The Birmingham News (Editorial): Alabama's immigration law bringing bad publicity on the state, which can't be good for officials trying to recruit new businesses to the state
With Republicans who control the Alabama Legislature saying they are focused most of all on creating jobs in Alabama, one can't help but wonder why they would support an overreaching immigration law that is creating uncomfortably familiar publicity for the state, which may well be used against Alabama and cost the state jobs.
"Standing in the Schoolhouse Door," is the headline on an editorial that appeared in the Saturday edition of The New York Times, criticizing Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange's lack of cooperation with the U.S. Justice Department's request for enrollment data in 39 school districts with significant numbers of Hispanics.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post, in a Friday editorial titled "The Rot in Alabama," noted farmers in Alabama are having trouble harvesting their fields and are in a "revolt against the state's over-the-top immigration law."
Without a doubt, Congress and the White House should address the immigration issue. Still, there was no great need for Alabama to pass the heavy-handed immigration law it did. And there is no reason for Strange to try to interfere with the Justice Department investigating possible civil rights violations. That is, after all, one of its responsibilities.
Strange challenged the Justice Department's legal authority to seek student enrollment data from certain school systems. As The Times pointed out in its Saturday editorial: "Surely no law-enforcement official of his (Strange's) stature would have responded to a fact-gathering request by challenging the federal government's 'legal authority' to investigate reports of civil rights abuses. Could there be an attorney general in the South -- or anywhere -- who is not acutely aware, and mindful, of the Civil Rights Act of 1964?"
Indeed, the Justice Department said it requested the data because it was investigating complaints that Alabama's immigration law was serving to deny children access to public education. Justice also is looking into whether other rights concerning housing, public safety and labor are being violated as a result of the immigration law.
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions and two other Southern senators are pushing legislation that would bar the Justice Department from suing Alabama and other states over their immigration laws. The Justice Department argues, and we believe rightly so, that it is responsible for enforcing immigration laws and that a hodgepodge of uneven state laws will be impossible to deal with.
Sessions would do better to convince his colleagues in Congress to approve comprehensive immigration reform instead of deflecting attention from Congress' role in helping to solve this national problem. But there's no movement on an immigration bill, just politics.
Regardless what one thinks of the national media's criticism of Alabama's immigration law, one would have to be in complete denial to believe the brouhaha isn't creating a difficult climate for state business recruiters.
When Alabama competes with other states for new industry, don't think for a second those competitors aren't pointing at the state's immigration law and how intolerant it makes Alabama appear.
If the goal of the Alabama law was truly to keep undocumented workers from taking jobs that could be filled by Alabamians, adopting E-Verify, the national system that checks immigration status, would have done the trick. E-Verify is constitutional; once the kinks are worked out, the system will tell prospective employers whether a job applicant's immigrant status is OK. E-Verify is a reasonable step for Alabama to take.
While the complicated immigration law was billed as a jobs law, it may cause just the opposite result, especially when going head-to-head with other states to win new businesses.
With Republicans who control the Alabama Legislature saying they are focused most of all on creating jobs in Alabama, one can't help but wonder why they would support an overreaching immigration law that is creating uncomfortably familiar publicity for the state, which may well be used against Alabama and cost the state jobs.
"Standing in the Schoolhouse Door," is the headline on an editorial that appeared in the Saturday edition of The New York Times, criticizing Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange's lack of cooperation with the U.S. Justice Department's request for enrollment data in 39 school districts with significant numbers of Hispanics.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post, in a Friday editorial titled "The Rot in Alabama," noted farmers in Alabama are having trouble harvesting their fields and are in a "revolt against the state's over-the-top immigration law."
Without a doubt, Congress and the White House should address the immigration issue. Still, there was no great need for Alabama to pass the heavy-handed immigration law it did. And there is no reason for Strange to try to interfere with the Justice Department investigating possible civil rights violations. That is, after all, one of its responsibilities.
Strange challenged the Justice Department's legal authority to seek student enrollment data from certain school systems. As The Times pointed out in its Saturday editorial: "Surely no law-enforcement official of his (Strange's) stature would have responded to a fact-gathering request by challenging the federal government's 'legal authority' to investigate reports of civil rights abuses. Could there be an attorney general in the South -- or anywhere -- who is not acutely aware, and mindful, of the Civil Rights Act of 1964?"
Indeed, the Justice Department said it requested the data because it was investigating complaints that Alabama's immigration law was serving to deny children access to public education. Justice also is looking into whether other rights concerning housing, public safety and labor are being violated as a result of the immigration law.
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions and two other Southern senators are pushing legislation that would bar the Justice Department from suing Alabama and other states over their immigration laws. The Justice Department argues, and we believe rightly so, that it is responsible for enforcing immigration laws and that a hodgepodge of uneven state laws will be impossible to deal with.
Sessions would do better to convince his colleagues in Congress to approve comprehensive immigration reform instead of deflecting attention from Congress' role in helping to solve this national problem. But there's no movement on an immigration bill, just politics.
Regardless what one thinks of the national media's criticism of Alabama's immigration law, one would have to be in complete denial to believe the brouhaha isn't creating a difficult climate for state business recruiters.
When Alabama competes with other states for new industry, don't think for a second those competitors aren't pointing at the state's immigration law and how intolerant it makes Alabama appear.
If the goal of the Alabama law was truly to keep undocumented workers from taking jobs that could be filled by Alabamians, adopting E-Verify, the national system that checks immigration status, would have done the trick. E-Verify is constitutional; once the kinks are worked out, the system will tell prospective employers whether a job applicant's immigrant status is OK. E-Verify is a reasonable step for Alabama to take.
While the complicated immigration law was billed as a jobs law, it may cause just the opposite result, especially when going head-to-head with other states to win new businesses.
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