Academics Boost Arizona Tourism

Here’s the difference between left-wing celebrities threatening to leave the United States because they don’t like the results of a presidential election and left-wing groups who threaten to boycott a state to show distaste for its laws. The former make America a better place while the latter make Arizona a better place.

“The governing Council of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) adopted the following resolution,” the group announced. “Whereas Arizona State Law S.B. 1070 is so broad in its reach and enforcement powers that it can have an adverse impact on the freedom to travel or assemble without encroachment.”

“Be it resolved that American Educational Research Association (AERA) has determined that it will no longer hold meetings or conferences in the state of Arizona until such time as this law is rescinded or AERA otherwise revisits the issue.”

“This Council resolution was adopted on April 30, the opening day of the Association’s 91^st Annual Meeting in Denver,” according to AERA. “Approximately 13,000 education researchers from 60 countries are attending this five-day meeting which ends May 4.”

“AERA has a longstanding commitment to ensure that researchers, scholars, and students can convene free of constraint or intimidation,” AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine said.

“As education researchers, we need to be concerned about the effects this new law may have on fostering an environment of fear with consequences for students’ learning, educational achievement, and attachment to and belief in the social institutions of society,” President-elect Kris Gutierrez of the University of Colorado-Boulder and Levine also stated. “This policy, on the face of it, does not take into consideration sustained sound bodies of science.”

Meanwhile, “A new immigration bill, S.B. 1070, which was signed into law in Arizona on April 23, has thrust the state into the center of a controversy and provoked local protests as well as a national call for convention boycotts,” Betsy Bair and Dave Kovaleski reported on Association Meetings. “The American Immigration Lawyers Association announced on Friday that it will relocate its fall conference, scheduled for September 23–24 at the Camelback Inn, a JW Marriott Resort & Spa, Scottsdale, to another state.”

Meantime, as a famous TV talk show host says, here’s a reality check. “Arizona alone spends $3 billion a year to educate, medicate and incarcerate illegal aliens,” according to Alan M. Gottlieb, the chairman of AmeriPAC.

Indeed, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies reports that:

• “The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has found that 22 percent of felonies in the county are committed by illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants are estimated to be 10 percent of the county’s adult population;

• “Analysis of data from State Criminal Alien Assistance Program showed that illegal immigrants were 11 percent of the state’s prison population;

• “Illegal immigrants were estimated to be 8 percent of state’s adult population at the time of the analysis;

• “Approximately 17 percent of those arrested by the Border Patrol in its Tucson Sector have criminal records in the United States”; and

• “In 2007, the Center estimated that one-third of households headed by illegal immigrants in Arizona used at least one major welfare program, primarily food-assistance programs or Medicaid. Benefits were typically received on behalf of U.S.-born children.”

Perhaps it is not surprising, against this backdrop, that an immigration rally in Atlanta recently, the International Socialists, the Socialist Worker’s Party and the Revolutionary Communist Party “worked” the crowd, as only they can. Historically, the really hard Left has a long history of milking this issue. For example, the National Council for Protection of the Foreign Born was established by the Worker’s Party in 1922.

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.