Experts Predict Arizona "OUT OF BUSINESS!"

MSNBC is reporting:

Experts predict employer sanctions will hurt AZ

By PAUL GIBLIN TRIBUNE
Sun., Dec. 23, 2007

A quick glance at the masons who work for Rhino Masonry in Mesa reveals an interesting quirk about the company's work force - nearly every block layer on the payroll is Hispanic. Business owner Robert Ahlers said he's comfortable with his company's demographics. It simply reflects those of the region's construction industry in general, he said. However, he has no idea what impact the state's stringent new employer sanctions law will have on his company next month. "I don't know if come Jan. 1, when this goes into effect, I'm going to wake up on a Monday morning and half the people working for me are going to be gone," Ahlers said.

Hispanic workers elsewhere have been walking off their jobs in anticipation of the Legal Arizona Workers Act taking effect New Year's Day. The law is intended to change the way Arizona companies conduct business. Specifically, it's intended to prompt business owners to purge illegal immigrants from their payrolls. Businesses knowingly employing illegal immigrants face corporate death penalties. The first offense can result in a 10-day suspension of a company's business license. The second offense can mean loss of the business license altogether. The law is widely viewed as the toughest of more than 100 passed by states and municipalities nationwide since the summer to crack down on illegal immigration.

...

Business owners are changing the way they hire, moving to an electronic, federal system called E-Verify, which checks job applicants' Social Security numbers to confirm their employment eligibility. Also, an uncounted number of illegal immigrants living and working in Arizona are moving to other states or back to Mexico to avoid detection, according to Hispanic community leaders.

However, the law also is causing Arizona is lose its appeal among business investors, according to business leaders. Arizona clearly is dependent on immigrant labor. Of the state's nearly 2.5 million workers, close to 300,000 are not U.S. citizens, according to a University of Arizona study released in October. That equates to more than 10 percent of the total work force.

Ahlers is worried about maintaining his own work force at Rhino Masonry, 722 W. McLellan Road in Mesa. The company typically employs between 50 to 100 at between $15 to $25 an hour, plus benefits. Ahlers always has been careful to check documents for new hires, and believes every employee on his payroll is eligible to work in the United States. Still, the new employer sanctions law is forcing him to act like an immigration agent, he said. "It's making me mad, because I object to having to do someone else's job for them," he said. "The federal government has failed miserably to do their job - or we wouldn't have a bunch of illegals wandering around our country. "Now our government says, 'Look employers, you've got to fix it because we can't. You've got to do extra work. You've got to do things. If you don't do it, we're going to fine you or put you out of business,'" Ahlers said.

GRAY AREAS IN LAW
There's widespread misunderstanding among business operators over the new law, said labor attorney Julie A. Pace, who has lectured at more than 50 seminars about the topic since July. "Some have been paying attention and some understand different things about the law. I think many feel it's unconstitutional and are waiting for the court to rule. Others are not familiar with it at all," she said. To make matters worse, the law is filled with ambiguities and is subject to different interpretations, said Pace, of the Phoenix law firm Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll. For example, no one has ruled definitively how the law will be applied to franchised businesses. If violations are discovered at a single location of a statewide chain of gas stations, restaurants, banks or department stores, does that mean every outlet statewide will be shut down, leading to hundreds of layoffs? Pace is operating under the legal assumption the entire chain can be closed. "Everybody loses their jobs," she said. With that in mind, business owners statewide are rushing to restructure their business operations, making each location a separate corporate entity. Also, some business owners are postponing Arizona expansion plans while waiting to see how the law will be enforced. "A lot of clients of ours have already moved their operations out of state for any expansion," Pace said. "They're not going to open any businesses here."

TROUBLE ON THE FARM
The law already is cutting into Arizona's agricultural industry, which employs the state's highest percentage of noncitizen workers. "We already were having problems getting workers," said Joe Sigg, director of government relations for the Arizona Farm Bureau Federation, a nonprofit association of 3,000 agriculture-related businesses. The impact is twofold: Immigrant workers without documentation are leaving to avoid deportation, and immigrant workers with documentation are relocating because they fear discrimination.

Consumers nationwide could see the impact as early as next month. Nearly all of the country's supply of iceberg lettuce from November through March is grown in and around Yuma, just north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The harvest requires 50,000 laborers a day, but farm owners are uncertain whether enough workers will be available to pick the lettuce before it rots in the fields, Sigg said. "The law, in our view, has lost proportionality to the problem," he said. "There is no question that immigration - legal and illegal - causes a host of problems. But the economic side of this is: How do you unplug a work force that you can't possibly replace?" he asked.

