Maggie's Farm

San Diego’s tourism industry leaders are in panic, and some politicians too, as some Arizonans cancel their summer trips due to the San Diego City Council and School Board condemning Arizona’s illegal immigrant enforcement law.

The summertime influx of Arizonans to San Diego’s balmier weather is a major source of tourism revenue. Tourism is one of San Diego’s main industries, off during this recession.

Tourism officials are advertising in Arizona an open letter urging Arizona residents to overlook local politics and come to San Diego just as they always have to escape Arizona's summer heat.

The San Diego Union-Tribune report remarks:

In some cases, it appears that Arizona residents misconstrued the votes taken by San Diego’s elected leaders as calls for an actual boycott of Arizona as opposed to statements of opposition.

The reporter should look back a few days to her paper's own reporting:

At the urging of board Vice President John Lee Evans, the board eliminated an Arizona travel warning that President Richard Barrera had proposed for students and their families out of concern they may be subject to harassment or racial profiling. However, the San Diego Unified School District will develop a policy restricting travel and participation in conferences in Arizona.

The San Diego School Board is in the hands of union tools.  It schools, mostly poorly, a high percentage of immigrants, 44% of its students are Hispanic, 75% ethnic minorities.  The School Board President says, “Certainly, we know how important tourism is to San Diego, and it wasn’t my intent to impact the tourism trade.” The tourism industry employs many immigrants.

Seems the School Board voted to place the parents of some of its students in the unemployment line.  The School Board should have stuck to the Three “Rs” and not the “I” that tourism officials call “political posturing.”  Similar for the City Council, not paying attention to the City’s severe budget deficits, largely the result of pensions for unionized workers.  One hotelier comments:

“I understand the City Council was being passionate about their politics, but I don’t think they thought it through,” Holladay said. “If it negatively impacts hotel revenue, it impacts the transient occupancy tax, and that goes right into the general fund, so they’ll have less money for their programs.”

P.S.: So far, 93% of those voting in the LA Times online poll oppose similar "posturing" by the LA City Council.