Alabama passes toughest illegal-immigration law in the US; advocacy groups threaten to sue

Alabama passes toughest illegal-immigration law in the US; advocacy groups threaten to sue

Bob Johnson
Associated Press
June 9, 2011

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Alabama vaulted past Arizona on Thursday with what is being called the most restrictive law in the nation against illegal immigration, requiring schools to find out if students are in the country lawfully and making it a crime to knowingly give an illegal immigrant a ride.

Advocacy groups promised to challenge the sweeping measure, which like Arizona's law also allows police to arrest anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant if the person is stopped for some other reason. In addition, it requires all businesses to check the legal status of workers using a federal system called E-Verify.

"It is clearly unconstitutional. It's mean-spirited, racist, and we think a court will enjoin it," said Mary Bauer, legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

It takes effect Sept. 1.

Republican Gov. Robert Bentley, who signed it into law Thursday, expressed confidence it would withstand any legal challenges.

"We have a real problem with illegal immigration in this country," he said. "I campaigned for the toughest immigration laws, and I'm proud of the Legislature for working tirelessly to create the strongest immigration bill in the country."

Alabama has an estimated 120,000 illegal immigrants, a nearly fivefold increase from a decade ago, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Many of them are believed to be working on farms, at chicken processing plants and in construction.

One of the legislation's sponsors, GOP Sen. Scott Beason, said it would help the unemployed by preventing illegal immigrants from getting jobs in the state. Alabama's unemployment rate stood at 9.3 percent in April, the most recent figure available.

"This will put thousands of Alabamians back in the work force," Beason said.

The Alabama Business Council has not taken a public stand on the law. In neighboring Georgia, some farmers and business owners warned that a crackdown passed recently in that state would make it more difficult to hire the laborers they rely on — many of whom are illegal immigrants.

The Alabama measure instantly puts the state at the forefront of the immigration debate. Organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Poverty Law Center agreed that it is the nation's toughest crackdown on illegal immigration.

Linton Joaquin, general counsel for the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles, said the Alabama law covers all aspects of an immigrant's life.

"It is a sweeping attack on immigrants and people of color in general. It adds restrictions on education, housing and other areas. It is a very broad attack," Joaquin said.

Among other things, the law makes it a crime for landlords to knowingly rent to an illegal immigrant.

Another provision makes it a crime to transport a known illegal immigrant. Arizona's law appears narrower: It includes language against human smuggling and makes it illegal to pick up laborers for work if doing so impedes traffic.

Alabama's law also goes further in requiring schools to check the immigration status of their students. The measure does not prohibit illegal immigrants from attending public schools; lawmakers said the purpose instead is to gather data on how many are enrolled and how the much the state is spending to educate them.

Jared Shepherd, an attorney for the ACLU, warned that because of that provision, some immigrant parents may not send their children to school for fear of arrest or deportation.

Activists such as Shay Farley, legal director of Alabama Appleseed, an immigrant advocacy group, said the bill invites racial profiling not only by law enforcement officers but by landlords and employers.

"It's going to make us profile our neighbors and our church brothers and sisters," Farley said.

Alabama's Hispanic population more than doubled between 2000 and 2010 to 186,000, or 3.9 percent of the state's nearly 4.8 million people, according to the Census.

Some farmers and other small businesses had hoped to be exempted from having to verify the immigration status of employees, fearing the database would be too costly and add too much red tape. Georgia's law, by contrast, exempts businesses with fewer than 10 employees.

Alabama's measure was modeled on Arizona's. A federal judge blocked the most controversial parts of Arizona's law last year after the Justice Department sued.

That includes the provision that required police to check people's immigration status while enforcing other laws if there was reason to believe the person was in the country illegally. The case appears headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.

A less restrictive law in Utah also was blocked after a lawsuit was filed. Civil liberties groups have sued to stop Georgia's law as well.

Maybe it would be easier to set-up checkpoints and have people produce their papers?

Joking aside, it will be interesting to see if getting rid of more immigrants does indeed see native-born Alabamans fill those jobs, or if there will be a state shortage of builders / vegetable pickers / whatever immigrants do.

bigger_guns_nearby wrote:Maybe it would be easier to set-up checkpoints and have people produce their papers?

Joking aside, it will be interesting to see if getting rid of more immigrants does indeed see native-born Alabamans fill those jobs, or if there will be a state shortage of builders / vegetable pickers / whatever immigrants do.

Sorry bud, but that should read illegal immigrants.

bigger_guns_nearby wrote:Maybe it would be easier to set-up checkpoints and have people produce their papers?

Joking aside, it will be interesting to see if getting rid of more immigrants does indeed see native-born Alabamans fill those jobs, or if there will be a state shortage of builders / vegetable pickers / whatever immigrants do.

I doubt that Alabamans could fill the whole that would be left behind if all illegal immigrants were to leave Alabama. Who would then pick fruits/vegetables, build houses or flip burgers for $4 an hour??

BubbleBliss wrote:

bigger_guns_nearby wrote:Maybe it would be easier to set-up checkpoints and have people produce their papers?

