The Alabama Immigration Law Caused an Employment Increase for Other Immigrants

[Toro]

It didn't lead to an increase in hiring of native-born Americans.

Esene Manga, an Eritrean refugee living in Atlanta, hadn’t heard of Albertville, Alabama until a recruiter offered him a job there. Now Manga, 22, earns $10.85 an hour cutting chicken breasts on a poultry-plant night shift, an unexpected beneficiary of a year-old law designed to drive out illegal Hispanic immigrants.
Alabama Firms Seek Legal Immigrants to Fill Jobs
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This isn’t what the law’s backers said would happen. Republican state Senator Scott Beason, a sponsor, said at a news conference last year that the restrictions on undocumented workers would “put thousands of native Alabamians back in the work force.”

Instead, it caused a labor shortage that resulted in the importation of hundreds of legal African and Haitian refugees, and Puerto Ricans, according to interviews with workers, advocacy organizations and businesses. Most were recruited by the poultry industry, in a segment of the economy that has been a heavy employer of undocumented workers, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington research group. ...

Plants sought refugees because too few local residents were interested or qualified, said Frank Singleton, a spokesman for Wayne Farms, based in Oakwood, Georgia. ...

Beason, the senator, said that while he welcomes legal immigrants, he isn’t pleased by the arrival of the refugees.

“We would prefer they hire native Alabamians,” he said. The reason refugees are being hired is probably because “they’re cheaper,” he said.

Africans Relocate to Alabama to Fill Jobs After Immigration Law - Bloomberg