Immigration Raids and Business Matters

Posted by Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin on April 20, 2007

When I met with local business leaders last month to conduct strategic planning for the development of the Latino Enterprise Center, we agreed that focusing our attention on economic development in Northfield through the support of entrepreneurship was a sound strategy. I was aware that immigration raids have a negative impact in the business environment and a high cost to our businesses, employees, suppliers, consumers, and the local and regional economies.

As a person who immigrated to the U.S. legally, and have worked hard to be a valuable citizen, I never thought that my Latino heritage would ever become a liability, I always believed that this country would figure out ways to separate those of us decent people and the criminals when picking the bad guys out. There seem to be a very delicate situation going on in this area as we watch how immigration raids are being carried out around the country, there is an article at the end that will illustrate this scenario better than I can.

I have known that immigration officials search within the Latino communities with a goal of picking up a list of criminals for whom they carry arrest orders with them. I did not see myself disagreeing with that logic and figured that preparing a local plan to deal with the disturbance, would ensure that we actually help ICE (Immigration and Custom Enforcement) officials carry out their job in a quick, efficient and clean manner and consequently minimize the distress to the local community. This logic would work if ICE stayed on track in picking up convicted criminals living among us. We can all probably agree that we don’t want criminals in our communities, specially us Latinos, we already have enough troubles as it is.

Last year in December, immigration raids in Worthington and Marshalltown were also measured on their economic impact. One thing to remember is that the economic impact is felt after the events, logically, the economic, psychological and social environment impact is a collateral damage to non-targets, a price paid by regular folks just living in the target communities. When the current governor of California filmed his christmas movie in Saint Paul in 1996, the disturbance that they created was compensated in some cases at the levels of $100,000 for lost income to local businesses that needed to be temporarily closed. Immigration raids not only surpass this cost locally, they are part of a large chain that also drains tax payers resources in excess of $4 billion.

I know the places where many of the people being deported come from or at least the conditions that make them come to this country without documents. I know for a fact that the house-to-house raids and intimidation of employers is a flawed strategy as a way to enforce or fix undocumented immigration of hardworking decent people. ICE (Immigration and Custom Enforcement) don’t even have the physical infrastructure or resources to carry the plan to completion as stated in their Strategic Plan.
ICE has embarked on a war against human survival, though history has shown thousands of times that nobody can win a war against poverty by expelling people from the places where they have tasted the flavor of opportunity to feed their family. So why are our towns, and our economies put through this painfull process and left behind without compensation for the losses when the show is over.? The answer will come many years from now, as the 10 year ICE strategic plan leaves no doubt that they are not about to slow down. Unfortunatelly, as in other failed war strategies, there is no public accountability to tax payers for such a loss of resources, to businesses for loss income, and to society for the tremendous human suffering, the consequences of a broken immigration policy and senseless intimadation of decent people.

I know a very large group of people around the country and back in Mexico and Guatemala who would revert immigration if given $ 4 billion to work with. In fact, we would only take 20% of overhead and invest the rest in low interest loans to entrepreneurs in the towns where people are coming from. Then we would take a percentage of the interest earned to influence a fair global trading system to multiply the effect of each dollar. We would not even need to be allocatd a budget year after year. I hope you get my point, if ICE were a business who had to show real long-term sustainable results for that investment, I can guarantee, it would not qualify for a bank loan.

A recent article by the Star Tribune in Willmar illustrates the human case very well, read on to learn more.