Farmers also are encountering new difficulties in securing business loans, because lenders recognize they may not be able to bring their crops to market. Private sector investors similarly are holding back, Sigg said. The law is certain to cause the entire state's economy to slow, said Ann Seiden, spokeswoman for the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

KEEPING UP WITH GROWTH
"Our rap over the past several years has been growth - this population has been booming, our economy has been doing well. Granted, there are some other factors that have caused our economy to backslide a little, but we think this is going to further that," she said. The now-slumping housing industry is closely tied to the immigrant labor pool. Approximately 22 percent of all construction trade workers are noncitizens, according to the UA study. Noncitizens account for 56 percent of plasterers and stucco masons, 41 percent of roofers, and 38 percent of drywall and ceiling installers. Plus, naturalized U.S. citizens account for an additional 6 percent of plasterers, 7 percent of roofers and 8 percent of drywall installers. The only question is how much impact the law will have on the state's economy, Seiden said. Economic development officials are hearing business owners are reluctant to move into or expand in Arizona while business licenses remain at stake, she said. "When you're going to invest in something, you pretty much want to invest in a sure thing. Uncertainty doesn't lend itself to that kind of positive investment and growth," she said.

One certainty is that the law will be enforced, said Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas. Employer sanctions are an important component of halting the "border crisis," and sheriff's deputies and county prosecutors are prepared to launch investigations next year, he said. "These are complex investigations. I would compare them to white-collar cases, fraud cases. These are not your simple cut-and-dried robbery or burglary cases," he said. The first cases are likely to take months to get to court. And while prosecutors have had months to develop a strategy on how to pursue their first cases, which are certain to attract national attention, they haven't done so, Thomas said. He dismissed the idea prosecutors have weighed whether to first go against a corner taco shop or similar small business in a quest for quick legal victory, or to first move against a larger and wealthier enterprise to score a strong victory. "We have no preconceptions about that. We're going to wait to see what kind of evidence and information we have," Thomas said. "The resources of the company will have no bearing on our decision."

Ron Paul: Idiot on Meet the Press today!

Ron Paul looked like an idiot on Meet the Press today!

What did he say?

1. End Income Tax and STOP ALL Government Programs including Social Security!

2. Stop Funding for all Public Services including Public Schools !

3. Pull all troops back from Around the World & Close most military Bases

4. Lincoln Advice: You should never have gone to War. Slavery could have been stopped by the Government buying all Slaves!?!

5. Hitler: He wasn´t ALL Wrong!

He looked like a total nutcase.

Was it just the format or was it R. Paul?

Time will tell, but....
do you see the similarities?

Meet the Press Transcript

Holiday Pictures of Commenters on my Blog

Every time someone posts a comment on my Blog, I always visualize what they look like as they are commenting. Here is the picture I get of a few of my frequent commenters. Happy Holidays!

Liquidmicro:

.......

Pat:

......

Ultima (young) & Lupita:

Ultima Now:

Migrants from Arizona Returning Home!

"I don't want to live here because of the new law and the oppressive environment," he said. "I'll be better in my country."

CNN is reporting:

PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) -- Illegal immigrants in Arizona, frustrated with a flagging economy and tough new legislation cracking down on their employers, are returning to their home countries or trying their luck in other states.

For months, immigrants have taken a wait-and-see attitude toward the state's new employer-sanctions law, which takes effect January 1. The voter-approved legislation is an attempt to lessen the economic incentive for illegal immigrants in Arizona, the busiest crossing point along the U.S.-Mexico border. And by all appearances, it's starting to work. "People are calling me telling me about their friend, their cousin, their neighbors -- they're moving back to Mexico," said Magdalena Schwartz, an immigrant-rights activist and pastor at a Mesa church. "They don't want to live in fear, in terror."

...Under the employer sanctions law, businesses found to have knowingly hired illegal workers will be subject to sanctions from probation to a 10-day suspension of their business licenses. A second violation would bring permanent revocation of the license.

...State Rep. Russell Pearce of Mesa, the author of the employer sanctions law, said his intent was to drive illegal immigrants out of Arizona. "I'm hoping they will self-deport," Pearce said. "They broke the law. They're criminals." Under the employer sanctions law, businesses found to have knowingly hired illegal workers will be subject to sanctions from probation to a 10-day suspension of their business licenses. A second violation would bring permanent revocation of the license.

