How long does it take to flip flop and buckle under pressure from Tea Partiers? About a day, if you're Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley.
On Friday, he signed a bill making flawed revisions to HB 56, the nation's most extreme anti-immigrant state law. Just a day earlier, Bentley had declined to sign the new measure, which was rammed through the Legislature on the last day of its 2012 regular session.
Instead, he summoned lawmakers to reconsider the bill in a special session in order to "prevent children from being interrogated" by school officials about their immigration status and the status of their parents. He also cautioned against the "public relations problem" that would ensue from a startling new requirement that the state Department of Homeland Security post online the names of every undocumented immigrant who appears in a state court.
The response from extremists in the legislature came swiftly. Last year Rep. Micky Hammon boasted that HB 56 "attacks every aspect of an illegal alien's life ...so that they will deport themselves." Sen. Scott Beason had urged fellow legislators to "empty the clip" on undocumented immigrants.
So, it should come as no surprise that it was Hammon and Beason who led the charge on the first day of the special session to re-introduce a bill identical to the one Bentley had criticized, with one noxious twist: the state Department of Homeland Security would also be required to a post online a photograph to accompany the name of each undocumented immigrant.
Bentley bent. The original bill was signed.
Much of the law, which promotes racial profiling, is tied up in litigation brought by the ACLU and other civil rights groups. The law has engendered a humanitarian crisis, harming citizens and immigrants alike. It has tarnished the state's reputation and has shrunk the state's economy by billions of dollars.
Bentley was hardly alone in highlighting the interrogation of school kids as troublesome. The provision directly targeting children of immigrants has done more than anything else in HB 56 to make Alabama a pariah, generating scorn across the U.S. and internationally to millions who remember the state's shameful civil rights legacy.
Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange recommended its repeal, calling its defense in litigation a drain on resources whose costs greatly outweighed its benefits. Let's call it what it really is: beyond the pale.
The other provision Bentley had momentarily objected to involved the posting of the names of undocumented immigrants who appear in state courts, along with the names of the judges who hear their cases and the decisions rendered. This "scarlet letter" applies regardless of whether there has been a conviction. It is a naked attempt to bully judges into imposing harsher sentences and refusing to release immigrants from detention and will expose immigrants to harassment and vigilantism.
What Beason blithely referenced as one more "tweak" to HB 56 is actually a reckless doubling down on his "empty the clip" approach that will mire Alabama in more controversy and litigation.
If there is a bright side, it is that this episode will further spur a growing movement to repeal HB 56 in its entirety, a movement with much stronger resolve than Bentley.
Rev. Jesse Jackson: U.S. Must Expand, Not Suppress, Voting Rights
John Tirman: Immigration Politics: More Than Jobs
Wade Henderson, Esq. and Eliseo Medina: Korea's Hyundai Can Fix a Human Rights Disaster in Alabama
Kristian Ramos: Could Local Governments Become Incubators of Pro-Immigrant Laws
Constitutional principle that says people have the final authority in government.
This applies to AMERICAN citizens.
"Mexicans shall have priority over foreigners under equality of circumstances for all classes of concessions and for all employment, positions, or commissions of the Government in which the status of citizenship is not indispensable."
Sometimes I wonder if the ACLU thinks that is also a part of the US Constitution...
My son was born on Clark AB, in the Philippines and born a US citizen.
"The Constitution does not define the phrase natural-born citizen, and various opinions have been offered over time regarding its precise meaning. A 2011Congressional Research Service report stated
"The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. "
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0088_0162_ZO.html
That's right. The Supreme Court has actually defined this term.
Your kids are not natural born citizens unless their mother was also a US citizen at the time of their birth. Technically, any citizen who has one or more parents who were not US citizens at their birth is naturalized.
To describe this law as "anti-immigrant" as at best disingenuous. By this argument, the Romans would have to be called "anti-immigrant" for resisting the Huns. The plain truth here is the persons addressed by HB56 are illegal aliens and not immigrants at all. They are invaders who differ from the Huns only in their means of entry : stealth instead of force of arms. Alabama has every right to seek their removal from its borders. The Federal government has a constitutional duty to remove these persons from the country.
