For Immediate Release
June 10, 2011 - Washington, D.C. – Alabama Governor Robert Bentley signed HB 56, a draconian law that takes immigration enforcement beyond Arizona’s SB 1070. While the law mimics SB 1070 by requiring local law enforcement to verify peoples’ immigration status during a stop, it also hits new lows by forcing public schools to make students and their parents provide proof of legal status, turning school administrators into immigration officers. The law also contains a broadly defined provision making it a crime to knowingly rent to, transport, or harbor unauthorized immigrants, as well as requiring employers to use E-verify. Alabama now joins Arizona, Utah, Indiana, and Georgia in passing costly immigration enforcement laws.
To make matters worse, Governor Bentley, much like Governor Deal in neighboring Georgia, is turning a blind eye to the state’s $586 million FY2011 budget shortfall—a deficit that is bound to grow in light of this costly enforcement law. Yesterday, the ACLU and several civil rights groups announced a forthcoming legal challenge to Alabama’s immigration law. To date, Arizona has already spent $1.9 million defending its law, key provisions of which were blocked by a federal judge, not to mention the millions Arizona has already lost in cancelled conferences and tourism revenue.
Arizona has demonstrated that using a “get tough” immigration law to drive unauthorized immigrants out of the state is not only costly, discriminatory, and unconstitutional; it also does nothing to actually solve our larger immigration problems. In its lawsuit challenging Arizona's SB1070 the federal government rightly asserted its authority over national immigration policy. What continues to be missing is Congressional action. Until Congress acts to fulfill its constitutional role in creating a functional immigration system, states will continue to look for ways to fill the leadership vacuum.
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For more information contact Wendy Sefsaf at wsefsaf@immcouncil.org or 202-507-7524.
The Immigration Policy Center (IPC), established in 2003, is the policy arm of the American Immigration Council. IPC's mission is to shape a rational conversation on immigration and immigrant integration. Through its research and analysis, IPC provides policymakers, the media, and the general public with accurate information about the role of immigrants and immigration policy on U.S. society. IPC reports and materials are widely disseminated and relied upon by press and policy makers. IPC staff regularly serves as experts to leaders on Capitol Hill, opinion-makers and the media. IPC is a non-partisan organization that neither supports nor opposes any political party or candidate for office.
Division of the American Immigration Counsel.
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