For the past several months, the open-borders left and its media allies have been promoting the 'narrative' that immigration enforcement has made illegals afraid to go to work, spelling the demise of the restaurant business in big cities as we know it.
But in Southern California, it's pretty clear the opposite is happening: Illegals are driving legitimate restaurants out of business.
This isn't because of illegal immigrants acting solely on their own.
It's the doing of public officials who refuse to enforce zoning and permit laws on street vendors, who are often illegals, based on a belief that if they do, illegals will get deported.
One set of laws for the restaurants, the other for the illegals.
As a result, the illegals, who can outcompete brick-and-mortar restaurants on price, are driving the latter out of business.
Amy Reichert points out the latest in San Diego:
Last night, Henry’s Pub in downtown San Diego closed for good & went after the illegal hot dog carts that are destroying small businesses in the Gaslamp. I’ve spoken with multiple business owners who say the city won’t act because many of the vendors are illegal immigrants. pic.twitter.com/3of3xdeXkf
— Amy Reichert (@amyforsandiego) May 19, 2025
So instead of a nice restaurant you can go to and sit down and be served at, you now get hot dog vendors on the sidewalk with no regulation whatsoever. Don't ask where they keep their hot dogs -- it's anyone's guess, and wherever it is, the regulators are not going to see it.
Welcome to the world of why we can't have nice things.
It's also going on in Los Angeles where they do issue permits -- just present your Matricula Consular from Mexico, or your foreign passport to get one, and you're all set. They even removed the 'no vending' restrictions so the competition with these restaurants is right there if street vendors so choose. It doesn't work the other way around.
Sometimes, the unregulated San Diego and Los Angeles vendors run by illegals actually get into fights with each other:
Right outside Petco Park on J street is Café de L'Opera, the owner, Alina Ahmed, is proud of her homemade pastries and coffee. When hearing about a stabbing close to her café Saturday night, Ahmed gets angry saying, “I don’t think enough is being done.”
She is referring to an incident around 10:30 p.m. when street vendors were setting up to feed hungry concertgoers exiting Petco Park.
Witnesses say hot dog vendors from Los Angeles were set up in areas where San Diego hot dog vendors typically sell food. A physical fight over territory ensued, involving about a dozen people.
A man was stabbed in the back and San Diego Police used pepper spray to disperse the rowdy crowd. Hot dog vendor Yoni Yanes, 21, was arrested.
All vendors are required to obtain a permit to sell food on city sidewalks. It’s unknown whether the out-of-town vendors from this weekend’s incident obtained the correct licensing or if anyone involved was permitted to sell in the area.
“I feel like if someone has a permit to be vending, they have gone through a certain process, a legal process. You assume they are people you can trust,” Ahmed said.
In June, a new ordinance went into effect, with code enforcement being tasked to enforce the rules, something Michael Trimble with the Gaslamp Quarter Association said is not happening.
And not surprisingly, there are lawsuits from restaurants to fight this:
Here’s the lawsuithttps://t.co/ShZNwPVQ3F
— Amy Reichert (@amyforsandiego) May 19, 2025
But the bottom line is that it's a shame for the poor restaurants who lose all of the business that is rightfully theirs based on their taxes paid, their permits purchased, and their rents delivered for their locations.
Nothing for them, everything for the hot dog vendors run by illegals, who are so profitable, they duke it out with each another.
As Reichert notes to a skeptic who says people would rather go to hot dog vendors than the restaurants, owing to their prices:
Do hot dog vendors have to pay outrageous rent? Do they have to pay outrageous high workers comp or taxes? It’s not price gouging. Tell me you have never run a business without telling me you have never run a business.
— Amy Reichert (@amyforsandiego) May 19, 2025
What it does tell us is that the idea of immigration enforcement shutting restaurants down is nonsense.
Today's Wall Street Journal actually looked at the matter and found that yes, illegals are going to work:
WASHINGTON—President Trump’s mass-deportation push has instilled widespread fear among migrants. What it hasn’t done, so far, is stop many from showing up for work.
While data covering immigrants lacking permanent legal status is fragmentary, what is available shows no broad pullback from the labor force.
In the three months since Trump took office, employment has continued to grow. That includes many industries reliant on workers lacking legal status: construction; the category that includes janitorial and landscaping services; food-manufacturing and restaurants; and staffing firms.
As of April, there were 31.8 million foreign-born workers with jobs, up 0.1% from January and 4.4% from a year earlier, according to a monthly Census Bureau survey of households. The data doesn’t distinguish between workers in the U.S. legally and those without legal status.
“In general it’s surprising to me,” said Tara Watson, an economist at the Brookings Institution who studies immigration in the economy. “We haven’t heard stories of big chicken shortages or [higher] construction costs.”
When you're here for the money, you go for the money, you use your time up this way while you can.
But in the meantime, this is why we can't have nice restaurants anymore. Illegals are driving them out of business, and too bad about the communities which benefit from them.
One might bring up that these restaurants are overregulated and overtaxes as illegal businesses are not, raising the question of why can't it be the other way around. But that's a topic for another day. The bottom line is that illegals are driving these businesses out of business and only President Trump is trying to stop it.
Image: Screen shot from X video