A few months ago Alabama passed and put into effect the toughest anti-immigrant law on record in the United States. Now the very representatives that helped back that law are beginning to back off. Why? Because the unintended effects of that law have angered the citizens who voted them into office. The early abuses were bad enough, but in a state which is against “government interference” in the affairs of its citizens, the amount of current government interference by the State of Alabama makes many of the false charges against the current federal government true for the state. It is bad enough here that the very Republicans that passed the law are trying to remove the architect of the law from his leadership position. But, let me quote from the Christian Science Monitor:
Acknowledging a growing list of unintended consequences stemming from the implementation of the nation’s toughest anti-illegal immigration law, key Alabama Republicans are gathering ideas for how to tweak the legislation to make it less onerous on Alabamans and less dehumanizing for illegal immigrants. …
The architect of the law, Sen. Scott Beason, once said the state needed to “empty the clip” on illegal immigration in order to reduce state expenditures and return jobs to legal US citizens. But as the full impact of HB 56 sinks in, Republican leaders in the Senate are realizing the law – a centerpiece in the national immigration debate – needs a major overhaul. …
While [Sen.] Dial has been working for several months on the tweaks, the decision by a Senate assignment committee this week to remove Mr. Beason, the tough-talking architect of the law, from chair of the powerful Senate Rules Committee and replace him with Sen. Jabo Waggoner of Vestavia Hills, signaled Republicans’ intent to pave the way for changes in the law. “We are looking at different fixes,” Mr. Waggoner told the Birmingham News.
So what have been the unintended side effects? First, let me say that many people warned the legislature about them. Sadly they were branded as “liberal” even when some of the warning came from farm groups. Frankly, that has been the national tactic as well. Any proposed law that is not liked is branded either socialist or liberal and dismissed without being considered on its merits. But Alabama has become proof of what happens when you pass a law that you refuse to tweak because all opponents must automatically be wrong.
Senator Dial says it’s primarily complaints from constituents – farmers, doctors, lawyers, and contractors among them – that are driving him to alter the law by Christmas. Among the bill’s requirements that Dial wants to change:
- A requirement that mandates proof of legal residence or citizenship for every transaction with the state and local government.
- Requirements that force, for example, pharmacists to check the residency status of specific suppliers, which promises to create an avalanche of new paperwork.
- Requiring that “officers of the court” report illegal immigrants, which means that lawyers may have to break confidentiality agreements with their clients.
- Dial says he wants to add a “good samaritan” clause so people who help illegal immigrants out of charity – such as at a soup kitchen – aren’t in danger of being arrested for a felony.
- He also wants to take out a provision where schools check the immigration status of new students, the fount of much of the criticism of the law.
I can verify that government transactions in Alabama have slowed to less than a crawl. Think about having to prove your citizenship EVERY time you do something with the government. The lines for renewing you auto license tags are hours long in the Birmingham area, because the immigration law broke the online registration system, since there is no way to verify your citizenship online. You cannot even get a library card from a city or country library without proof of citizenship.
Pharmacists already work with suppliers that are federally licensed. Because of the war on drugs (from decades ago) it would be near to impossible to find a supplier that has not had to become federally licensed. But, was not enough for Alabama. Since some of the suppliers may be shipping from the other side of the country, or may be local expressions of national conglomerates, I have no idea on whom one would check such citizenship!
Lawyers are up in arms, and it is considered that any federal court challenge would immediately invalidate the requirement that a lawyer turn in his own client if his client were an illegal alien. They are also correct that this break in lawyer-client privilege could quickly expand to a requirement that a person’s lawyer report any crime to the appropriate authorities. That is an abhorrent thought to those who believe that a person has a right to counsel. In passing, lawyers are forbidden by both law and custom from calling a client innocent in court if they know he is guilty. At that point they can, and do, argue the evidence, since every suspect is allowed the right to a defense, a right that began to be invalidated by this law.
That fourth problematic requirement should touch the heart of most Christians. Under the Alabama law, as it currently stands, it would be quite possible to shut down just about every “on-the-ground” charitable organization in the state. Places such as the Jimmy Hale Mission in Birmingham serve the poorest of the poor, some of whom (when they first come in) may not even be able to fully prove who they are, let alone that they are citizens. These charities were not about to begin citizenship check on the poor they serve, and thus surely violated the law. Churches that ran church buses could have been charged under the law, not that the state would have dared.
