Will you boycott Sacramento over the city councils decision to boycott Arizona over enforcing federal law? You are not alone if you plan on boycotting Sacramento businesses. Thousands of people have committed to not do business in the city limits of Sacramento.
Over 2,240 people have signed up for a Facebook group committed to boycotting Sacramento. The Sacramento Convention Center has received hundreds of calls from businesses outside of California saying they will no longer be doing any conventions in Sacramento. Area talk shows are inundated with calls and emails from people all boycotting Sacramento. The Sacramento Metro Chamber has heard from a significant number of business that are getting calls from their customers about a boycott. Most agree the City Council’s decision to boycott Arizona will do very little to hurt Arizona, but will significantly impact the City of Sacramento.
The Sacramento Metro Chamber has written a letter to Mayor Johnson. From that letter:
According to the Sacramento City Council agenda minutes taken at the Tuesday, May 25 Council meeting, the Sacramento City Council spent three hours and ten minutes discussing the Arizona immigration legislation. With an estimated $43 million dollar budget gap in the City of Sacramento’s General Fund budget, squandering over three hours on a piece of out-of-state legislation, is not only a gross misuse of time, but is a complete waste of taxpayer dollars.
The anger over the City Council’s decision to support illegal activity has grown into a desire for a recall. A website at www.recallsacramento.com as been setup for that recall effort. The site was setup by local talk show host Eric Hogue. Hogue had this to say on his website:
As a local talk host who cannot vote for city council, I believe it is my duty to provide a conduit of action for the citizens, taxpayers and business owners who are asking for voice.
A recall rally has also been setup. The rally will take place on Thursday June 24th at 12 noon in front of the Sacramento City hall.
This is a email sent to me from the mayors office stating I do not think a city should take a stand on another states laws.
On behalf of Mayor Johnson, thank you for your email. The Mayor supports comprehensive immigration reform, but believes the Arizona immigration law, SB 1070, enables discrimination against certain people because of their appearance.
Based on the Mayor’s own experiences and his conversations with people on both sides of the issue, he supports a boycott of Arizona. Regardless of your position, Mayor Johnson encourages you to participate in the national debate on immigration in a respectful manner.
>>> 05/16/10 10:12 PM >>>
Date
May 16, 2010
This is a email sent to me from the mayors office in response to my email stating I do not think a city should take a stand on another states laws.
On behalf of Mayor Johnson, thank you for your email. The Mayor supports comprehensive immigration reform, but believes the Arizona immigration law, SB 1070, enables discrimination against certain people because of their appearance.
Based on the Mayor’s own experiences and his conversations with people on both sides of the issue, he supports a boycott of Arizona. Regardless of your position, Mayor Johnson encourages you to participate in the national debate on immigration in a respectful manner.
>>> 05/16/10 10:12 PM >>>
Date
May 16, 2010
I believe the city council decided to boycott Arizona to take the heat off their poor performance in Sacramento. Why else would they do this?
Now that The California capitol city of Sacramento has started a boycott of Arizona passing a law to defend itself, lets look at some facts. First there is, according to Rand Corporation, a non profit organizatiion, there are “67 formal agreements between the federal government and state and local criminal justice agencies enpowering local officials to enforce immigration laws. Such efforts are credited with identifying 140,000 deportable immigrants from 2006 to 2009.” Rand further states there are 12 million out of status immigrants currently in the U.S . the corp alsao found that it woulld take over 15 years and $5 billion to clear just the backlog of those who have been orded deported. Jessica Saunders of Rand reports tat the partnership betwee ICE and Marcops Countyin AZ rsulted in 16,000 illegal immigrants being identified among its jail poplulation of 160,000 Considering this, the arguments that say the state of Arizona is overstepping rights given only to the Federal government seem to be misleading. Then there is the accusation of racial profiling. The National Immigrtion Forum says that in Gwinnett GA there are case of racial profiling due to the partnership but there wa also before the partnership began. Which seems to indicate that racicial profiling is problem in other state besides Arizona and this new law prohibits racial profiling which is more than the partnerships do.
From the U.S. Immigration and Customs Encorcement “Terrorism and criminalactivity are most effectively combated through multi-agency/ multi – authority approach that encompasses federal, state and local resources skills as state and local law enforcement play a critical role in protecting our homeland…”
It would seem by these facts that the Federal government has set up a role for state and local law enforcement to aid in illegal immigration control. Therefore making any boycotts a hinderance of a states rights. It would seem that a boycott of those who boycott Arizona, like Sacramento, San Francisco and Los Angeles, would be called for. Further, the above information should be spread to everyone so that an intellegent discussion could resolve the issue.
Jerry Johnson
Nice job Jerry. What was a problem with illegal (I call it “direct”), immigration is now about terrorism and criminal activity.
Arizona legislators should go after their own citizens that provide the money involved in drugs and cheap labor. If you want to stop the attraction, dry up the jobs and other incentives to cross. Then only criminals and terrorists will be left to deal with. The boycott is just an emotional outburst. I guarantee you, the problem is us and our needy economy.
[...] city voted to boycott Arizona and the backlash of that vote has created a boycott Sacramento campaign. Adding additional taxes on businesses when the city council is already creating an anti-business [...]