Joking aside, it will be interesting to see if getting rid of more immigrants does indeed see native-born Alabamans fill those jobs, or if there will be a state shortage of builders / vegetable pickers / whatever immigrants do.

I doubt that Alabamans could fill the whole that would be left behind if all illegal immigrants were to leave Alabama. Who would then pick fruits/vegetables, build houses or flip burgers for $4 an hour??

In this economy, you might be surprised.

BubbleBliss wrote:I doubt that Alabamans could fill the whole that would be left behind if all illegal immigrants were to leave Alabama. Who would then pick fruits/vegetables, build houses or flip burgers for $4 an hour??

Excuses! How about legal immigrants doing the work? That's what most of us Americans prefer.

kronos wrote:In this economy, you might be surprised.

Precisely. There's people these days taking whatever shit job they can find. Unemployment doesn't last forever.

TexasBlue wrote:

BubbleBliss wrote:I doubt that Alabamans could fill the whole that would be left behind if all illegal immigrants were to leave Alabama. Who would then pick fruits/vegetables, build houses or flip burgers for $4 an hour??

Excuses! How about legal immigrants doing the work? That's what most of us Americans prefer.

Legal immigrants have the same right to minimum wage as every American, making it impossible for any legal immigrant or citizen of the US to work for $5 an hour. Hiring an illegal immigrant is MUCH cheaper than hiring legal citizens or aliens. That's not an excuse, that's a fact!

BubbleBliss wrote:
Legal immigrants have the same right to minimum wage as every American, making it impossible for any legal immigrant or citizen of the US to work for $5 an hour. Hiring an illegal immigrant is MUCH cheaper than hiring legal citizens or aliens. That's not an excuse, that's a fact!

Of course they have that right. But if we can get rid of most illegals here, the wages WILL go up. That, my friend, is a fact.

What gets me is that it's the liberals that constantly whine that wages aren't high enough for the American worker. Then they're also the same ones who seem to want to keep illegals here to keep "prices" down.

Ya can't have it both ways.

I'm not using the fact that prices will go up for an excuse that illegals should stay in the US, I'm simply saying that it is a fact to consider.

What gets me is that conservatives constantly whine that prices are getting higher and that businesses are losing money, yet when it comes to things like this, they don't mind an increase in prices that will affect EVERY American.

BubbleBliss wrote:
I'm not using the fact that prices will go up for an excuse that illegals should stay in the US, I'm simply saying that it is a fact to consider.

What gets me is that conservatives constantly whine that prices are getting higher and that businesses are losing money, yet when it comes to things like this, they don't mind an increase in prices that will affect EVERY American.

Conservatives constantly whine that prices are getting higher? Who? Where? When?

No conservatives says that businesses are losing money due to illegals. If you can prove that, then do so.

It's always about consumers having to pay the price increase because of government meddling. Higher taxes, tougher regulations, etc. they all get passed down to the consumer. Dbl ALWAYS talks about this, for example.

I never said that they are losing money due to illegals, I only said that conservatives wine about that all the time mostly because of regulations or taxes.

TexasBlue wrote:

bigger_guns_nearby wrote:Maybe it would be easier to set-up checkpoints and have people produce their papers?

Joking aside, it will be interesting to see if getting rid of more immigrants does indeed see native-born Alabamans fill those jobs, or if there will be a state shortage of builders / vegetable pickers / whatever immigrants do.

Sorry bud, but that should read illegal immigrants.

Lol, an important correction. Although I wonder if the practical translation of this law won't be something like "Pull over Hispanic-looking people on some kind of minor violation (didn't like how they were driving; suspected they had run a stop sign) and then ask to see their ID to check immigration status."

bigger_guns_nearby wrote:

TexasBlue wrote:

bigger_guns_nearby wrote:Maybe it would be easier to set-up checkpoints and have people produce their papers?

Joking aside, it will be interesting to see if getting rid of more immigrants does indeed see native-born Alabamans fill those jobs, or if there will be a state shortage of builders / vegetable pickers / whatever immigrants do.

Sorry bud, but that should read illegal immigrants.

Lol, an important correction. Although I wonder if the practical translation of this law won't be something like "Pull over Hispanic-looking people on some kind of minor violation (didn't like how they were driving; suspected they had run a stop sign) and then ask to see their ID to check immigration status."

Noooooooo that would never happen! Do you have any kind of proof for that, because if not, it's impossible for that to happen!

bigger_guns_nearby wrote:Lol, an important correction. Although I wonder if the practical translation of this law won't be something like "Pull over Hispanic-looking people on some kind of minor violation (didn't like how they were driving; suspected they had run a stop sign) and then ask to see their ID to check immigration status."

Generally, illegals don't have drives licenses. They also don't speak very much English, if at all. These are the things I observed when I lived in Texas.... which has a large illegal population.

This law, as does the AZ law, forbids profiling. I posted the AZ law on here last year while arguing this very point. There's plenty of checks in this law (as the AZ law) that WILL provide (suit-wise) for the Hispanic(s) if it was found to be racial profiling.