(Editorial) Federal Homeland Security official tells Congress her department isn't going to help Alabama implement its wrongheaded immigration law, and that makes sense.
As The Birmingham News reported: Alabama looks like it's on its own where the state's punitive immigration law is concerned. But it's not like we haven't been here before.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told Congress this week that her department, which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement, will not help implement Alabama's immigration law.
That shouldn't be too unexpected. The U.S. Justice Department is challenging the law on constitutional grounds. The federal government argues that immigration enforcement is not a state responsibility.
That makes sense, too. We can't have 50 different immigration laws across the country. Alabama's immigration law so overreaches, that at one time it made criminals out of people who gave undocumented workers a ride to church. It forced schools to ask the immigration status of students and their parents. It prohibits contracts between undocumented workers, the government and businesses.
Some provisions have been blocked by federal courts. But one provision -- allowing police to detain a person to verify immigration status if the person is stopped for another reason -- remains. We all know what that can lead to: profiling.
As has already been seen, under this law, children of Hispanic heritage were pulled out of public school classrooms to fill out immigration questionnaires because they looked a certain way. A three-judge panel with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta stayed the provision that forced schools to act as immigration officers.
Napolitano said Alabama's priorities in enforcing immigration laws aren't the same as the federal government's, and they shouldn't be.
ICE deported nearly 400,000 people in fiscal year 2011, the largest number in the agency's history. The priority for ICE is to detain and remove undocumented residents who are a threat to others. That makes sense.
In Alabama, the law was intended to make it uncomfortable for all undocumented residents, whether they were a threat to anybody or whether they were part of a mixed-status family that was simply trying to get along and have a decent life.
While Alabama might have to make adjustments to how it enforces the immigration law without help from Homeland Security, one of the law's sponsors, Sen. Scott Beason, R-Gardendale, doesn't think so.
"It was not designed to go out and arrest tremendous numbers of people," Beason told News Washington correspondent Mary Orndorff. "Most folks in the state illegally will self-deport and move to states that are supportive of large numbers of illegals coming to their state."
Alabama never had "large numbers of illegals" to begin with, and Beason confirms that the law is meant to scare people into leaving. Of course, it also scares those who are legal but are afraid they'll get caught up in the xenophobic frenzy of Beason and his ilk.
The real trouble with this overreaching immigration bill is that it reminds the nation and world of a time when Alabama wanted to scare its African-American citizens.
It's encouraging that Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security aren't going to be a part of this wrongheaded law. The hope is that the Legislature would reconsider when it meets again but, more likely, we'll have to once again depend on the federal government to make us act responsibly.
As The Birmingham News reported: Alabama looks like it's on its own where the state's punitive immigration law is concerned. But it's not like we haven't been here before.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told Congress this week that her department, which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement, will not help implement Alabama's immigration law.
That shouldn't be too unexpected. The U.S. Justice Department is challenging the law on constitutional grounds. The federal government argues that immigration enforcement is not a state responsibility.
That makes sense, too. We can't have 50 different immigration laws across the country. Alabama's immigration law so overreaches, that at one time it made criminals out of people who gave undocumented workers a ride to church. It forced schools to ask the immigration status of students and their parents. It prohibits contracts between undocumented workers, the government and businesses.
Some provisions have been blocked by federal courts. But one provision -- allowing police to detain a person to verify immigration status if the person is stopped for another reason -- remains. We all know what that can lead to: profiling.
As has already been seen, under this law, children of Hispanic heritage were pulled out of public school classrooms to fill out immigration questionnaires because they looked a certain way. A three-judge panel with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta stayed the provision that forced schools to act as immigration officers.
Napolitano said Alabama's priorities in enforcing immigration laws aren't the same as the federal government's, and they shouldn't be.
ICE deported nearly 400,000 people in fiscal year 2011, the largest number in the agency's history. The priority for ICE is to detain and remove undocumented residents who are a threat to others. That makes sense.
In Alabama, the law was intended to make it uncomfortable for all undocumented residents, whether they were a threat to anybody or whether they were part of a mixed-status family that was simply trying to get along and have a decent life.
While Alabama might have to make adjustments to how it enforces the immigration law without help from Homeland Security, one of the law's sponsors, Sen. Scott Beason, R-Gardendale, doesn't think so.
"It was not designed to go out and arrest tremendous numbers of people," Beason told News Washington correspondent Mary Orndorff. "Most folks in the state illegally will self-deport and move to states that are supportive of large numbers of illegals coming to their state."
Alabama never had "large numbers of illegals" to begin with, and Beason confirms that the law is meant to scare people into leaving. Of course, it also scares those who are legal but are afraid they'll get caught up in the xenophobic frenzy of Beason and his ilk.
The real trouble with this overreaching immigration bill is that it reminds the nation and world of a time when Alabama wanted to scare its African-American citizens.
It's encouraging that Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security aren't going to be a part of this wrongheaded law. The hope is that the Legislature would reconsider when it meets again but, more likely, we'll have to once again depend on the federal government to make us act responsibly.
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