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Call To Boycott Arizona Getting a Lot of Attention in Arizona!

Posted April 27, 2010 by Patrick Young, Esq.
Categories: Hate Watch

The call to boycott Arizona is getting a lot of attention in Arizona. The state’s largest newspaper, The Arizona Republic, notes that in a surprisingly short time the Boycott Arizona movement has gone viral on the web:

Calls for boycotting Arizona and its businesses because of its new anti-illegal-immigration law have begun spreading virally, showing Arizona what it’s like to be unpopular in a social-media era in which protesters can organize at the drop of a tweet.

A convention for immigration attorneys, scheduled for the Camelback Inn this fall, already has been canceled, and the state’s business community has begun fighting back, urging groups and individuals not to boycott the state.

They hope outsiders will see the new law not as something that casts Arizona as being unwelcoming to Hispanics but as a call to the federal government to enact immigration reform….

But calls to boycott Arizona businesses, convention and meeting sites, the Grand Canyon and even the Arizona Diamondbacks and other baseball teams that train in the state have been gaining momentum since Gov. Jan Brewer signed the bill into law on Friday.

The nation’s largest Spanish-language newspaper has called for a boycott, and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is expected today to consider a resolution calling for an end to any business the city has with Arizona or any Arizona-based businesses.

Some business groups fear Arizona could suffer deeper consequences. Hispanics could be discouraged from participating in the census, depriving the state of federal revenue. And several economists also say that the new law, combined with the 2008 employer-sanctions law, could make it harder to attract workers once the economy rebounds.

Calls for boycotts

San Francisco Supervisor David Campos and City Attorney Dennis Herrera have called on city officials to adopt a boycott and not do any business with Arizona or any businesses based in Arizona. If the resolution passes, Herrera will examine the law to see if the city can legally terminate any existing contracts with Arizona-based companies.

La Opinion, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in the country, on Saturday called for an economic boycott. Henrik Rehbinder, editor of the editorial pages for the Los Angeles-based publication, said the boycott is intended to send a signal to Brewer and other political leaders

“A law that encourages racial profiling and makes discrimination possible should not be tolerated,” Rehbinder said.He said Californians also may be impacted by the law.

“We have a lot of Californians who travel to Arizona to visit relatives,” he said. “Will they have to carry passports?”

On Facebook, there are more than 10 pages dedicated to boycotting Arizona, with two attracting thousands of supporters. They are Boycott Arizona and Boycott Arizona 2010.

A Facebook poster from Chicago urged fans to write to baseball teams who do their spring training in Arizona to let them know they won’t be attending Cactus League games.

A woman from Boston said she and her “mixed-race” family will keep the Grand Canyon off their radar for the time being.

Tourism and sports

Those close to the state’s tourism industry worry that it could suffer the brunt of a backlash from the new law.

“I think it will be really easy for someone to pass us over on a convention decision now,” said Barry Broome, president and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, which has been trying to promote Arizona as a good place to do business.

David Roderique, president and CEO of the Downtown Phoenix Partnership, said he is concerned about the possibility of boycotts. “If we see major losses in terms of conventions and other activities, it certainly could cause a very difficult economic condition for us at a time when we cannot afford to have anymore losses to this economy,” he said.

Decades after Arizona’s waiting to adopt a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday cost it a Super Bowl, the Diamondbacks are hoping the law doesn’t cost them next year’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game.

“I’m concerned because we worked so hard to get it,” said Derrick Hall, Diamondbacks president and CEO. “We’d hate to see it go away if too much pressure is put on MLB, but the planning is well into motion, and I think it would be difficult to back off at this point for 2011.”

Hall said he hasn’t heard anything from league officials to lead him to believe the game will be moved.

Other effects

Aside from possibly hurting the state’s census count and tourism, economists and immigration experts say that without federal immigration reform and better guest-worker programs, the state could be hurt when the economy rebounds and it needs more workers, especially in its construction and tourism industries.

Officials still don’t know if the 2008 employer-sanctions law that makes it a crime to knowingly hire undocumented workers has discouraged Hispanics from coming to the state. The recession wiped out almost 300,000 jobs since December 2007.

Judith Gans, manager of the Immigration Policy Program at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona, said studies have shown that some key sectors of the Arizona economy have relied significantly on low-skilled, non-citizen workers who often are not documented. By discouraging those workers, with both the state’s 2008 employer-sanctions law and the latest anti-immigration law, the costs of labor could rise. That would hurt business owners but help citizens who are competing for those construction and hospitality jobs, Gans said.

Broome, of GPEC, said the group is mostly disappointed at the federal government’s failure to take action on immigration reform and forestall a state law like this. “You can criticize the policy and the policymakers for enacting it, but no one can deny the fact that this policy has an incredible groundswell of support in the state,” he said.

But he also said it will overshadow the progress that Arizona has been making in attracting renewable-energy and health-care businesses. GPEC just led a delegation to Washington, D.C., to tell national officials and media the good things Arizona has been doing.

“In the meantime, this (the new law) is going to define us,” he said. “And this is not how we want Arizona to be defined.”