by Jeremy Leaming
Alabama’s harsh anti-immigrant law is already costing the state billions in lost revenue, according to a study by Samuel N. Addy, an economist at the University of Alabama.
Reporting for Politico, MJ Lee notes that Addy’s report, “determined that the estimated 40,000 to 80,000 unauthorized immi
grant workers fleeing the state have resulted in 70,000 to 140,000 jobs lost and $2.3 to $10.8 billion reduction in Alabama’s GDP annually.” The law moreover, is expected to cost the state “$56.7 to $264.5 million in reduced state income and sale tax collections, as well as $20 to $93.1 million less in local sales tax collections ….”
Addy’s study centers largely on the law’s harm to the state’s overall economy, concluding that because it has already spurred scores of undocumented people to flee the state it has negatively impacted the state’s economic landscape. The professor says the “income generated by these people [undocumented workers fleeing the state] and their spending will decline. That results in a shrinking of the state economy and will be seen in lower economic output, personal income, fewer jobs, and lower tax revenues than would otherwise have been.”
In coming to this conclusion about the law’s impact on the state’s economy, Addy, perhaps curiously, asserts that nobody “can fault the intent of the law” and that the law is “well-intentioned,” because it is aimed at tackling “illegal immigration.” He also highlights some “potential economic benefits of the law,” such as “saving funds used to provide public benefits to illegal immigrants; increased safety for citizens and legal residents; more business, employment, and education opportunities; and ensuring the integrity of various governmental programs and services.”
Regardless of the law’s intent, its sweep has provoked protests throughout the state and some withering national scrutiny. Shortly after the law’s enactment, The New York Times opined that it was “the country’s cruelest, most unforgiving immigration law.”
More than fifty years ago Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. heroically battled segregation and built a coalition of conscience to change our society and its laws. Today, a new struggle is being fought in many of the same places. Arizona, which famously 
n harmful, to immigrants. Now a group of students, teachers, and voters are banding together in an attempt to save the Maryland Dream Act, which was enacted earlier this year and would allow immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, the ability to attend state schools at in-state tuition rates. The law, as noted by The Times, applies only to those immigrants who have paid their taxes and graduated from state high schools.