This article was brought to my attention earlier today and I've given it some thought. There are certainly many, many issues with the immigration law (i.e. ranging from family separation to claims it is racially biased) but this article focuses mostly on the economic impact of the law.

I'm certainly no economist (although I had a couple of classes in college with some really great professors) and I've never met the author, Dr. Samuel Addy; but I find his study interesting on a couple of levels.  His report found that 40,000 to 80,000 workers earning between $15,000 to $35,000 annually have left the state and that the state's total goods and services produced will drop between $2.3 billion to $10.8 billion and the state will lose between $56 to $264 million in state income and sales tax collections.  

Hmmm, that's a gap of 40, 000 workers, a gap of $8.5 billion (with a B!) in goods and services, and a gap of $208 million in sales tax collections...I know this, I would've received a very bad grade for predictions that swung to these extremes.

But, after working through some numbers on my own I decided to provide my version of the Cost-Benefit Analysis of the New Alabama Immigration Law, depicted in the chart below.  Again, I'm not an economist or a scientist, I'm just a retired Marine who continues to use common sense.
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I'll start off by recognizing that critics of HB56 - Alabama's Immigration Law - who believe the law has nothing to do with the decline in Alabama's unemployment rates. They believe the rate is going down simply because people are growing tired of looking for a job so they've stopped filing for benefits. I don't buy that

The December 2011 unemployment rates were
announced today and now that we have a full year's snapshot I decided to overlay the monthly unemployment rate with significant events that occurred with respect to the immigration law. Bottom line - this bill was an economic recovery and jobs bill for residents of Alabama - proof below (data sourced from State Website).
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I also find it  interesting to compare Alabama's unemployment rate to other Southeastern United States. Note this chart does not include the latest unemployment figure...it is actually 8.1% now. Hard to argue with the facts.  H56 is a "Jobs Bill" and is doing exactly what we intended.