Nancy-Jo Merritt, an immigration lawyer who primarily represents employers, said her clients already have started to fire workers who can't prove they are in the country legally. "Workers are being fired, of course," she said. "Nobody wants to find out later on that they've got somebody working for them who's not here legally." When immigrants don't have jobs, they don't stick around, said Dawn McLaren, a research economist at Arizona State University who specializes in illegal immigration. She said the flagging economy, particularly in the construction industry, also is contributing to an immigrant exodus. "As the jobs dwindle and the environment becomes more unpleasant in more ways than one, you then decide what to do, and perhaps leaving looks like a good idea," she said. "And certainly that creates a problem, because as people leave, they take the jobs they created with them."

Pearce disagreed that the Arizona economy will suffer after illegal immigrants leave, saying there will be less crime, lower taxes, less congestion, smaller classroom sizes and shorter lines in emergency rooms. "We have a free market. It'll adjust," he said. "Americans will be much better off." He said he's not surprised illegal immigrants are leaving the state and predicts that more will go once the employer-sanctions law takes effect next month. "It's attrition by enforcement," he said. "As you make this an unfriendly state for lawbreakers, I'm hoping they will pick up and leave."

Las Posadas at Christmastime!

In my hometown in Michigan, my father help found the Catholic Church for Mexican Americans. Back in those times, most of the Mexican Americans were migrants brought up to Michigan by the State of Michigan and the various Farm Bureaus to harvest the crops. Most of the migrant families were from Texas and Mexico. Most did not speak English. After the busy harvest season, many of the men who decided to stay in Michigan with their families found jobs in the auto industry as my father did.

Most of the migrants were Catholic, as my family was Catholic. Many of the Catholic churches conducted various masses in Spanish, just for the migrant workers. Our church was the same.

Within a few years, there were a significant number of Mexican American families. My father, along with several other Mexican American leaders, petitioned the church for their own Mexican American church. With so many new members, the church complied.

The church provided was previously an old Baptist Church. It was in an older section of town and the building was built around the turn of the previous century. All the parishioners pitched in and help refurbish the church, painting meeting rooms and the church itself.

During Holidays, everyone helped to festively decorate the church. The year it was established, at Christmastime, we conducted our first Posada.

Las Posadas were a special time in our church. We reenacted Joseph´s journey with Mary to Bethlehem. Las Posadas started on December 16 and continued through Christmas Eve. Our families went to church every evening during this time for the reenactment. We went from house to house and sang songs. It was a beautiful time of togetherness. It also helped all of us understand the true meaning of Christmas. Mary and Joseph arrived at the inn and we were all welcomed in for the birth of Christ at Christmastime.

When I think of those times, I think of the birth of Christ, the singing and the feeling that we were all joined together in this Celebration of the True Meaning of Christmas!

Soap Opera Politics Vol 1, Issue 1

Both sides are starting the mud-slinging and the soap operas. Here is what I am seeing:

Dems Frontrunners:
John Edwards: The juiciest rumor is being reported by several blogs, "Rielle Hunter and John Edwards have been rumored to be having an affair for months. It’s only this evening, when the National Enquirer announced that it had, not only photos of a pregnant Rielle, but also testimony from several sources close to her and Edwards, that her name became well-known." Say it ain´t so John (for the record, he has denied it but now, supposedly, there are witnesses and a baby). We love your wife and if you did this, you have lost your shot, forever!
Obama: The mud slingers keeping bringing up Obama´s loyalty to America. False! Obama is a very loyal American! Now, are the Hollywood Superstars helping or hurting him?
Hillary: Quite honestly, I think the Republicans want Hillary to be the Candidate. I think they think they have the best shot of beating her.

Republican Front-runners (the rest don´t stand a chance!)
Huckabee: Using his religion on his shirt-sleeve. Gilchrist as his backer. Flip flopping on border security. Even the ANTI sites say there are other scandals blooming!
Romney: Flip Flopper Supreme, plus his Mormon religion are all targets.
Guiliani: Affair, Divorce, Marriage, Funds, Unethical Business Practices, Shady Friends, ANTIs hate his past stance on Immigration, plus he dressed like a girl. He has it all, most of it old news, but still very relevant!

Well, maybe an Independent will win.

After all, Liquid has thrown his hat in the ring and is now a candidate!

MMs Gilchrist and Simcox and Gheen still fighting!

Just a quick update (I won´t belabor this subject but wanted to give you an update):

Gilchrist sent out a very angry letter to his MM email broadcast code calling Simcox and Gheen Hypocrits, Liars and Charltans. On his website, Gheen angrily fights back and says "Jack Sharpe" is a known alias of Gilchrist.. The shxx is hitting the fan and mass broadcast emails are flying back and forth. Here are excerpts from Gilchrist´s first email. I am providing links to various responses below.

