{"id":372,"date":"2012-07-07T16:22:25","date_gmt":"2012-07-07T16:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/?p=372"},"modified":"2014-02-09T05:26:25","modified_gmt":"2014-02-09T05:26:25","slug":"immigration-laws-jim-crow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/blog\/2012\/07\/immigration-laws-jim-crow\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Immigration Laws Like Jim Crow? – Article by David Bier"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"The<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
David Bier
\n<\/big><\/big><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
July 7, 2012<\/big><\/span><\/div>\n
Recommend this page<\/a>.<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Alabama Governor Robert Bentley was forced to defend his state\u2019s harsh immigration law recently against charges that it amounts to a return to segregation-era racially biased policies.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWhat took place in the civil rights era was a series of unlawful actions against lawful residents,\u201d Bentley\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0in response to the charges. \u201cIt was a shameful chapter in our state\u2019s history. The immigration issue of today is entirely different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parallels to segregation might be slightly overdone, but to call immigration policies \u201centirely different\u201d is disingenuous. America\u2019s restrictive immigration system was invented by the Eugenics Research Institute\u2019s future president, Rep. Albert Johnson (R-Washington), who wanted to protect America\u2019s racial purity from, in the words he quoted from a State Department official,\u00a0\u201cunassimilable . . . filthy . . . and often dangerous\u201d<\/a>\u00a0foreigners. While such laws are no longer justified on racial grounds, their\u00a0impacts today are just as ethnically disparate\u2014more than\u00a080 percent<\/a>\u00a0of immigrants labeled \u201cillegal\u201d are Hispanic, and\u00a097 percent (pdf)<\/a>\u00a0of deportees are Hispanic.<\/p>\n

Nor was segregation \u201cunlawful\u201d\u2014it was a bizarre system of legal controls. Although it\u2019s best known as a system of social control, it was just as much a system of economic regulation. Jim Crow began humbly\u2014with segregated streetcars in Georgia in 1891\u2014but quickly escalated, imposing on southern businesses ever more burdensome requirements: twice the number of bathrooms, waiting rooms, ticket counters, phone booths, even cocktail lounges. The president of Southeastern Greyhound told\u00a0the Wall Street Journal\u00a0<\/em>in 1957, \u201cIt frequently costs fifty percent more to build a terminal with segregated facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Businessmen Conscripted<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since laws that intend to control personal behavior are so rarely enforceable, governments conscript business people to act as\u00a0de facto\u00a0State agents. In this way social controls quickly morph into economic regulations. It is often forgotten that the railroad in the infamous Supreme Court case\u00a0Plessy v. Ferguson<\/em>\u00a0(1896) actually\u00a0helped fight<\/a>\u00a0 the \u201cseparate but equal\u201d doctrine because it \u201csaddled employers with the burden of becoming the state\u2019s race policemen.\u201d Immigration law, which began as a way to restrict the movement of foreigners into the United States, has followed exactly the same pattern. Today a vast portion of America\u2019s immigration code targets businesses, not foreigners.<\/p>\n

Jim Crow\u2019s regulatory state only affected businesses that served both white and African American patrons. For most small businesses, the costs of the regime were simply too great. Similarly, for many businesses today, hiring migrant workers has just become too dangerous. \u201cI always relate it to tax law,\u201d labor law consultant Barlow Curran recently\u00a0told<\/a>\u00a0the Tampa Tribune<\/em>. \u201cFederal tax law is so complicated that if the IRS audits you, regardless of how careful you\u2019ve been, they\u2019ll probably find something. The same thing is true of farm labor law.\u201d No wonder Immigration and Customs Enforcement has imposed\u00a0$100 million<\/a>\u00a0in fines in just the last three years alone\u2014more than the Bush administration\u2019s previous eight years.<\/p>\n

Alabama has only added to these regulatory threats. The state\u2019s\u00a0HB 56<\/a>\u2014enacted a year ago\u2014mandated that employers use E-Verify to check the work authorization for potential employees. Over 60,000 Alabama businesses missed the deadline. If employers are unable to comply, they face license suspensions and may even be given the \u201cbusiness death penalty,\u201d permanent closing.<\/p>\n

As Isabel Wilkerson documents in her Pulitzer Prize-winning\u00a0The Warmth of Other Suns<\/em><\/a>, more than six million African Americans fled the Jim Crow South and left many southern employers facing labor shortages. \u201cFarmers . . . have [woken] up on mornings recently to find every Negro over 21 on his place gone,\u201d editorialized\u00a0the Macon Telegraph<\/em>\u00a0in 1916 as the Great Migration began. \u201cAnd while our very solvency is being sucked out beneath us, we go about our affairs as usual.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fleeing the State<\/strong><\/p>\n

Alabama is discovering that harsh immigration laws can just as easily \u201csuck the solvency out beneath\u201d them. \u201cFrom a business point of view, it\u2019s a terrible piece of legislation,\u201d Henry Hagood, CEO of Alabama Associated General Contractors, told\u00a0Reuters<\/a>. \u201cMy counterparts around the country are saying, \u2018thanks for sending workers our way.\u2019\u201d Tens of thousands of workers have already fled the state. University of Alabama professor Samuel Addy\u00a0found<\/a>\u00a0that losing these workers reduced the state\u2019s GDP by between $2.3 billion and $10.8 billion.<\/p>\n

Conservatives who profess a commitment to the free market must extend that commitment to the labor market. They must realize that harsh immigration laws have the same dire effects on business as other burdensome regulations. They limit not only the free movement of foreign workers but also the rights of American businesses to hire, transport, and associate freely. They need to go the same way as Jim Crow\u2014into the dustbin of history.<\/p>\n

David Bier<\/a> is the immigration policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

This article was published by The Foundation for Economic Education<\/a> and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution United States License<\/a>, which requires that credit be given to the author.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Bier July 7, 2012 Recommend this page. ****************************** Alabama Governor Robert Bentley was forced to defend his state\u2019s harsh immigration law recently against charges that it amounts to a return to segregation-era racially biased policies.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cWhat took place in the civil rights era was a series of unlawful actions against lawful residents,\u201d Bentley\u00a0said\u00a0in response to the charges. \u201cIt was a shameful chapter in our state\u2019s history. The immigration issue of today is entirely different.\u201d Parallels to segregation might be slightly…<\/p>\n

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