The baby girl was born on October 3, weighing just 5 pounds 15 ounces. But just as she came into the world, her father, a dishwasher in a restaurant, was detained by immigration authorities, possibly to be deported.
The mother, who is 20 years old and also undocumented, lay in her hospital bed wondering what to do: wait a few months to see if the situation for immigrants in Alabama gets any better after it's new immigration law, HB 56, came into effect, or simply return to her native Guatemala with her two children--both native-born American citizens.
"I don't know how I'd do it. I just gave birth, I can't just pick up and move. I don't have anyone here. To stay here I need money so that we can pay rent and eat," she said. Her 2-year-old son, also born a U.S. citizen, played in the hospital room.
"If there's nothing I can do for my husband at this point, the only option I have is to go back to my country," the woman said. She's lived in the United States for five years.
Alabama immigration law HB 56, also called the Beason-Hammon Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act, requires that, if there is "reasonable suspicion" otherwise, law enforcement agencies must verify whether a person detained, arrested or stopped has a legal right to be in the U.S.
Among other provisions, it requires public school officials to verify if students are in fact illegal immigrants.
On Wednesday, federal judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn refused to block the enforcement of immigration law HB 56 while her decision to let key parts of the law stand is being appealed by the Department of Justice and civil-rights groups.
With this, fear continues to spread throughout Alabama's immigrant community, as many have packed up and fled the state. Others prefer to weather the storm by staying as far underground as possible, leaving home only when strictly necessary. Still others have chosento take their children out of school, to avoid the risk that they'll be asked about their immigration status--despite the fact that in theory, this provision is not supposed to apply to students who have already enrolled. Some undocumented or mixed-status families in Alabama are also choosing to notarize documents to grant relatives or friends legal power to decide what to do with their children--many of them U.S. citizens--if their parents are detained and eventually deported.
State Senator Scott Beason, one of the authors of SB 56, defended it in a meeting with supporters last month stating: "We crafted a bill that the vast majority of it mirrors federal law." This week, in front of local farmers in northeast Alabama, he added: "My position is to stay with the law as it is."
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9Q5JJF81.htm
But the new law hasn't just impacted the state's undocumented immigrants. Their children, many of them native-born U.S. citizens, are also suffering the consequences of the state's immigration policies, amongst the most severe in the country.
It's been widely reported that many undocumented parents have already opted to take their children out of public school, because the family had already fled for another state or was about to do so.
The young mother in the hospital was accompanied by her neighbors: a young couple also from Guatemala and undocumented, with their three U.S.-citizen children. The husband has been living in the U.S. for ten years; the woman has lived here for eight.
Their story is the same one heard all over the state: they don't dare drive because they're afraid of being detained; they think twice before going to the market to buy food because they're afraid of being detained; they're afraid of going to the doctor because they're afraid of being detained; they're afraid to take their native-born U.S. citizen children to the doctor because they're afraid of being detained. Even taking the kids to school has turned into a nightmare, they said.
"Our daughter is still going to school, but we're thinking about taking her out. The thing is, she's afraid to go. Anything you do can be an excuse for them to detain you--and if you don't do anything, they'll make something up," the young father said.
The Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama (HICA) is getting bombarded with calls and appointments from immigrants looking for advice on all kinds of issues. The most frequent question: how they can grant legal power to relatives or neighbors to take care of their U.S. citizen children, or decide what to do with their property, if they're deported, explained Vanessa Stevens, communications coordinator at HICA.
"I already have a notarized document giving temporary power of attorney to the godmother of my son--he's just seven years old--to bring him to Mexico for me if I get deported," another mother from Oaxaca, Mexico told me. She's lived in Alabama for 11 years.
On Monday, five mothers--all of them white U.S. citizens--demonstrated in front of the federal district court in Birgminham against HB 56. They said that their partners and fathers of their U.S. citizen children, are all undocumented--and could be torn from their families at any moment. If this happened, they added, their children would no longer be able to live on the economic support of their fathers; they would have to seek public assistance instead.
