In the coming weeks, the Supreme Court will likely decide whether to review the constitutionality of Arizona's high-profile immigration enforcement effort, known popularly as S.B. 1070. Arizona's law is simply the tip of the iceberg. State legislatures have passed immigration enforcement laws over the last few years at breakneck speed, and, generally speaking, have attempted to make life as uncomfortable as possible for undocumented immigrants. Controversy has ensued. The Arizona law received worldwide attention, international condemnations, and calls for an economic boycott of the state. Paradoxically, these state immigration laws come at a time when the Obama administration has aggressively pressed enforcement, setting all-time records for the removal of noncitizens from the United States, with nearly 400,000 people deported in fiscal year 2011.
Earlier this year, the Alabama legislature entered the fray by passing a tough-as-nails immigration law known as the Beason-Hammon Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act. The Alabama law builds on the controversial Arizona law but goes considerably further. Unsettling migration of Latinos to new destinations in the United States, combined with Congress's failure to improve an immigration system that commentators on both ends of the political spectrum vigorously condemn, led us to where we are today. Alabama is the latest state to act -- and act decisively it did.
I believe that the civil rights implications for immigrants and Latinos raised by the state immigration laws are in many respects similar to the civil rights issues raised by Jim Crow for African-Americans. This is true even though the current legal challenges to the U.S. government to the Alabama, Arizona, and Georgia laws center on federal preemption doctrine, as opposed to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The defense of current state laws eerily bring back memories of the "states' rights" defense of segregation.
It should be troubling that Alabama, ground zero in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, gave birth to the harshest immigration law to date. Many famous incidents in that state -- from Birmingham Police Chief Bull Connor unleashing fire hoses on peaceful civil rights marchers to Governor George Wallace proclaiming "segregation now, segregation forever" in his 1963 inaugural address -- remain indelibly imprinted on the national imagination. As in the days when segregationists championed "states' rights," we again hear objections to the intervention of the federal government as it attempts to defend immigrants' civil rights through lawsuits challenging state immigration laws. Alabama now risks going down in history for its intolerance toward undocumented immigrants and Latinos as well as African-Americans.
Importantly, the civil rights implications of immigration enforcement exist regardless of whether the states or the federal government takes charge. The Alabama law is startling in terms of its civil rights consequences to Latinos and immigrants, including increasing the likelihood of racial profiling, denying access to public education, and the like.
So where does this leave us? In my estimation, the United States, much as it was in the 1960s, is at a civil rights crossroads. Millions of immigrants and undocumented immigrants live in the United States. Employers value their labor. Consumers gain from lower prices. The economy as a whole benefits. But legally, the nation has been at best ambivalent about how to treat immigrants, especially undocumented ones, in the eyes of the law. Most fundamentally, what rights do they possess? We as a nation must address these civil rights questions. Until then, we can expect more turmoil in the states and, consequently, continued threats to the civil rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens of particular national origins.
At the same time, the rationale for enacting state laws regarding immigration enforcement crumbles if the U.S. Congress acts to reform basic U.S. immigration law in a meaningful way. Indeed, state political leaders have repeatedly emphasized that the states are acting because the Obama administration and Congress have failed to address immigration enforcement. As a co-sponsor of the Alabama immigration law stated,
[t]o me the federal government ignoring this problem is putting an unfunded mandate on the states. The federal government's job is to enforce immigration law. . . . We are hoping through this [law] that people who do need immigrant labor . . . will put pressure on Washington now to correct the broken immigration system.
Congress enacted the omnibus Immigration & Nationality Act in 1952, during the Cold War, and has only amended it on a piecemeal basis almost annually since then. The last major effort at anything approaching "comprehensive" immigration reform was in 1986 with the Immigration Reform and Control Act. If Congress could act to address the current issues of immigration, it could address the civil rights concerns afflicting immigrants today. Unfortunately, with a presidential election upcoming in 2012, it appears that immigration reform is dead in its tracks.
Read the full article, Sweet Home Alabama? Immigration and Civil Rights in the "New" South by Kevin R. Johnson, on the Stanford Law Review Online.
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Alabama Immigration Law's Critics Question Target - NYTimes.com
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State laws are quite legal when they supplement rather than oppose Federal laws. That is simple legal common sense.
There is NO ambiguity about how to treat LEGAL immigrants since they have NO problem if they follow the law. For illegals they are by definition smugglers of at least themselves and thus criminals under Federal law. So how can there be any question as to how to treat them? The only civil rights that they have is to be given a hearing in immigration court, and deported if they are found to be here illegally. Do they have the civil right to drive without a license, insurance, registration, and work in the US illegally? The LAW is absolutely clear about this. NO. There is total agreement with state and Federal law on all counts. I would expect some cite since you are a lawyer that would at least show some grounding in law for any civil right to violate all of those laws.
By law, they should have been deported a very long time ago. Congress is paying to deport ONLY 400,000 illegal aliens a year. They have been for a long time and for a long time, the mark was up there at close to 400,000. Obama hasn't out done anyone though.. in older days, the deportation rate was over a million illegal aliens.
