Last week, a federal court's decision allowed parts of a law to go into effect that essentially requires police to racially profile people while criminalizing undocumented migrants for being without immigration documents. The law and the decision upholding it shows that Alabama -- in passing the harshest anti-immigration law in the nation -- is still mired in its racist, segregationist past.
The message Alabama sent to brown people by passing this law -- especially those thought to be migrants -- is a simple one: Get out of Alabama. We don't want your kind here.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Alabama was a place of intense racial hatred. Montgomery, Ala., central to the Civil Rights Movement, is the city where, in 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested after sitting in the whites-only section of a city bus, leading to a massive and ultimately successful boycott of the city's public bus system. A year later, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned segregation on public buses nationwide finding that the Alabama law allowing seating according to skin color was unconstitutional.
Despite that success, much of Alabama's white residents were determined to defend their segregated way of life through brutal violence.
In 1961, some 200 white men in Anniston, Ala attacked the Freedom Riders, a racially integrated group of activists on a bus trip through the South. The bus was firebombed and the activists were beaten with pipes and bats.
Alabama is also the state where four little black girls were killed in 1963 in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.
After years of people putting their lives on the line and going to jail and the help of federal civil rights legislation, Alabama ended legalized oppression of African Americans that barred them from voting, from attending better resourced all-white schools and from many jobs that had been reserved for whites.
But a cursory look at the state's history shows how Alabama was dragged kicking and screaming into accepting desegregation. It took enormous courage, self-sacrifice and the power of the federal government to force change. But by passing Alabama's harshest anti-immigration law, the state has shown that while Jim Crow laws may not exist anymore, the spirit of Jim Crow, which is defined by white supremacy, is alive and well.
Alabama's H.B. 56 requires police to investigate the immigration status of those pulled over for routine traffic stops, if they have a "reasonable suspicion" that a person is undocumented. It's obvious that police will make these judgments of who to investigate based on appearance, including skin color.
The law will also allow undocumented migrants to be held without bond; make it a felony for an undocumented migrant to do business with the state; make it a misdemeanor for an undocumented resident to be without immigration documents; and require elementary and secondary schools to check the immigration status of incoming students.
The enforcement of the nation's immigration law has primarily been a responsibility of the federal government. But by making it a state law to be without immigration papers, undocumented immigrants are subject to a whole range of new state laws and penalties.
By treating someone different based on skin color or appearance, this law, which violates the constitution in my view, institutionalizes inequality. It's clear that white Americans will be given a pass and people who are thought to be immigrants will be forced to prove they have the documentation to reside in the United States legally. Since the majority of migrants come form Latin America, people who are brown-skinned, Latino, or thought to be Latino, will likely bear the brunt of this law.
By making it a felony for an undocumented migrant to do business with the state, which could mean applying for a driver's license or applying for a license to operate a business, Alabama will isolate and ghettoize people who came to the United States to pursue the American Dream and are simply trying to survive.
And by requiring that schools check the immigration status of students, many migrant parents will avoid sending their children to school out of fear that sending them to school will lead to arrest and deportation. The only reason that Alabama lawmakers would want undocumented migrants to keep their kids out of school is because they don't care about the children's welfare. In all honesty they could only back such laws if they simply want a group of people gone.
This hateful law has already had a horrible effect. Hundreds of children have already reportedly been absent from schools in some Alabama cities.
The anti-immigrant climate was already causing migrant workers to leave the state, the Christian Science Monitor reported last week.
Racism in the United States often increases during tough economic times and is reflected in scapegoating. That's what seems to have happened in Alabama. Passing H.B. 56 allowed lawmakers to claim that they're keeping undocumented migrants from taking jobs that should go to those born in the United States. However the Alabama Farmers Federation indicates that they have not been able to find legal residents to fill the agricultural jobs that must be filled.
The Obama administration is right to have filed an appeal of the federal court decision. And civil rights groups, including the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center have asked the federal court to block last week's decision form taking effect, pending their appeal.
Rights Working Group Executive Director Margaret Huang had it right last week when she said: "People of conscience across Alabama and the United States should send the message that the human rights of all people should be respected regardless of their race, nationality, ethnicity, religion or immigration status."
We must all speak out against this law.
Follow Keith Rushing on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@rightsworking
Michael Wildes: Alabama's History With Jim Crow Revisited
James Peron: Know Nothings and Immigrants: Some Things Never Change
Marielena Hincapié: Alabama's Assault on Civil and Human Rights
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
"Democrat State Senator Richard Moore and Republican State Senator Bruce Tarr have co-authored a massive illegal immigration enforcement bill in Massachusetts that the two lawmakers hope will come up for a vote during the current session. The bill would deny illegal aliens access to in-state tuition, overturn Gov. Deval Patrick's policy by requiring the state to join Secure Communities, and punishes employers who hire illegal aliens."
https://www.numbersusa.com/content/news/september-27-2011/bi-partisan-immigration-enforcement-bill-offered-massachusetts.html
Also:
Deny illegal aliens access to state subsidized housing and empowers local officials to better enforce local coding to ensure that single-family housing units don't become multi-family housing units.
