From the Washington Post:
Prince William County's controversial immigration policy appears to have had some effect, as the growth of the county’s Hispanic population now lags behind that of other jurisdictions, a report from the University of Virginia states.
The three-year, $385,000 study – released Tuesday by the university's Center for Survey Research – also found that the county's noncitizen Hispanic population, legal and illegal, dropped by 7,700 from 2006 to 2008, and that illegal immigrants accounted for 2,000 to 6,000 of that decline.
(The report itself is here.)
Attorney General Holder might be interested in this tidbit from the story:
The study found that initial fears about racial profiling did not materialize and that only one lawsuit that mentions racial profiling has surfaced. Those accusations were dismissed in court.
Who woulda thunk it?
WAMU radio's piece on the new report had this nugget in reaction:
John Steinbach, with the local group Mexicans Without Borders, opposes the policy.
He says many Hispanics now see Prince William as an unfriendly place.
"If your purpose is to terrorize the community, to break up families, to incite hatred, then by all means — this is a wonderfully successful resolution," Steinbach says.
I love the name of the group, "Mexicans Without Borders" — it's a variation on a Kinsleyan gaffe, where an advocacy group accidentally tells the truth about its agenda. But then, you knew their agenda anyway, given that they consider checking the immigration status of people under arrest (mostly for drunk driving, public drunkenness, and driving without a license) to be terrorism and incitement to hatred.
