Miami Herald (Editorial): The latest news from the war-against-immigrants front: Hispanics in Alabama skipped work on Wednesday to protest the state's toughest-in-the-nation immigration law, forcing at least six poultry plants to close down or scale back operations and hurting business across the state.
"I don't think it's going to be just today," lamented a spokesman for one of the major processors, the Wayne Farms poultry plant. It normally employs 850 people, but on Wednesday the parking lot was empty and the plant was idle.
The reaction to Alabama's harsh anti-immigrant measure should surprise no one. Indeed, it was fully predictable from the first moment the state's lawmakers started railing against the "foreign invasion," even though the foreign-born population there is below five percent. The reach of the law is so broad and so indiscriminate that all immigrants -- legal or not -- fear they and their children have all been placed in jeopardy.
Alabama's law allows police to detain people indefinitely if they are suspected of being in the country illegally and requires schools to check the status of new students when they enroll. Anyone with a foreign accent or who "looks foreign" can become a suspect.
Federal law forbids the denial of education to children in this country, but the Alabama requirement that schools gather information on children without proper papers was enough to put a scare into the parents. In the two weeks since a federal judge upheld most of the law's provisions, schools have reported high absentee rates among Hispanic students and, according to news reports, some Hispanics are hiding in their homes.
The law -- and similar versions in Georgia, South Carolina and elsewhere -- is aimed at stopping illegal immigration, but no state can do that by itself, and any attempt is likely to backfire. The mostly Hispanic workforce is reminding the people of Alabama of their significant contribution to the state.
In Albertville, near the center of poultry industry, numerous Hispanic-owned businesses shut down in solidarity. Mexican restaurants, a bank that caters to Hispanics, small grocery stores and supermarkets all closed down, according to a report by The AP.
Anti-immigrant measures have had their strongest impact in the fields that grow the crops Americans eat. Alabama farmers are scrambling to find prison labor to replace the absent workers.
Farmers in the state next door could tell them that ploy won't work. In Georgia, which passed its law first, the inevitable exodus of skilled, Hispanic migrant labor resulted in an estimated $140 million in losses during the spring and summer harvest, They, too, were so desperate that they resorted to using prison labor -- with pitiful results because the workers were not as productive, farmers said.
Of course they weren't. The work is grueling, conditions are punishing, and the rewards minimal. Most Americans are simply unwilling to do it.
Undocumented immigrants are a convenient scapegoat in hard times, but laws passed in anger won't cure what's wrong with the economy. Nor can any one state or group of states pretend it has an answer. States should pressure Congress to pass a rational, comprehensive, national remedy.
It will entail giving some undocumented immigrants already here a path to citizenship. Certainly more practical -- and more humane -- than creating a climate of fear and demonizing some of the most vulnerable and productive workers in America.
"I don't think it's going to be just today," lamented a spokesman for one of the major processors, the Wayne Farms poultry plant. It normally employs 850 people, but on Wednesday the parking lot was empty and the plant was idle.
The reaction to Alabama's harsh anti-immigrant measure should surprise no one. Indeed, it was fully predictable from the first moment the state's lawmakers started railing against the "foreign invasion," even though the foreign-born population there is below five percent. The reach of the law is so broad and so indiscriminate that all immigrants -- legal or not -- fear they and their children have all been placed in jeopardy.
Alabama's law allows police to detain people indefinitely if they are suspected of being in the country illegally and requires schools to check the status of new students when they enroll. Anyone with a foreign accent or who "looks foreign" can become a suspect.
Federal law forbids the denial of education to children in this country, but the Alabama requirement that schools gather information on children without proper papers was enough to put a scare into the parents. In the two weeks since a federal judge upheld most of the law's provisions, schools have reported high absentee rates among Hispanic students and, according to news reports, some Hispanics are hiding in their homes.
The law -- and similar versions in Georgia, South Carolina and elsewhere -- is aimed at stopping illegal immigration, but no state can do that by itself, and any attempt is likely to backfire. The mostly Hispanic workforce is reminding the people of Alabama of their significant contribution to the state.
In Albertville, near the center of poultry industry, numerous Hispanic-owned businesses shut down in solidarity. Mexican restaurants, a bank that caters to Hispanics, small grocery stores and supermarkets all closed down, according to a report by The AP.
Anti-immigrant measures have had their strongest impact in the fields that grow the crops Americans eat. Alabama farmers are scrambling to find prison labor to replace the absent workers.
Farmers in the state next door could tell them that ploy won't work. In Georgia, which passed its law first, the inevitable exodus of skilled, Hispanic migrant labor resulted in an estimated $140 million in losses during the spring and summer harvest, They, too, were so desperate that they resorted to using prison labor -- with pitiful results because the workers were not as productive, farmers said.
Of course they weren't. The work is grueling, conditions are punishing, and the rewards minimal. Most Americans are simply unwilling to do it.
Undocumented immigrants are a convenient scapegoat in hard times, but laws passed in anger won't cure what's wrong with the economy. Nor can any one state or group of states pretend it has an answer. States should pressure Congress to pass a rational, comprehensive, national remedy.
It will entail giving some undocumented immigrants already here a path to citizenship. Certainly more practical -- and more humane -- than creating a climate of fear and demonizing some of the most vulnerable and productive workers in America.
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