Georgia restaurants report labor shortages after passage of anti-illegal immigration law
5:04 p.m. Wednesday, July 20, 2011

By Jeremy Redmon

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia restaurants are reporting labor shortages following the passage of the state’s tough new immigration enforcement law, a new survey by the Georgia Restaurant Association shows.

Nearly half of the 523 restaurateurs across the state who voluntarily participated in the electronic survey this month are having trouble finding workers, a summary of the survey results shows. That summary, however, doesn't say how many pinned the labor shortages on Georgia's new anti-illegal immigration law, also called House Bill 87.

Of the respondents, more than three-quarters are located in the metro Atlanta area. Almost a third of those who took part in the survey gave additional feedback, and 91 percent of them said they were opposed to Georgia's "immigration reform."

Supporters of Georgia’s new law say illegal immigrants are burdening the state’s taxpayer-funded resources, including schools, courts, hospitals and jails. A recent estimate by the Pew Hispanic Center puts the number of illegal immigrants in Georgia at 425,000, the seventh-highest among the states.

But Georgia's $14.1 billion restaurant industry has been particularly critical of HB 87. After the Legislature passed the law in April, the Georgia Restaurant Association raised concerns that it would create additional costs for small businesses and possibly trigger boycotts targeting the state. The association took the position that it supports comprehensive immigration reform, but only at the federal level.

Karen Bremer, the association’s executive director, said she plans to send the results of the survey to state lawmakers in the coming weeks.

“We could have saved a lot of time and a lot of money and dealt with this issue a lot more effectively if business and government had worked together as a coalition and petitioned our federal government to change things and to correct failed policy,â€