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"Much of the law, which promotes racial profiling" SMP - Please explain to us exactly which parts of the law promotes racial profiling instead of spewing the party line? Exactly the same thing was said about SB1070 - yet to date not even the feds, who are the plaintiff in the action or the courts have been able to explain that one to anyone either.
I'm sure that their are parts of the country that are still feeling the affects of immigration but the illegals that are here have been here, on the average, since between 1995 and 2004. They are taking jobs that most Americans, even those unemployed, would not take. So it would seem adding more laws and the expense of carrying out those laws may not be cost effective. But then this is something the TPers want.
My point in my original post was to perhaps suggest that more laws which may interfere the rights of legal aliens and the cost involved in enforcing them might not be the smartest move at this point in time. I found your reply rude and unwarranted.
Net of apprehensions and deportations that means that we have a gain of around 1 million per year.
The ONLY way the number is not going up would be if another 1 million self deported each year, which means that not only is mass self deportation possible, feasible and being done at the expense of the illegal!
You cannot have it both ways!
since enforcement against illegal immigration ...
Sept.2011 9.8% .vs 9.0%;
Oct.2011 9.3% .vs 8.9%;
Nov.2011 8.7% .vs 8.7%;
Dec.2011 8.1% .vs 8.5%;
Jan.2012 7.8% .vs 8.3%;
Feb.2012 7.6% .vs 8.3%
Mar.2012 7.3% .vs 8.2%
Apr.,2012 7.2% .vs 8.1%
The ONLY Issue that the Republicans & Democrats agree on?
Deportation of illegals
Democrats = forceably deporiting illegals = 1 every 79 seconds
Rebuplicans = voluntary "self-deportation" of illegals proposed
Again, when you have to pay more for fresh fruits/veggies, please don't complain. Man up and pay the price because that's basically what you're asking for.
Just got back from the grocery store ~ no "gap" in supply of fresh fruits & vegetable found.
Plenty of produce on the shelves
Do fruits & vegetable produced by illegal means, using illegals, taste better than produced by legal means?
Cause they sure don't cost any less at the grocery store
Those "noble" farmers ~ exploiting illegals in Federal Felony violation of U.S. Federal Immigrations Laws ~ just to line their pockets for the past consecutive 25 years ~ gotta stop the slave labor farming practices
The sad part is even if farm wages increased to the level of Laborers and Loggers, to a median wage of $13.50 per hour, the cost of farm labor is only 7% of the cost of food. The result would be a 4.5% increase in food prices. The average American household currently spends about $370 per year on fruits and vegetables. Such an increase to a living wage would cost the average American Household than $17 per year. Most other crops are harvested by machine.
According to the USBLS the Farm Worker unemployment rate is 20%. But if you count those who want to work but are not counted for various reasons this figure should be over 30%. Allowing Illegal Immigrants to work devastates employment and wages for American Farm Workers. Sounds just like "The Grapes of Wrath".
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That is when America built the biggest most prosperous economy the world has ever seen. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party and Obama have spent the last 30 years in lock step with Republicans helping business use free trade, illegal immigration, and deregulation to drive down wages and destroy BENEFITS. Â Consequently, America is virtually broke again. Â Without that well paid workforce, America will never again have the consumer demand that is necessary for an economy to truly prosper. The ACLU is fighting to destroy the very things that make immigrants want to move to America.
And if so, what would you set that wage at?
Which businesses would it apply to?
Can you give me a number? An actual DOLLAR figure that you would set the 'living wage' at?
Why would anyone want to hire someone who is going to intentionally break an institution? That would get you kicked off the board of a corporation. You wouldn't be welcome very long at a non-profit if you were trying to make it fail.
So why do Republicans voters keeping voting people into office that are trying to make government bad by design? How dumb is that?
How about we limit the federal government to what it was intended and designed to do?
I don't know how conservatives manage to keep overlooking that whole "promote the general welfare" clause that's right there at the beginning of the Constitution, and has been upheld for decades by both liberal AND conservative justices.