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March 29, 2008


SOUTH LEE EDITORIAL: Hispanics leaving area


People are slowly seeing the difference in anchor stores that catered to Hispanic immigrants in several strip malls around Lee County: They are most of the time half empty.

At an even more visible level, chain grocery stores have definitely seen a decrease of Hispanic customers.

You may wonder whether a sluggish economy has forced these workers to flee the area in search of better opportunities. Well, you are partially right.

There is a second, even more important reason why Hispanic immigrants, both legal and illegal, are leaving this area, if not the country.

Twice in the past two years, the U.S. Congress tried but failed to pass comprehensive legislation to deal with the problem of illegal immigration.

However, state and local governments have pressed forward with hundreds of new enforcement bills, regulations and procedures, including stepped up deportations, more workplace raids, and restrictions on access to driver's licenses and other government services and benefits.

It's no secret that the Justice Center in Fort Myers is flooded every day with Hispanic workers to pay their traffic fines for driving without a license.

With the federal government's failure to take up this federal responsibility, municipalities have turned to making life for immigrants both legal and illegal a living hell. Remember that most of the illegal immigrants do have relatives who are legal, including their U.S.-born children.

So the sluggish economy is really the excuse immigrants have been waiting for to leave Lee County.

Unlike staying here collecting unemployment, most of these workers otherwise employed in construction have moved to agricultural and cattle states up North and West.

Hispanics are the nation's largest minority group, numbering 47 million (about 15.5 percent of the total U.S. population).

About a quarter of Hispanic adults are illegal immigrants, most of them arriving as part of a heavy wave of immigration that began gathering force in the 1970s.

Estimates based on the March 2005 Current Population Survey show that 2.5 million undocumented workers arrived in the country between 2000 and 2005, accounting for just under 2 percent of the U.S. labor force.

More than half of them were employed in construction and service occupations where they make up a larger share of the labor force.

People say that immigrants cost jobs. So the economy is down, no jobs, we don't need immigrants - immigrants leave.

False assumption.

Jobs create more jobs. Were these immigrants "legal" they would use their skills locally to create more businesses. Just as history tells us, immigrants have an unparalleled entrepreneurial spirit.

The basic story for the national slowdown is that the end of the housing boom has not been offset by growth and employment creation in other sectors of the economy. Here is where a timely immigration reform could have played a major role.

The products and services immigrants consume create more jobs for the companies that provide them. This needs to be emphasized because it's a major hidden benefit for the state's economy.

We may not see it right now but in a year or so there will be a correction in the construction labor market. Then we will see - again - more demand for construction labor than the marketplace can support. What would we do then?

We'll probably be back to the drawing board, calling for immigration reform.

Will we ever learn?

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