Posted on 05/04/2008 2:09:30 PM PDT by lonewacko_dot_com
The linked video attempts to portray the dire consequences of Prince William County's anti-illegal immigration ordinance, and it includes pans of the inside of two empty restaurants in the area. I'm trying to "bust" the filmmakers; see my earlier discussion of the video here. Note that they've been promoted by both the Washington Post and Youtube.
Could someone in the area look into whether these restaurants are really as empty as claimed, or whether this was a setup, and then post their findings here?
The restaurants are El Portal Restaurant in Woodbridge and the Casablanca restaurant/dance club on Route 28 in Manassas Park. Both shots were taken at 7:30pm, and their empty seating areas can be seen at about the 4 minute mark of the video.
That's my retail business background talking.
Right. And $4/gal gasoline might be part of the equation.
I recently left Woodbridge in July07 for Fort Worth, TX. I can honestly say I have never even heard of the restaurants in question. I love Tex-Mex and I would have known if this place was worth eating at. Most likely it just serves bad food to illegals who are rapidly leaving the county.
I used to live in Manassas. The Casablanca NEVER had a crowd, and has operated under 4-5 names in the 8 years I lived in Manassas. It’s on the absolute edge of Manassas Park, it has some nasty-looking repair shops on bordering it on one side, and a hotel (which has its’ own restaurant) on the other. It is, effectively, a very wierd oriental-looking building in an industrial area, and I can recall it advertising “drinks and dancing”. Yep. That’s where **I** want to take the wife dancing, in an industrial park. . .
The piece is an argument from authority. Prominent placement of title, certificates, magazine covers, pictures with famous persons, pointing out graphs to subordinates, etc. All are intended to establish the speakers prestige as an authority on the topic. However, what he actually says is nothing more than basic economics and undocumented generalizations.
It becomes propaganda when he decides to spin a cause and effect relationship between PWC’s recently adopted policy on illegals and the county's current budgetary problems.
That's nonsense and you'll note he never actually goes beyond inferring some relationship. He can't. The policy hasn't been in effect long enough for him to have any data to work with.
What he fails to note that PWC is basically a bedroom community at the southern end of the DC Metropolitan Region (although a lot of commuters do come up to DC from as far as Fredricksberg - another 25 miles further south on I-95). A goodly proportion of the jobs held by middle and upper class residents of the community are tied to the federal government, its supporting contractors and businesses, or high tech manufacturing. As far as I know, that sector of the PWC economy is not being effected by the illegal immigrant controversy.
What is effecting the county's budget is the subprime mortgage fiasco. Seems the mortgage brokers, lenders, etc. were particularly active in writing these type mortgages during the recent run-up in housing prices. Some of those questionable mortgages were probably written for illegals purchasing homes because, as it was noted here on FR at the time, the banks had decided they were not going to check whether or not the purchasers had a right to be in the country or to work here. As a consequence of loan interest resets, there are over 1500 foreclosures going on in my zip code and many thousands more throughout the county.
Since a pretty healthy proportion of the county's budget funding is provided by the property tax and with assessment's down (I lost 13% on the value of my home from January 2007 to January 2008), tax receipts are down too.
The county is making adjustments to the budget to cut costs and raise additional revenues. In addition, local businesses tied to the housing sector or sensitive to the generally tightened credit situation have probably seen a downturn in sales. That will effect retail workers (some illegal) but it is not caused by the PWC policy on illegal immigrants.
The professor would have you believe the county is about to dry up and blow away or that business investment has stopped coming into the county.
All I can say is that the professor needs to get out and around PWC more. There is plenty of economic activity going on. If businesses really are making decisions not to locate in PWC based on the county's illegal immigrant policy, let him cite specific cases. He's an academic. He has all the data, right? Should be a piece of cake.
My feeling is that such decisions, if they are being made, would be being made more on the basis of internal company liberal PC/diversity culture. And that would be particularly ironic, since all U.S. employers are already required by law to verify the employment eligibility status of their new hires and only employ persons legally entitled to work in the United States. So the hypothetical company or companies the professor is referring to would be objecting to the county enforcing a policy that exactly parallels the laws they (the businesses) are already enforcing inside their own organizations.
Let's talk about the images in the video.
