Just in case anyone had any illusions of what is occurring in Prince William County, here we have a Daily Caller article on how Prince William County has cut taxes by driving out Hispanics:
“It gave us the ability to cut costs because the cost driver for the county is the school and we had such an influx of limited-English speaking students between 2002-2007 and those limited-English students are extra costly to the school system. That was the prime cost driver, the influx of those students,” Stewart said, citing the importance of being able to reduce the number of expensive English as a Second Language classes, which had increased over 250% in the previous five years.
And where do we find the claim that this is a limited government, cost-cutting solution? Why — it’s right there in the UVA study that, while it pointed out that 8,000 Hispanics (legal or otherwise) were driven out of Prince William County, there was no correlation between that demographic change and the reduction in crime. To wit:
In 2007 the county adopted a very strict illegal immigration policy, which, according to a study by the University of Virginia and the Police Executive Research Forum has likely resulted in a 46.7% drop in aggravated assaults and a 32% drop in violent crime. (emphasis mine)
See that word? Likely. Not causal, but correlative. Logic 101, folks — correlation does not imply causality.
UVA knew that. But for political gain, others sidestep this convenient fact… especially as it relates to crime, because if it’s true in that instance, the total collapse of the housing market in Northern Virginia and the massive number of foreclosures could certainly be applied here as well.
Of course, what might have happened is that no person of color wanted to be harassed due to ‘probable cause’ and packed their bags — not back to Mexico their point of origin, but to neighboring localities.
Now where — oh where — have we heard this strategy against transports before? Who — I wonder — is the architect of such a grand scheme?
Now tell me truthfully. Just what is the difference between Borat and the arguments against Hispanics in Prince William County? Just change the minority and the epithets and you have yourself an argument.
…and frankly, that disgusts me as a Virginian and as an American.
But this doesn’t matter — because the cost of government went down. And because the cost of government went down (as it did in virtually every locality in Virginia — thank you Great Recession) we can some how add to the fact we drove out the people incurring the cost — regardless of their legal status — and claim this is a model for Virginia localities??
You want to know the best way to cut local government? Find waste, eliminate a department, or insist on metrics.
But driving out taxpayers? Come on… is this really the best we can do?
UPDATE: Citizen Tom did not enjoy being called out on “step B” with regards to targeting Hispanics:
Is it a secret where most illegal immigrants come from? How do we know? Would it have anything to do with statistical observations?
Uh-huh. What was that about this not being about race, again?
