One infamous dig has stuck with the state for years: Jon Stewart, the former host of "The Daily Show," dubbed Arizona the "meth lab of democracy" when the state was considering three controversial bills in the same week , one of which was SB The boycotts and the Sound Strike lasted only about a year, and some performers were confused over whether they should cancel shows when canceling harmed their fans more than the state, said Jaime Aguila, a history professor at Midland College in Texas.
Aguila has studied immigration and politics in Arizona and formerly taught at Arizona State University. Todd Sanders, president and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Chamber, said the boycotts were highly visible and affected people far beyond those who supported the law. When Sanders took trips to Mexico City with former Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton soon after the bill passed, it was hard even to get meetings because of how Arizona was viewed, Sanders said.
But, many trips later, the tone has changed internationally, he said. It took a few years for Arizona to change the narrative, Sanders said. The rest of the country moved on and focused less on the measure, while Arizona started looking inwardly at itself to figure out how to improve and repair, he said. Kim Sabow, president and CEO of the Arizona Lodging and Tourism Association, said via email that her organization has seen increased interest in Arizona in the past decade, nationally and internationally.
Kanye West has frequently traveled to Arizona and performed a religious ceremony in Tempe this year. Rage Against the Machine was scheduled to play here this spring before the coronavirus pandemic hit. In the decade since SB was signed, Arizona has seen its population increase rapidly, its electorate change and its status as a Republican stronghold soften as Democrats win seats statewide and in spots historically held by the GOP. The lingering impact of SB may not be that it cemented Arizona's reputation as a hotbed of racial disparity, but that it motivated many people who opposed the measure to get involved in politics.
The organizing efforts that grew in response to SB led to the recall of Russell Pearce and the defeat of immigration hard-liner and longtime Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. This likely helped shape this new Arizona, said Tom Jawetz, vice president of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress.
This changed Arizona showed its face earlier this year when Gov. Ducey wanted a statewide vote on the issue and announced it in his State of the State address, the governor's most high-profile platform. Critics saw the proposal as a vestige of SB , a return to a more divisive, anti-immigrant politics the Ducey administration had largely avoided since taking office in Ducey had worked to rebuild relationships with Mexico and preached messages of opportunity — this sanctuary city effort would harm that work, critics said.
Opposition came from the groups that have solidified their activism since SB and from business leaders, typically allies of Ducey. When there are proposals that potentially put key industries at risk, the business community will speak out.
Business leaders learned from SB to voice their opposition more quickly on laws that can hurt the state's reputation. This was a change from the chamber's reaction to SB Back in , the Phoenix Chamber signed in as "neutral" on the bill when it was heard at the Capitol. During one of the early hearings, the chamber's lobbyist shared minor concerns over how businesses would comply with the law but didn't sound the alarm about how it might affect the state's reputation.
The economic fallout from SB might not have been substantial, but reputational damage lingered for years. The state had to work to repair relationships, particularly with Mexico. Arizona's experience served as a cautionary tale for other states that were considering similar measures. While it seemed like SB like laws might spread to many other states, the rapid backlash Arizona faced changed the trajectory. Pearce, the lawmaker who sponsored the bill, said similar bills were being considered in 34 states, but legal challenges to SB held them up.
And you wait and wait, and then things change. Ten years ago, SB looked like it was going to be the first of a wave of comprehensive anti-immigrant state laws that could sweep across many states in the country. The death of the sanctuary city ban proposal showed how the community had successfully organized in the past 10 years, Martinez, of UnidosUS, said.
Reach reporter Rachel Leingang by email at rachel. Reach reporter Ryan Randazzo at ryan. Follow him on Twitter UtilityReporter. Facebook Twitter Email. Here's what really happened. Russell Pearce on SB Bill. Brewer never invited him when she signed the bill in Alabama and Georgia have also suffered deep economic harm due to their own restrictive copycat laws, especially in agriculture.
Even before the new Georgia law was scheduled to take effect on July 1, , an estimated 30 percent of both documented and undocumented farmworkers had fled the state. Divisions between states as a result of restrictive immigration laws can also result in distorted competitive advantages in attracting new business.
Louis Post-Dispatch editorial foreshadowed this dynamic by soliciting business from a prominent auto manufacturer whose visiting executive was detained in Alabama because he lacked the right papers:. Hey, Mercedes, time to move to a more welcoming state.
The economic impact of these harsh new immigration laws can also be measured in population loss. One study estimated the economic impact on Arizona if S. Thanks for joining us. Good to see you. What did you look at in this study? Jim Rounds: Not only in total of economic activity but the GDP figure but in terms of the general fund tax collections and the things we were able to capture, what is the economic impact in tax revenue losses associated with those conferences and convention that is formally identified they weren't going to come to Arizona and then we took a look at reductions in bookings for future events -- that's pretty much a proxy for picking up what we're missing and we're not hearing about.
When you add those together, it gives you a chance to approximate. Ted Simons: What did you find? Jim Rounds: We found that in -- we could only pick up what I think after look agent this quite extensively about half the economic losses in our particular analysis and so what it came down, to there's a lot of economic activity but ends up being the lost economic activity is one-tenth of a percent.
Smaller than anticipated. The job losses in terms of job losses related to S. Ted Simons: Talk about though -- and we've heard this from tourism and convention folks on the program, not only what they're missing now, but the phone calls -- and you touched on this, the phone calls not coming that will impact in three, four years, somewhere along the line. Is there -- how close can you get to something like that? Jim Rounds: That's another area where we captured about half.
But the economy is a little bit better than last year and at worst, we thought they would have been about the same as last year. But when you translate that into lost general fund tax collections while is sounds impressive.
One, it's a transitory event. Arizona is carrying the water for the immigration reform. The next session, maybe more states will try to replicate what Arizona did with S. I think we captured about half the activity and it's a guestimate but gives you an idea the scale. It's not so much the exact estimate. It's not nearly as big as some were portraying it to be.
I think the biggest impact wasn't S. I think it was the legislature sweeping a large amount of tourism advertising money from the budget last year. That's impacts the -- impacted the state about three times more than S. Ted Simons: Could that be exponential? The tourism losses could be three times that amount. Maybe more.
Our calculation related to the sweeping of the funds last year, for every dollar we cut from the tourism budget, we lose about three. While it was used as a budget balancing tool, I think it worsened the situation and what I would like to see happen, the legislature restore the moneys in tourism and it will offset the impact of S. Ted Simons: The idea though -- and maybe it's included in the lost aspect, we can't figure out for now.
But the idea people moving here, the idea of relocating.
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