A number of the daylight shots in Woodbridge appear to have been taken early in the morning (based on the shadow angles) so, of course, the parking lots are empty at 6:00 in the morning. The location for most of them appears to be the Marumsco Plaza Shopping Center and vicinity. This location is in the oldest and probably one of the poorest parts of the community. There ARE a lot of closed stores in that shopping center. However, this is no different than older strip malls everywhere. Marumsco Plaza is at least 35 years old. (I first shopped there in 1978.) It HAS been struggling - for about the last 20 years.
The primary reason for that struggle is about three miles from it: Potomac Mills Shopping Mall. At one time the second largest shopping mall in the country (but that was a while ago), Potomac Mills is more like a economic complex than a simple shopping mall. And it is a major retail economic engine for the Woodbridge region. I can attest that as of 16:00 on Sunday, 4 May 2008 the engine was running strong. Oh, and by they way, Shopper's Food Warehouse was full of shoppers of every sort of color, ethnicity, and, I feel confident, immigration status.
The MailBoxes location shown in the video is, IIRC, directly across the street from the Marumsco Plaza shopping center. Unmentioned is that most of the missing business at the store is probably remittances - money sent back to relatives by illegals. Obviously, the illegal labor market is going to be most sensitive to a drop off in the disposable income that purchases the services from the businesses they are employed by. So too, the remittances sent home.
(BTW, about two businesses up the street from MailBoxes is a Mexican restaurant where illegal day laborers used to gather (along with the 7/11 further south at the corner of Route 1 and Longview). PWC Police and ICE have repeatedly raided these locations in recent years to dissuade them from congregating.)
The immigration rally appears to be stock footage and may not even be from the area (note the Maryland state flag).
As for the two restaurants, can't help you too much there.
Don't even know where they are located.
Have you tried asking over at BVBL?
Greg is familiar with the area, 9500 Liberty and many of the leftist players involved on the pro-illegal side.
He has a couple of references to Fuller on his blog.
http://www.bvbl.net/index.php/2008/05/03/prince-william-the-hottest-real-estate-market-in-nova/
http://www.bvbl.net/index.php/2008/04/28/illegal-alien-apologists-find-faulty-spokesmen/
Greg or others familiar with the area may be able to help you out.
>>>>>All I can say is that the professor needs to get out and around PWC more. There is plenty of economic activity going on.
Wasn’t there a dent from reduced activity at Ft. Belvior some years ago?
A dent which by the way is bound to be repaired by the movement to relocate a lot of federal agencies down to Belvior.
And the new housing and leisure activity at the Occoquan River seems to be fairly strong. Not to mention Prince William Marina and the several others nearby. When I had a boat there I’d guess there were $50 million in boats at PWM alone.
Yes, there was a dent when the Engineer School relocated to Fort Leonard Wood, MO. But that was...well, awhile ago.
Fort Belvoir is a little off topic since the installation is in Fairfax County. (No doubt the Professor would claim this is because of Fairfax County’s more progressive policy on illegal immigration. Which is, of course, just as wrong as his claims concerning the impact of PWC’s more conservative illegal immigrantion policy.)
That said, there seems to be a lot of new construction occurring on Fort Belvoir. Beautiful new family housing near the site of the old PX. Not sure if the politics (inside the Army and outside) will ever allow them to close Walter Reed, but they are building something next to DeWitt Regional Medical Center and it is starting to look like a hospital to me. Not sure about other activity on base as I only get up there very infrequently.
As for housing, not only is the PWC existing housing inventory up due to the subprime market crisis, they are still building new family housing all over. (And selling it at very reasonable prices, I might add.)
I drive by the Casablanca every now and then and it never looks busy to me. This morning at 9:30 there were only 2 cars in the parking lot.
Thought you’d get a kick out of this.
Apparently this Fuller guy sits on the board of directors for the building company that was just raided by ICE in Richmond, VA where 33 illegal aliens were arrested.
Who Benefits From Cheap Illegal Alien Labor?
http://www.bvbl.net/index.php/2008/05/08/who-benefits-from-cheap-illegal-alien-labor/#comments
ICE arrests 33 at courthouse construction site
http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=25&sid=1371913
http://www.turnerconstruction.com/tompkins/content.asp?d=3909
The recently elected Tompkins Builders, Inc. Board of Directors are as follows: Edward Small, chairman, William Brennan, vice chairman, Roger Lang, Gregory Druga, Robert Maxwell, Stephen Fuller, Ph.D., Robert Gordon, and Brigadier General Leif H. Hendrickson, USMC (retired).
I live in Fairfax County. Less people are eating out due to the higher prices of gas and food.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.