Tightens the requirements for registering a motor vehicle to reduce the chance that illegal aliens can register a vehicle.Increases penalties for anyone driving without a driver's license.
I am also tired of the advocates for illegals trying to co-opt the African-American experience in America. African-Americans were brought to this country by force. Illegals made a conscious choice to be here. Now, they can choose to go home or face the consequences of their actions.
Hello, illegal immigrants already can't get driver's licenses, and why would we want them to be operating businesses, when we already know they break the law? Who cares why they came here? Lots of burglars have pretty good reasons too. Isolating criminals is a good idea. As for ghettoizing, (which I doubt is even a word), no one is forcing them to stay here. If they choose to be a criminal instead of returning to their country of origin, that choice should have consequences.
That sounds like a lot until it is considered that there are about 37,000 Hispanic schoolchildren in the state.
Foreign nationals may not be as visible, but there does not yet seem a great rush to leave. Many are just waiting for a reprieve from the new laws and laying low until then.
As for people to do the work, Americans will do it, as they had before. It has been a while since illegal aliens just did "jobs Americans don't want".
It turns out Americans would like to work in plants and construction and service and restaurants. Until now we couldn't qualify for those jobs because we had to speak fluent Spanish. Now that might not be the case anymore.
These are not people without a country and they didn't just pop out of thin air.
These are other country's citizens here without permission. It is not a question of giving them civil rights as they already have them in their own nations. Civil rights are for the citizens of a nation, not visitors.
If illegals are allowed to break the law and get away with it, American citizens should be able to do so too.
I have joked with my husband that US citizens must have been dropping dead from hunger in their filthy homes with lawns that had grass growing up to three feet high because harvesting food, cleaning our homes and doing lawn care are jobs we are much too good and lazy to do those things on our own. We were only saved by illegals sneaking into our country to do those jobs.
My home city has a slaughter house that use to pay a decent wage that a person could raise a family on and the employees got a discount on the meat. The benefits offered to the employees was something to envy. Now it pays next to nothing, no more discounts on the meat and no benefits at all.
If we leave, we should take everything we invented and built up with us. We should leave the land just the way we found it. Of course, they would follow us since there wouldn't be anyone left to pay for their welfare checks, section 8 housing and food stamps.
Question for the author: We have about 10 million Mexicans in this country illegally now, and many millions of other peoples to boot. Just how many Mexicans should we accept to prove how tolerant and non-racist we are? Would 20 million be enough? How about 50 million? The fact is, if something is not done now to stop this tide we will indeed have another 20 or 30 million people pour in from the developing world in the next decade or two. When French President Nicholas Sarkozy was asked about illegal immigration a few years back, he said "France should not become a home to all the world's miseries". Damn right, and the same should be the practice here. It is already supposedly the law, though the gutless pukes at ICE won't enforce it.
Three cheers for Alabama, and Georgia, and Arizona and Utah and Indiana, for finally taking a stand and saying "No more".
Alabama soon will learn a painful lesson, lost of migrant workers equals lose of millions of dollars. You don't understand one basic concept of human nature, where there is work, even if it is tough labor work, people will come. Americans, for the most part, are lazy and are just simply not willing to do the labor work. For the most part, illegal migrant workers do this type of work. It's really not fair to them that people like you want to criminalize them, treats them like slaves, pay them lower wages, no benefits and wants them to live in fear of deportation. The fact is that if they were not needed, they would not be here. But for now, send your sons and daughters to work the fields. Or try those people on welfare see how long they last. The reality is that these people are hard working and you need them; otherwise, be ready to lose millions. Read the following article, copy and paste into your browser.
http://www.11alive.com/news/article/208044/40/Ag-chief-estimates-millions-in-losses-from-immigration-law
Immigration reform is needed is this country to fix this problem.
The problem is that if we were talking about 100,000 or even 1 million people, US citizens would be relatively tolerant. But when it is 15 million or more (and it is at least that; the figure of 12 million is totally bogus) and the flow only gets worse, allowing the flow to continue is tantamount to importing poverty. And people here see it every day, at the overcrowded schools and hospitals and prisons. Add those costs up, and they more than offset whatever benefit is derived from bringing debased peasant labor.
And it is not me who is criminalizing anyone. The law is the law. If someone enters the US illegally or overstays a visa, then they are illegally on US soil. Period. That means they should be detained, processed and deported, in accordance with the law. Mexico has no trouble doing that with illegals on its soil. I say let's follow Mexico's fine example on that score.
Immigration reform does not address that.