Citizens need to vote on this issue. If we don't vote, we will lose, and Newt Gingrich will be one of the very first to sell us down the river.
My rule-- times are hard, leave.
Voluntarily or otherwise.
This is why we need Secure Communities, E-verify, 287(g), a national ID card coupled with the legal clarification of the 14th Amendment.
Those defending and supporting illegal aliens are doing the exact opposite of what Dr. King and everyone working in the Civil Rights Movement were striving and sacrificing to achieve. Coming / staying here illegallly, working here illegally, driving here illegally, stealing identities and/or using fake/forged/fraudulent IDs, siphoning off social services, and damaging our tax base - those are NOT the actions of people of good character. The content of the character of illegal aliens is overwhelmingly dishonest; they are the lawbreakers, the perpetrators, and NOT the victims. The consequences they are facing are entirely appropriate, and it's time for the dishonest arguments about 'law-abiding illegal aliens' and propaganda painting these perpetrators as victims to be discredited and dismissed permanently.
The people who come/stay here illegally are absolutely not above the law and should not be excused from the consequences of breaking the laws. Illegal aliens and those who support them at our expense are just another special interest group working against the public interest and they're just as corrupt and damaging as any other special interest group seeking to profit/succeed at our direct expense.
Americans who break the laws here face the consequences all the time, every day. It's time for those here illegally (regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, age, gender, nation of origin, or any other characteristic) be held to account under our laws equally and without favor. It's time for them to either self-deport or be identified, detained and deported by the government that's charged with upholding our tradition as a nation of laws with respect for the rule of law, and for the government that's responsible for working in the public interest to stop pandering to special interests at our great expense.
In other words, the author thinks we should just abandon enforcement of our immigration laws, so as not to inadvertently inconvenience only certain groups of citizens by making them show ID on occasion. He can think of no other remedy.
How about just setting up roadblocks like the police do for drunk drivers, and requiring every adult in each car to produce a driver's license, government issued ID, or a green card? How about requiring the same ID whenever anyone applies for any type of government services? How about the same requirement to open a bank account, or to transfer cash outside the U.S. by wire? This would apply to all persons.
A law school professor should have no difficulty arriving at these and similar solutions. If he wanted to.
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No Karissa. You're ignoring an important aspect of what enforcing this law entails, which is profiling and harassment (more than just an 'inconvenience'). While you, not being a person of color would not experience this as an issue, those who are of Latin American descent, would (or who appear that they are). Try to see their point of view.
Please provide a link documenting your factual knowledge of the original poster's skin color. Thanks. If you don't have specific knowledge, your comment is dishonest and despicable.
The original poster was suggesting a great and constitutional remedy that would still allow us to enforce our immigration laws appropriately; a remedy that the author didn't even mention (for shame that removes race and color from enforcement entirely. Why do you attack the original poster rather than discuss the entirely reasonable suggestion the poster made? When the laws and requirements are applied equally to all people, there's no profiling and no harassment- the courts have upheld sobriety checks at roadblocks based on that principle. There's nothing wrong, illegal, or unconstitutional at all about the suggestion that everyone consistently and routinely provide proof of legal status or citizenship here.
As for your description of what enforcing that law entails, you either didn't read/understand the Alabama law or are deliberately misrepresenting it (or both). The Alabama law specifically prohibits racial profiling anyway (as does the Arizona law).
"An agency of this state or a county, city, town, or other political subdivision of this state may not consider race, color, or national origin in the enforcement of this section."
and
"A law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, or other political subdivision of this state may not consider race, color, or national origin in the enforcement of this section except to the extent permitted by the United States Constitution and the Constitution of Alabama of 1901." (emphasis added)
The Arizona law has a similar provision regarding "except to the extent permitted by the United States Constitution" - do you know what that exception is all about and why it's written into these laws?
Attempting to smear over legal and appropriate enforcement with anyone's race/ethnicity may be the only method available to those who attempt to defend the lawbreakers and criminals here illegally, but that doesn't make it ethical, honest, or acceptable.
The lions share of Latinos are with you as well most Anglos. Collectively we will arrive at a decision that is equitable. We've done that in Texas, New Mexico, California, Nevada and created a new day in Arizona.
"I see them all the time".
Yes and I'm sure your x-ray vision can tell their legal status just by looking at them. Thanks for proving the point that these provisions need reconsidered.
Oh and yes, we should most definitely emulate countries in the Middle East, they have such a lovely human rights record.....oh wait.
Of course, the Spanish did the opposite since they came as conquerors and committed the worst genocide in history, until Hitler did them one better. That is why all the folks south of our border speak Spanish, have Spanish names, food, religion, and there are few to none Native Americans left. In the 1920s, Mexico wiped out the last vestiges of the Yaqui indians and you will notice that there are NO reserved lands for them even now in Mexico or other Latin American countries.