By Laurel Morales
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/knau/local-knau-914288.mp3
Flagstaff, AZ – If Arizona's new immigration law holds up in court, some say Arizona's economy will not. While some argue more jobs will be available, others say at what cost? Arizona Public Radio's Laurel Morales reports on the possible economic impacts of SB1070.
Isidro, an undocumented immigrant, has lived and worked in Flagstaff for 10 years. He says he came to the US for the same reasons so many other Mexicans cross the border - for a better life.
ISIDRO: una mejor vida
Soon after he moved here Isidro, who didn't want to use his full name, met his wife and had two kids. Like many undocumented workers he holds more than one job - he works at a golf course by day and a restaurant at night. He says Arizona's economy would suffer without immigrants like him.
ISIDRO: El trabajo esta alli. El problema es no quieren hacer ellos.
He says there is work. The problem is no one else wants to do it.
Northern Arizona University economics professor Ronald Gunderson agrees. He says agriculture, construction and tourism have depended heavily on low-skilled workers. And many of them are undocumented.
GUNDERSON: Without those workers someone else has to do the job and to do that may require increase in wages. The increase in wages then gets passed off in the form of higher prices so we could see higher prices in agricultural products simply because we have a different set of workers at a higher pay, if you can get those workers at all.
Across NAU's campus Professor Miguel Vasquez teaches an anthropology class called People's of the Southwest.
Because of current events the class often discusses illegal immigrants. He tells his students he has some strong feelings about the subject. His grandparents came to the US undocumented. But Vasquez tries to dispel myths.
VASQUEZ: One of the first thing that emerges is that they're taking our jobs. So I do a little experiment and I tell them that I'm a watermelon grower in Yuma, Arizona. In the summertime I've got 500 acres of watermelon that I need to harvest. I'm willing to pay them more than minimum wage 10 dollars an hour to pick my watermelons. But they need to remember it's 110 degrees and they need to work until the harvest is in.
Out of a class of 55 students he has no takers until he raises the wage to 20 dollars an hour. At that price Vasquez says it will be an expensive watermelon.
But Jack Martin doesn't think so. He's with the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, an organization that pushes for reducing immigration both illegal and legal.
Martin says he'd like to see employers on a level playing field so they wouldn't have to undercut competitors and hire illegal immigrants.
MARTIN: Whether or not Americans would take those jobs really would have to be seen once those working conditions and wages were improved as they sorely need to be improved but the idea that we have to have a permanent underclass of illegal workers to do those jobs doesn't make any sense.
United Farm Workers president Arturo Rodriguez recently came on the Comedy Central Talk Show the Colbert Report to challenge the American people to take their jobs.
COLBERT REPORT: We put up a Web site takeourjobs.org and we're inviting Americans throughout the US to come and try to work in agriculture if they feel American farm workers are taking away good American jobs. How many people in America have taken you up on this? Only three are working in the fields. Three people? Three people. Make that four I'll do it. (Applause)
FAIR recently released a report called the Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on US Taxpayers. It estimates the total education, medical and incarceration costs in Arizona because of illegal immigration at 2 point 6 billion dollars a year.
NAU economist Ronald Gunderson says it's too soon to tell what the savings would be if illegal immigrants left the state. But if the existing labor force dries up Gunderson predicts the costs would outweigh the savings.
GUNDERSON: We're going to have less people therefore less demand for jobs, less activity, therefore less unemployment, lower incomes, lower taxes, lower housing prices, depressed real estate tax collections so it builds and it's just a downward spiral of one thing building upon another until the whole economy is in a much worse position than it is today.
Even if the law doesn't go into effect Gunderson says the damage has already been done.
GUNDERSON: Perception often trumps reality. As long as people feel there's going to be a problem, say with racial profiling, that's going to be enough to make certain businesses or people change their mind about coming to Arizona.
Or convince those already here to leave.
For Arizona Public Radio I'm Laurel Morales in Flagstaff.