Subject: Hypocrites, Liars and Charlatans: Is the minuteman movement doomed?

by Jack Sharpe (aka Jim Gilchrist)

For years now, many leaders and volunteers of the Minuteman Movement have remained quiet about things they know to be true. We all believed it would hurt the movement if Americans knew how their donations were being spent, or what kinds of narcissistic nitwits are leading some of these organizations. Minutemen held their tongues and soldiered on with the mission. Despite this attempt to protect the movement through silence, Americans have not turned out in the numbers that the original founders had hoped. Why? Because America still sees us as a racist, kooky, fringe group. In three years there have been less than 6,000 Minutemen that have ever patrolled the border. They are divided into several organizations with many members belonging to two or three of these organizations. Some of these organizations charge a “membership fee” (sometimes referred to as a background check), or monthly dues. But the bigger groups also use professional fundraising companies to raise money from direct mail campaigns and donor drives. Patriotic Americans often give money in lieu of going to the border, and many of these groups exploit them by claiming that the donations are used to support the Minutemen on the border. However, more often than not, most of the money goes straight into the pockets of the leadership. Not that they are stealing vast sums of money, but after half of the donations are paid back to the fundraising firm, and twenty-five percent split between various creditors, and another twenty percent to operating costs (staff), that only leaves five percent (5 %) of the donations left to actually fund the cause.Chris Simcox is the president of one of the largest Minuteman Project spin-off groups, the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC). Chris and MCDC split away from Jim Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project over two years ago to become a “project” of Declaration Alliance. Chris hired a slick Washington Consulting company (Diener and Associates) to handle MCDC’s finances and raise money for the organization. Before Simcox knew it was happening, he had lost control of his organization to a DC beltway insider’s coalition. They took control of MCDC’s parent corporation after Simcox was convicted of a weapons violation on Federal land. For the record: Simcox was legally wearing a sidearm until he accidentally entered a state park. The felony prevented him from remaining the head of the group, but the fundraising company kept him on as the “Founder” and sent him on the paid lecture circuit. With a wife and children to consider, Simcox was in no position to turn on his masters. Last year almost half of the members of MCDC revolted against Simcox and tried to take the organization away from its real owner, fundraiser Diener and Associates. The members claimed that they received no financial support from MCDC and were instructed to send what little donations they could scrape up to Headquarters for redistribution. Many Chapter leaders complained, but they were dismissed or ignored. At one point the majority of the chapter leaders called for a meeting with Simcox to ask where the money went. Simcox had no idea and no one from the fundraising company would tell him. The rebelling members demanded to see the financial books, but Simcox didn’t have them and wasn’t sure who did. He then did the only thing he could do; he ran away and hid. At this point Simcox had become jealous of the success of Jim Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project.

...Without so much as a phone call to Jim Gilchrist asking him why, several leaders of Minuteman fringe groups viciously attacked Jim and Mike Huckabee with the hopes of getting some cheap publicity for themselves... It only took Simcox two days to pile on and take his cheap shot at Jim Gilchrist as well. He and his friend William Gheen (ALIPAC) have started a “destroy Gilchrist and Huckabee” campaign with help from among the kooks and zealots of the movement. William Gheen, President of ALIPAC, has had a personal grudge against Jim Gilchrist since the Minuteman Project was founded. Gheen makes his living soliciting donations from unsuspecting Americans in the name of border security. What most people don’t know is just how much of the donor money coming into his organization Gheen pockets. He has never opened his books to the public or explained what happened to the money that many hard working people have given to him. William Gheen uses fear- mongering and race baiting to scare old people out of their savings with stories of “the savage invasion from the Southern border”.When Gilchrist founded the Minuteman Project many patriots believed that Jim was doing more for the movement than all of the dozen of other activist organizations combined. This caused the donor money to dry up for Gheen and ALIPAC, and Simcox and MCDC. And, oh, how they ranted and cursed Gilchrist and the Minuteman Project! To preserve their “cash cows”, the naïve American donor base that has already sent them millions of dollars, Simcox, Gheen, and other so-called secure-borders advocates have to attack Gilchrist’s endorsement of Mike Huckabee. ..Meanwhile, Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project, which does not require “membership fees” to participate in saving America, stoically plods onward, relying on only a hope, a prayer, and a vision inspired by our Founding Fathers.

Jack Sharpe, for Jim Gilchrist and The Minuteman Project

Gheen´s response

This is turning into a HUGE Soap Opera!! Will Huckabee be hurt by all of the infighting? Only time will tell!