A new study shows that Alabama’s illegal immigration law may cost the state billions. “From an economist’s perspective, the question Alabama and its legislature have to ponder is this: Are the benefits of the new immigration law [Alabama’s illegal immigration law] worth the costs?” Preliminarily, the answer is “no.”
A Republican House Majority Leader calls the study “baloney” and states, “It’s clear the study overestimates the negative and underestimates the positive to skew the result toward an agenda,” he said. “If 40,000 illegal workers leave the state, they free up jobs that homegrown Alabamians are happy to have.” However, this simplistic way of thinking is incorrect. The school of thought is that if an immigrant takes a job, that it is one less job for the native-born American. Time and again it has been shown that immigrants create jobs and take the jobs that native-born Americans won’t, and that each phenomenom spurs U.S. economic growth.