The Arizona Republic is reporting that many illegal immigrants are “fleeing the state” … which I think means “going home” … because of an impending AZ law that enforces tough sanctions against employers:

It’s impossible to count how many undocumented immigrants have fled because of the new law. But based on interviews with undocumented immigrants, immigrant advocates, community leaders and real-estate agents, at least several hundred have left since Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano signed the bill on July 2. There are an estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona

Hat tip: Captain’s Quarters

This is one of the disputed effects of greater enforcement, with some history behind it.

Advocates of tougher laws against employers and of “rounding up” aliens for deportation point to things like this description of the “Operation Wetback” effort in Texas by the Eisenhower administration, as recounted in the state’s official history, the “Handbook of Texas Online”:

It is difficult to estimate the number of illegal aliens forced to leave by the operation. The INS claimed as many as 1,300,000, though the number officially apprehended did not come anywhere near this total. The INS estimate rested on the claim that most aliens, fearing apprehension by the government, had voluntarily repatriated themselves before and during the operation. The San Antonio district, which included all of Texas outside of El Paso and the Trans-Pecos,qv had officially apprehended slightly more than 80,000 aliens, and local INS officials claimed that an additional 500,000 to 700,000 had fled to Mexico before the campaign began. Many commentators have considered these figure to be exaggerated.

There’s another article on the effort at Wikipedia with a slightly different tone and numbers. A search of blogs on the topic at http://blogsearch.google.com reveals many different opinions.

Most seem to forget that Operation Wetback occured because some ranchers were circumventing the official Bracero guest worker program that existed at that time. The Bracero Program was negotiated with Mexico to formalize the guest workers, who had crossed the border for many years in search of seasonal work. Americans also did this work, as my father did prior to WWII, moving with the crops across the US.

Its not a lifestyle many Americans today would prefer, especially with such low unemployment rates. That low unemployment rate is really remarkable when you consider that the American economy saw the influx of women workers in the 1970s and increased illegal immigration of some 10 – 12 million.

It will be interesting to see if Arizona’s enforcement causes any disruption in the job market there.

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