10/05/2012 - Myclipp

Alabamians should see on Wednesday, the last day of
the legislative session, just how badly the Republicans
who control the Statehouse want to continue down the
path of anti-immigrant extremism.The lawmakers’
challenge was to fix last year’s terrible immigration law,
House Bill 56, which turned state and local police
officers into papers-checking immigration agents and
imposed a grab bag of criminal punishments and
deterrents on undocumented immigrants and on
businesses and charitable organizations that help or
hire them. The only real solution is the full repeal of the
law, but bills to do that have died. Republican leaders
have said they want to make the law more “efficient,”
but have vowed not to weaken it. So the question as
time runs out is whether the Legislature will approve
any “tweaks” through a new measure, House Bill 658,
that has already passed the House, or some other bill
originating in the Senate. It may be that only the courts
can rescue Alabama from itself. Some parts of the
current law are temporarily on hold awaiting the
outcome of a federal lawsuit, including the requirement
that schools collect students’ immigration data and
sections criminalizing “business transactions” by the
undocumented and nullifying contracts they enter. But
other sections are still in force, including the one
directing police to check the papers of those they stop.
Alabama’s Disgrace
The New York Times/ - Politics, Qua, 16 de Maio de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Constitutionality.)
House Bill 658 preserves the malign intent of the
earlier law and makes some of its provisions worse. It
expands the “papers, please” requirement to target
passengers in a stopped car as well as the driver. It
doubles, to 48 hours, the time someone can be jailed
while awaiting an immigration check. It increases jail
time and fines for newly created — and surely
unconstitutional — state immigration crimes. It does
nothing meaningful to shield from prosecution those
who “harbor” or “transport” immigrants for religious or
humanitarian reasons. As for the expense of litigation,
the harm to public safety as crime victims avoid the
police, and the misery inflicted on the working poor —
all of those ill-effects seem quite intact. The Supreme
Court recently heard oral arguments on the
constitutionality of Arizona’s immigration law, whose
noxious spirit and letter Alabama has copied. A ruling
in that case is expected in June, and could unleash
more Arizona-style damage in other states.
Meanwhile, the two Republican architects of
Alabama’s immigration law, Micky Hammon in the
House and Scott Beason in the Senate, are pressing
on. And The Associated Press reported this month that
Alabama farmers are planting less and shifting to
mechanized crops as the reality of an immigrant labor
shortage — the high price of xenophobia — sinks in.
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