"If you don't want to pay for our children, repeal the law," one of the mothers said.
All day, I heard stories like this, first-, second- and thirdhand, about the fears and uncertainty that HB 56 has generated--not just among adults but among children, and many of them U.S. citizen children at that. But the day ended on an ironic note. Listening to the radio, we heard a commercial about the importance of religion and family values. At the end of the commercial, the announcer asked: What would Jesus do?
EDITOR'S NOTE: The unnamed persons in this article requested anonymity to protect themselves and their families from risk of arrest.
Michael Wildes: Alabama's History With Jim Crow Revisited
Laura W. Murphy: The Three Faces of Racial Profiling: The ACLU Connects the Dots
Marielena Hincapié: Alabama's Assault on Civil and Human Rights
Here is how it works. People from Mexico come here on a work permit. They go work for a roofing company and are hired as a foreman. He has his papers and is legal. The company is following the law.
The foreman is then in charge of getting his crew. He hires illegals. The forman only charges about 2/3 of what the American crews have been doing it for and the company makes a higher profit and can say, they are following the law.
Meanwhile, people like my cousins get displaced from jobs they had been doing for 20 yrs because they cant do it for the 2/3 price.
And then we get people from the left saying, "they are only doing jobs Americans wont do" What a scam!
I live in a sactuary city...They do the same thing when renting a house. One person with a visa, and 8 without. The person that signed the papers is legit and it takes months to evict so by the time the visa expires or the work season has ended and the tenents leave, the damage is done. Next year, one of the other 8 will get the visa and the whole thing starts all over again.””
But the new law hasn't just impacted the state's undocumented immigrants. Their children, many of them native-born U.S. citizens, are also suffering the consequences of the state's immigration policies, amongst the most severe in the country.
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The most severe in the country. Hmmmm The federal law says those who are here without proper documentation will be deported. Al's law says those who are here without proper documentation will be deported.
How is this classified as "most severe"???????? I know you have the left fooled but what about us who can think?
It's been widely reported that many undocumented parents have already opted to take their children out of public school, because the family had already fled for another state or was about to do so.
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This is good. As they flee from swtate to state, the rest of the country will see what the people in the sancuary cities have seen. And then maybe they will understand. 20 million coming to yor town soon.
Higher costs for education
Diplaced American workers in the trades
Gangs
State oporated health care programs soaring in cost
Suppressed wages
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The most severe in the country. Hmmmm The federal law says those who are here without proper documentation will be deported. Al's law says those who are here without proper documentation will be deported.
How is this classified as "most severe"???????? I know you have the left fooled but what about us who can think?
But the new law hasn't just impacted the state's undocumented immigrants. Their children, many of them native-born U.S. citizens, are also suffering the consequences of the state's immigration policies, amongst the most severe in the country.
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Journalism 101 Tell the truth
Their children, many of them, native born citizens, because their parents willfully and knowingly broke the law and bore them in the U.S. although they should not have been here to do so, are also suffering the consequences of their parents BREAKING THE FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LAWS.
Truth in reporting...try it HPO!
20 million people we supply for. When will you wake up that this is a problem. The rich can't pay for it. They wioll be too busy going broke paying the health care you want. And keeping SS and Medicare solvent and they will not have enough for OUR kids education. Sorry illegals but there is a path. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean its broken.
This is the attitude that so many of us resent. We are sick and tired of paying for your children. You sneak into the country to have them and then demand entitlements for them. We are paying your hospital bills, for their education, food stamps, welfare....all on a technicality. They are your children....support them yourselves. What kind of parent would leave a country and leave their children behind? I don't know a single caucasian parent who would do such a thing. Of course, since these parents probably plan to sneak back into the US, leaving their kids here is convenient.
Thank God that they have their own home countries in which they have full rights and to which they are entirely free to return.
None that have worked so far.