Listen to the press call here. (mp3)
Washington, D.C. – In April, Georgia passed H.B. 87, a harsh anti-immigrant law modeled after Arizona’s S.B. 1070. In the months since the law’s passage, its negative effects on Georgia’s agricultural industry, which is heavily reliant on migrant workers to pick crops and gin cotton, were felt acutely.
A report by the Center for American Progress entitled “How Georgia’s Anti-Immigration Law Could Hurt the State’s (and the Nation’s) Economy” and written by Tom Baxter, a career journalist from Georgia, explores the impact of the law on the state’s agricultural labor force and estimates the direct economic losses to range in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Adding to the report’s analysis, CAP’s economic team has also estimated some of the costs associated with switching from handpicked crops to mechanized crops, an oft-repeated recommendation of anti-immigrant leaning organizations.
Please join Paul Bridges, the Republican mayor of Uvalda, a small agricultural community in southeast Georgia, and a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the state’s anti-immigrant law; Tom Baxter, former national editor and later chief political correspondent at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and current editor of the Southern Political Report; and Angela M. Kelley, Vice President for Immigration Policy and Advocacy at the Center for American Progress, to discuss the real costs of Georgia’s anti-immigrant law.
Who:
When: Tuesday, October 4, 2011, 12:00p.m. EST
Call-in info: 877.210.8943
Conference ID:
RSVP:
To RSVP for this call, please contact Raúl Arce-Contreras at [email protected] or 202.478.5318.
**Please note, this call will be recorded. By participating in the call, you consent to being recorded.**
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