As You Sow, So Shall You Reap

by: Juan Melli

Thu Aug 23, 2007 at 08:53:52 AM EDT

Robins, who owns Scott Street Music, said that since the law was enacted last summer - and amended several times thereafter - the community has lost thousands of residents.

He said that some 1,500 immigrants left the onetime mill town within the first two weeks of the law hitting the books. The impact has been devastating, he said, considering that Riverside's total population is only 8,000.

"It was very vibrant," Robins said of the commercial corridor that dissects this 1.6-square-mile town.

"Now," he said, "it's dead."