Raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement continue after a sweep netted more than 1,100 suspected illegal immigrants in California last month. On Tuesday, another 300 were arrested in a raid on a poultry processing plant in Greenville, S.C. (video). In a process that has become familiar, 60 people, including mothers of young children, were released for humanitarian reasons, and the rest are being held, awaiting trials or deportation.

A U.S. attorney told reporters that the raid on House of Raeford’s Columbia Farms was the result of a 10-month investigation that found paperwork for 775 out of the plant’s 825 workers had been falsified. Twelve supervisors were also arrested.

Meanwhile, 16 undocumented immigrants arrested in New Haven, Conn. last year, are in court arguing that their civil rights were violated when ICE agents entered their homes unlawfully. The immigrants are receiving legal help from lawyers and students from a legal clinic run by Yale Law School.

Today we watched the stock market plunge as the House voted down Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s financial bail-out package. Things are not looking good for the economy, which in modern times has been the main factor attracting immigrants to this country. So how will the crisis affect immigration?

New census figures that came out earlier this month showed drastically reduced immigration numbers in 2007. Demographic experts attributed this decline to an economic slowdown. As a recent editorial in Scripps papers put it, “We’ve discovered something more effective than a wall and workplace raids at discouraging illegal immigrants from trying to enter the United States and encouraging those already here to leave—a bad economy.”

At Forbes, Edward Alden points out that more than half of our PhD students are foreign-born. With a weaker economy, they will have fewer reasons to stay.

Unskilled labor is also important. In some places in the Northeast, immigrants have been propping up economies that were devastated decades ago, when industrial jobs moved out. Business leaders in Connecticut are worried that a lack of immigrants will hurt that state. In Eastern Pennsylvania, despite anti-immigrant sentiment, Latino immigrants have resurrected downtowns by building small businesses. With fewer immigrants, there will be no room for immigrant-oriented businesses to grow.

The economy affect immigration, and in turn, immigration affects the economy. The only question is to what degree, and how long will the changes last?

(AP Photo)

Until recently, Richmond, Ca., leaders, including Mayor Gayle McLaughlin, were considering a program to provide illegal immigrants with municipal identification cards. But the Contra Costa County Municipal ID Task Force decided to shelve the proposal, after San Francisco backed down from its plan amid controversy.

San Francisco has lately been under fire for its lax attitude toward undocumented immigrants. After Mayor Gavin Newsom announced a plan last month, the Immigration Reform Law Institute (a branch of the Federation for American Immigration Reform) filed suit against the city to block it. IRLI’s Kris Kobach is also suing the city for its “sanctuary” policy.

IRLI has also sued New Haven, Conn., where 6,000 people have been issued municipal ID cards since 2007, without being asked about their immigration status. In 2007, the IDs were a hot concept around the country, but since the controversy over issuing drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants hit the presidential election in November, the idea has mostly fizzled.

Still, proponents say that municipal IDs could serve as proof of identification if an illegal immigrant were hospitalized, arrested, or involved in a traffic accident. The IDs would also be used to open bank accounts, use public facilities, or check out library books.

(Photo by Flickr user size8jeans)

City Councilman Luis Cotto, quoted in the Hartford Courant, explained why he introduced the bill:

If you are a law abiding resident of the City of Hartford, you should have no fear of reporting a crime to police and you should be able to utilize the city’s services. People are here. We can’t do anything about that.

Proponents of such laws say that if illegal immigrants are afraid to come forward and report crimes, the police cannot do their jobs. As San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom put it in an op-ed this month, these cities are trying to

create a climate where residents, regardless of immigration status, can feel free to call the police or fire department, or take a sick child to the hospital, without fear of deportation.

On the other hand, opponents point to crimes committed by illegal immigrants as a reason to report undocumented people who are arrested. One especially gruesome example was this triple-murder in San Fransisco earlier this summer.

So-called “sanctuary cities” are controversial, but they illustrate the flip-side of local ordinances against illegal immigration, like the one passed in Hazleton, Pa. in 2006 One thing is certain: in the absence of a federal immigration reform law, municipalities will continue to enact their own immigration policies.

(Photo from Wikipedia)