"You can't just be
approaching people because they are Hispanic."
TUCSON (By Ryan Randazzo, Arizona
Republic) July 12, 2007 — If all undocumented workers were
removed from Arizona's workforce, economic output would drop
annually by at least $29 billion, or 8.2 percent, according to a
University of Arizona report released Wednesday.
The study is based on Census Bureau and other data from 2004,
the most complete year available, and assumed most non-citizens
in the state are undocumented.
It also found that Arizona's documented and undocumented
immigrants generate nearly $44 billion in output annually.
"Output" includes the value of
goods produced in industry, wages and profits.
"I'm not making a stand on what policy should be," said author
Judith Gans, a program manager at the university's Udall Center
for Studies in Public Policy. "This just shows what's at stake."
Gans conceded that the research does not capture all costs
associated with undocumented immigrants but says it caught
significant expenses.
"It is not the purpose of this study to address the myriad
issues surrounding illegal immigration or to imply in any way
that illegal immigration is not a problem," Gans wrote in the
study, funded by the Thomas R. Brown Foundation in Tucson.
The group funds academic research and promotes education about
the economy.
The study also looked at what would happen to specific
industries that lost most non-citizen workers. The figures
assumed unskilled citizens would fill some positions.
Without most non-citizen immigrants, the simulations showed:
• $6.56 billion in lost construction output.
• $3.77 billion lost in manufacturing.
• $2.48 billion lost in service sectors.
• $600.9 million lost in agriculture.
"Filling the specific jobs in question would require large
numbers of low-skilled workers, and the U.S. education system
produces relatively few of them," Gans said. "There simply
aren't enough additional workers in Arizona to fill the jobs."
Experts do not expect that companies will fire undocumented
workers on Jan. 1, the day the state's employer-sanctions bill
goes into effect.
There are an estimated half-million such immigrants in Arizona.
"If they think their folks are illegal, I think they have to
address that," said Troy Foster, an employment lawyer with Ford
& Harrison in Phoenix. "But they have to be cautious. You can't
just be approaching people because they are Hispanic."
Foster advises clients not to be too aggressive in going after
suspicious workers unless they have knowledge of their illegal
status, but he said the new law certainly will keep companies
from hiring more undocumented workers.
"The real impact will be on the back end," Foster said. "In four
or five years, we will see an impact because of the
growth-restraint issue."
