged with the job market and have given up -- either by going back to school or retiring early.


"The people leaving the job market are not being shipped to Mars. They're going to come back at some point," Deravi said.


"When they re-enter the job market, if we're not creating enough jobs to absorb them then unemployment goes back up," he said.

Unemployment rate falls, but economist says optimism over figures should be guarded | al.com

First article added to the Homepage: http://www.alipac.us/content/alabama...employment-82/

Yes! and it will keep dropping to the percent it should be at! If they would have left it alone and waited a year, the whole country would see the truth about illegal immigrants, voter fraud, etc... and at the end of that year they'd be saying "Damn! where did all this good money come from?"

Alabama's Unemployment Rate Plummets In Wake Of Tougher Illegal Immigration Laws


By Bill Hobbs
January 23, 2012

Alabama's unemployment rate has suddenly started dropping fast - and much faster than its neighboring states - raising the intriguing possibility that the conventional wisdom that illegal immigrants "take jobs that Americans won't do" is wrong, at least when the economy is terrible.

The state's unemployment rate fell 1.2 percentage points in three months - September through November - a much faster improvement than achieved in any of its neighboring states.

Alabama's unemployment rate in November was 8.1 percent, compared to 9.8 percent just three months before, and dropped twice as fast over three months as it did in Tennessee, down 0.6 percent to 9.1 percent, and Florida, where it dropped 0.6 to 10 percent.

Alabama's sudden drop in unemployment also far outstrips neighboring Georgia, where unemployment declined 0.4 percent to 9..9 percent, and in Mississippi, where unemployment dropped a mere tenth of a percent, to 10.5 percent.

On Friday, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley announced the state's unemployment rate continued to plummet in December, to 8.1 percent. While official Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers won't be released until later this week for all of the states, it is clear that something good is happening in Alabama, where unemployment has dropped below the national average.

Some are suggesting that the state's new laws designed to push back against illegal immigration are the reason for the sudden improvement in Alabama's unemployment rate.

In December, Chuck Ellis, a member of the city council in Northern Alabama’s Marshall County, told the Daily Caller that the suddenly-plummeting unemployment rate is "proof that people - American Citizens [and] legal migrants, have suffered at the hands of politicians who choose politics over economics." He pointed to the fact that in his county, population 95,000, with a workforce of 30,000, "there are over 600 people who now have jobs that they didn’t have 6 months ago."

In that same story, Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a D.C. -based advocacy group, said that it was "certainly plausible that immigration enforcement - and the subsequent drop in the number of illegals - enabled unemployed Americans to find work." He went on to say this: "Americans with the highest unemployment rates — young workers, less-educated workers, minority workers — are the ones facing the greatest job competition from illegal aliens, and thus would benefit the most from the departure of those illegal aliens."

Of course, correlation isn't causation. It is certainly possible that Alabama's tough new anti-illegal immigration laws had little or nothing to do with Alabama's sudden emergence as a center of job-growth.

But if the new state unemployment numbers released this week show Alabama continuing to outpace its neighbors in reducing its unemployment rate, it will be more and more difficult to make that argument - and easier for lawmakers and candidates who favor a tougher stance on illegal immigration to make the argument that it is a crucial and necessary step in reviving the American economy so that it is producing more jobs for Americans and legal residents.

Alabama's Unemployment Rate Plummets In Wake Of Tougher Illegal Immigration Laws | CNSnews.com