Border Justice

I attended the panel discussion with local business leaders and scholars called “The Economics of Migration”.  It was on Thursday, April 8 at 3:00pm in the La Sala building.  It was a very interesting discussion involving how immigrants, both legal and illegal, contribute to the community and put money into the economy.  In Arizona alone the Mexican population has approximately $3.7 billion in buying power.  This is a huge amount of money that can be put back into our economy and if we didn’t allow them to be here would crush our economy.  Mexican workers in Arizona send about $447 million in remittances to their families back in Mexico.  By them doing this approximately $47 million stays in Arizona for bank charges and check cashing companies.   

 The United States only has about 4% of the world’s market share.  After the September 11 incident that number may even decrease because of heightened security.  Since 9-11 schools have lost students and teachers and business have moved to other countries.  The United States has made it difficult for foreigners to get into the country and because of the difficulties they have gone to other countries instead.  This in turn has lost us money in our economy and might decrease our market share.  One example of business changing countries due to difficulties was Amway.  They were going to hold a convention in either Los Angeles or Las Vegas which would have brought the host city an estimated $10 million.  Because of the difficulty of getting foreigners into the country Amway moved the convention to China costing the United States economy millions.