Report: Municipal Anti-Immigrant Laws Hurting Economies and Communities

In recent years, states and localities across the country have enacted divisive anti-immigrant legislation that has led to costly lawsuits and sharply divided communities. A newly released Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) report examines the economic and community backlash that can follow the enactment of these laws and concludes that the price of such legislation is quite high.

These various laws criminalize landlords who rent to undocumented immigrants, punish employers who have hired undocumented workers, and require local police to enforce federal immigration laws. The towns SPLC surveyed in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Texas and Nebraska, along with the entire state of Arizona, have spent millions of dollars defending these laws – cases that were ultimately unsuccessful. To raise legal fees in a tight economy, some communities increased property taxes and cut personnel — one even had to outsource its library. The social price is often much higher – the enactment of these laws has fueled tension and violence in towns that had previously been peaceful, the report said. 

The report also highlights the role that Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State and former legal chief for an anti-immigrant advocacy organization, played in writing these laws. SPLC has found his influence so pervasive that it named its report “When Mr. Kobach Comes to Town: Nativist Laws and the Communities They Damage.” The trend is far from over with states across the country considering copycat laws to Arizona’s discriminatory S.B. 1070, which mandates racial profiling in law enforcement, and measures to rewrite the constitutional definition of citizenship to create a new underclass of Americans.

The report and more background are available at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website.