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Would Arizona-style law keep visitors away from Indiana?

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One by one, organizations began calling convention officials in Phoenix. Their message: We’re no longer interested in visiting your city.

Why?

Arizona’s passage last year of a comprehensive law cracking down on illegal immigrants.

Since then, organizers of four conferences have canceled plans at the city’s convention center. Even more worrisome, by December, future bookings were off 36 percent. And the toll of lost spending by attendees of meetings and conventions in the city could reach $170 million in the next several years, according to the Greater Phoenix Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Indiana is among at least a dozen states that are considering similar legislation requiring state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws. Among its provisions: calling for officers to ask for proof of a person’s legal status based on their suspicions.

The debate divided Arizonans and spurred dozens of cities and organizations outside that state to lodge a boycott. Some Indianapolis economic development and tourism advocates fear a similar law in Indiana could hurt business here, too.

Indianapolis should worry, said Scott Dunn, associate director of communications for the Phoenix convention association.

“I would certainly think their (convention business) is going to face an impact,” Dunn said, and not just from boycotts.

A bigger problem, in his view, is the pervasive negative perception of Arizona among convention scouts and others considering doing business there.

Consideration of Indiana’s Senate Bill 590 — sponsored by Sen. Mike Delph, R-Carmel — comes after last month’s opening of an expanded Indiana Convention Center Downtown.

The facility, slightly smaller in exhibit space than Phoenix’s, has moved up from the 32nd- to the 16th-largest convention venue in the nation. Bookers are working feverishly to fill the space.

An Arizona-style law “is only going to hurt our convention business, which is the core driver of our economy Downtown,” said Phil Ray, general manager of the 622-room Indianapolis Marriott Downtown hotel. He’s also board chairman of the Indiana Hotel & Lodging Association.

“The Downtown success story helps the suburbs and the surrounding counties as well.”

The Indiana bill has passed one committee and has a hearing set before the Senate Appropriations Committee this morning. The full Senate could vote next week, sending it to the House.

John Livengood, president and CEO of the state hotel association and the Indiana Restaurant Association, called the prospect of boycotts potentially devastating for the expanded convention center.

Beyond losing business, hotel managers and restaurateurs worry about losing workers because many are legal immigrants who could be targeted if the law becomes reality.

The Alliance for Immigration Reform in Indiana, of which Livengood is co-chairman, recently helped persuade hospitality industry leaders, the city and state chambers of commerce, university and religious leaders, and some elected officials to sign an “Indiana Compact” urging against the passage of Delph’s bill. The compact urges Indiana leaders to instead lobby Congress to change federal law and policy.

But while some business leaders worry about the potential economic backlash, Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard and the Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association aren’t ready to sound the alarm, saying it’s too early to speculate.

And Delph dismissed concerns about potential collateral damage if his bill becomes law.

“We should absolutely reject illegal immigration along with the ivory-tower elitists that keep engaging in fear-mongering for political ends,” Delph said.

“How in the world can enforcing the law concern any legitimate business?” he added. “To suggest that it’s going to create all these economic consequences, all this doom and gloom — it’s just silly.”

Indiana was home to an estimated 120,000 illegal immigrants as of 2009, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Nationally, Pew estimated there were 11.1 million.

Arizona is feeling the heat from its law, which is on hold while the federal courts review its legality.

Among organizers that cited the law in canceling conventions in Phoenix were the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, for its meeting last summer, and the National Council of Teachers of English, for its 2012 meeting. Both switched their conventions, which typically attract 7,000 to 9,000 attendees, to Las Vegas.

The Urbana, Ill.-based English teachers group also has held a convention in Indianapolis, but spokeswoman Millie Davis said a similar law would play into considerations for future events.

“One of the criteria we use in choosing a convention city is that it’s a welcoming place,” Davis said.

In Phoenix, convention association officials figure that the canceled conventions, lost future bookings, and lost commitments for hotel and resort meetings would have amounted to $110 million in estimated direct spending by 90,000 potential attendees.

Dunn adds another $59 million in direct spending by groups that haven’t canceled but have put the convention center on notice that they are considering backing out.

The total: $169 million possibly gone.

That loss will be felt over a few years, but it’s sizable considering that in one recent year, events at the Phoenix Convention Center were estimated to reap an estimated $350 million in direct spending, Dunn said.

Statewide, a study conducted for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for American Progress — an opponent of Arizona’s law — estimated the following losses from canceled conferences in four months after the law’s enactment: $141 million in spending by conference attendees, $10 million in state tax revenue and 2,700 jobs.

One year before Indianapolis hosts the Super Bowl, the stakes are high.

Chris Gahl, a spokesman for the Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association, said the group hit its target of booking 650,000 hotel room nights in 2010 for upcoming large conventions and meetings. With the center’s expansion open, it’s increased the target this year to 725,000 room nights.

And besides the convention center expansion, a gleaming JW Marriott — with 1,005 rooms — opened this month.

The hotel joins a crowded market that planners see as necessary to support what they hope will be a convention boom. But even before the JW opened, the average Downtown hotel occupancy rate in 2010 — 59.5 percent — was the lowest in at least seven years, according to Smith Travel Research. The citywide occupancy rate last year was 54.5 percent, higher than in 2009 but still low historically.

Ballard — no fan of Delph’s bill because he views immigration as a federal issue — declined to speculate on the economic impact if the measure was signed into law, though he suspects Indiana may fare better than Arizona.

“If many of the states in the nation are looking at something like this, it would probably have minimal impact,” Ballard said.

The Service Employees International Union, a vocal advocate of boycotting Arizona over the law, gave an indication that states following its lead might not be targeted so strongly.

“It’s not necessarily something we would want to do right now because of the way the courts are ruling,” Gebe Martinez, the SEIU’s communications coordinator for immigration, said of an Indiana boycott.

Besides Indiana, similar measures have been proposed this year in 11 other states, including Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Oregon, South Carolina and Utah, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Delph and other supporters say his proposal, modeled on Arizona’s law, is necessary to bring illegal immigration under control.

And they contend that illegal immigration already costs Indiana millions in health-care, education and other costs.

But Roland Dorson, president of the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, says the potential economic impact should not be discounted.

“Even beyond that,” he said, “we don’t want to become Arizona, where there is empirical evidence that they have suffered from passage of that law. . . . We don’t want to hang out a shingle that says, ‘No entry.’

“This is two steps backward.”

From www.indystar.com


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