Finally, at least one school pulled all its “Hispanic” students from classes and told them that their ID’s would have to be checked. This incident got on the national news and led to another confrontation with the Federal government a week ago. The New York Times has a good summary of that confrontation, although it was also recorded in the local newspaper.
The federal inquiry was prompted by the state’s new immigration law, which took effect in September, part of which requires schools to check the immigration status of schoolchildren and their parents. The Justice Department has already sued Alabama over the law, the nation’s cruelest collection of immigration enforcement schemes and punishments. After receiving reports that students were being harassed and bullied, and that frightened parents were keeping children out of school, the department asked 39 school superintendents for data on student absences and withdrawals since the school year began.
Instead of acknowledging that the Supreme Court has upheld every child’s right to a public education regardless of immigration status, and that the new law requires schools to collect the information that the government was seeking, Mr. Strange sent Thomas Perez, head of the Civil Rights Division, an ultimatum.
“I was perplexed and troubled to learn that you have personally written to Alabama’s school superintendents demanding information related to the pending litigation,” he wrote. “Your letter does not state your legal authority to demand the information or to compel its production. If you have such legal authority, please provide it to me by noon Central Standard Time on Friday, November 4, 2011. Otherwise, I will assume that you have none and will proceed accordingly.”
The ultimatum, which even locally brought memories of a certain governor standing in the schoolhouse door in the 1960’s, struck directly at a Supreme Court ruling already in place that requires that a child’s education not be withheld or troubled because of their immigrant status. In other words, a child should not be punished for a crime for which it is not the responsible person. The child may be here without documentation, but it is the adult who brought the child who is the guilty person in this type of case. The child is not here legally, but that is not a cause to punish the child by destroying its future. Note that deportation is allowed, but the child must otherwise have a somewhat normal life. Yet there are those who, on the basis of the lack of documentation, would withhold even medical services from such children, let alone education. The response from the federal government was swift.
The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is tasked with investigating potential violations of civil rights laws that protect educational opportunities for schoolchildren. We know that the longstanding legal tradition in this country of ensuring the right to attend school without being subject to discrimination on any impermissible ground is as critically important to you, as the Attorney General of the State of Alabama, as it is to the Civil Rights Division.
In this regard, the Civil Rights Division has recently received complaints in Alabama that may implicate some of the non-discrimination statutes related to education that the U.S. Attorney General has express authority to investigate and enforce, including Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000c-6, and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act, 20 U.S.C § 1703. We requested information from Alabama school districts to review compliance with those statutes. …
Separately, it is our understanding that you do not represent the school districts that we have contacted. Please let us know if that understanding is correct, so that we may proceed accordingly.
As we receive additional information, the Civil Rights Division and other Federal agencies will be evaluating the potential for violation of Federal laws in Alabama, including civil rights laws- the Fair Housing Act, the Safe Streets Act, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, among others. Any subsequent inquiries regarding these matters would be in furtherance of our obligation to monitor compliance with these laws.
To date, the state Attorney General does not appear to have provided his letter authorizing him to represent every school district in Alabama. But, the problems go on and on. To return to another quote from the Christian Science Monitor article from this week:
. . . the economic effects of the law have begun to pile up as many immigrants have left the state, fearing deportation – and have taken their purchasing power with them. Prof. Samuel Addy at the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Alabama recently predicted that HB 56 will reduce the Alabama economy by $40 million as income and spending by both illegal and legal Hispanic immigrants will decline.
In fact, the law is like an ongoing train wreck, as Alabama is starting to be shunned by certain convention groups, etc., just like Arizona is being shunned. This has been acknowledged by both the governor and some in the legislature. The final two paragraphs in the Monitor article say:
Moreover, both Gov. Robert Bentley and Beason, who earlier had said they’d oppose changes to the law, have hinted in recent weeks that they will support tweaking it.
“We’re loving, caring, compassionate people in Alabama, not hateful and mean as we’ve been painted by this bill,” Dial says. “I want to remove some of that stigma.”
I would rather finish with the final two paragraphs from the New York Times article:
Alabama has seized from the federal government the job of controlling immigration within its borders. The law’s architects and supporters proclaim that their goal is to catastrophically disrupt the lives of illegal immigrants and their families. With reports of harassment and panic, and of a mass exodus of immigrants fleeing the state, the potential for civil rights abuses is acutely obvious.
That Alabama’s attorney general would not welcome a federal inquiry, but bristle instead, with an implicit appeal to state’s rights — with all the defiant history of intolerance and minority oppression those words suggest — says volumes. All Americans should feel ashamed.
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