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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