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Arizona businesses losing customers
Joesphina Saldana, owner of the Zacatecas Beauty Salon, sitting in her empty salon in Phoenix.
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Tess Vigeland: Arizona is on the front lines in the debate over immigration. The state attracted intense controversy with its new law police to check the ID of anyone suspected of being in the country illegally. Small business owners across Arizona are already paying a price -- especially the ones that have catered to Hispanic customers.
Marketplace's Jeff Tyler reports.
Jeff Tyler: El Guero Canelo is a popular restaurant with Hispanics in Tucson. But since Arizona passed its tough new immigration law, business is down.
Arturo Contreras: Twenty percent, you know. And with 70 employees, it's big.
That's general manager Arturo Contreras. He says many clients are leaving town.
Contreras: Some of them say they're going to Canada. And some of them say they're going to Texas.
Some of his employees are moving, too. When they're hired, Contreras gives each employee a uniform. Some workers abandon the job and the state because they have a relative who is undocumented. They fear the new law could result in the family being split up.
Tyler: So they don't give the uniform back?
Contreras: Nope.
So, when a worker leaves, Contreras needs to find a replacement. And shell out around $50 for a new uniform. The situation is even worse for some business owners in Phoenix. Joesphina Saldana owns the Zacatecas Beauty Salon.
Joesphina Saldana: Right now, it's empty. But before, we make like 40 or 50 customers each day. But right now, we have one customer a day, or two customers.
Rent on the salon runs about $1,500 a month. Plus utilities.
Saldana: I can't pay my rent. I can't pay my bills and everything. I need customers. I need money.
Her long-time clients have left town. She says even Hispanic with the proper papers feel unwelcome in the state. What will she do?
Saldana: Maybe gonna close. I don't know.
Saldana is trying to sell her beauty salon. She's asking $20,000, but willing to negotiate. No one wants to buy, she says, not in this environment. Even though she's a U.S. citizen, Saldana may have to relocate to another state.
Saldana: Citizen or not citizen, we have to leave because we don't have work. So we don't have nothing to do over here.
Next door, a national chain store called Gen-X specializes in hip-hop fashion and accessories. Kay Kim is district manager. She says the retailer used to cater to Hispanics. Now she's searching for a new clientele.
Kay Kim: We do have more African-American peoples here right now. That's why we need to bring some different size and different type of clothes and merchandise.
She's nervous because sales were down about $20,000 last month. Business is slow, she says, with one exception. She's sold a lot of luggage lately.
Kim: Not only Mexican people.
She says immigrants from Africa and Asia are moving too -- afraid they'll be targeted under the new law. Kay Kim also worries. She's here legally from South Korea.
Kim: Even I'm an Asian. But when I driving, I'm not comfortable. I don't want to go anywhere. So I stopped the shopping.
She says many Koreans came to Arizona and opened businesses. But now they are having second thoughts.
Kim: We got a lot of people decide to go back to California right now. So, a lot of places are going to be closed.
Kim wouldn't mind being district manager someplace else.
Kim: If my company don't want to transfer me to other states, I might quit. Ha ha. I'm not sure. I'm joking.
Business owners face a similar dilemma. Do they wait and hope their Hispanic customers return? Or do they transfer to another business model or another state?
In Phoenix, I'm Jeff Tyler for Marketplace Money.
Interesting that there are so many comments here about racism. I wonder did these people even listen to this story? Those impacted by these laws are of many different ethnic origins. The issues here are obviously about law and economics, but not really about race. Why is it that so many people are so eager to turn every controversy into a case of racism?
These small businesses deserve to go out of business, period.
Everyone interviewed in this story are just plain bad business people with bad business plan.
Their target customers are a bunch of unreliable and illegals people. I mean, did these people really think there's a future with these customers?
Did Mr Contreras thinks his low wage employees would be around forever? Did he thinks the law will never catch up with his hiring practice?
Three years ago, I was a partner in a restaurant and I fired every single illegal employees that my partner had hired. They were illegal, they were lazy, and they were unreliable. That turns out to be the best thing because the locals that we hired turn out to be reliable people who live in the neighborhood, who knew the repeat customers we get every week. These illegals were just that, illegals, zero added value.
Again, the law is not the problem, it's their business model that's the problem, and they do not deserve to be in business.
It cuts both ways. For example, the city council of Durham, NC (near where I live) tried to get into the act of boycotting Arizona, so I promptly cut off all business with Durham since there were alternatives in Cary and Apex. The liberal news media, while focused on the damage being done to Arizona, neglects to mention the damage being done in the reverse direction.
Sounds like another salvo from the white snow-birds and your range of garden variety racists most, but not all, of whom would never admit even to themselves that they are racist, they are just following the laws of the land, which are often at there core racist. These "real" Americans are so afraid of an America that is becoming more diverse that they will tramp out any excuse to scare and degrade those who are not like themselves in some way.
If the U.S. did not (often brutally) take and use the limited resources of the world and transport the wastes elsewhere then we would not have so many people from around the world desiring to live here. People can see where the resources that make life possible and pleasent are going and they want to go there too. We need to change our relationship with the rest of the world human and non-human
Once again, you do an article to trash AZ enforcing the national immigration law. Those people leaving the state are illegal. What part of that don't you get? I do not sympathize with business owners who made money off illegals. Frankly, illegals are often paid under the counter and do not pay taxes to support the roads, hospitals and schools they use. They most definitely lower wages where they live.
This is disturbing. People boycotting Arizona's businesses because the state supports enforcing our immigration laws. As a left leaning individual, I would remind others that illegal aliens have a huge effect of driving down wages of the base employees. Arizona, seems to be doing more for its underclass citizens then other States.
