New York Times (Editorial): Alabamians should see on Wednesday, the last day of the legislative session, just how badly the Republicans who control the Statehouse want to continue down the path of anti-immigrant extremism.
The lawmakers’ challenge was to fix last year’s terrible immigration law, House Bill 56, which turned state and local police officers into papers-checking immigration agents and imposed a grab bag of criminal punishments and deterrents on undocumented immigrants and on businesses and charitable organizations that help or hire them. The only real solution is the full repeal of the law, but bills to do that have died.
Republican leaders have said they want to make the law more “efficient,” but have vowed not to weaken it. So the question as time runs out is whether the Legislature will approve any “tweaks” through a new measure, House Bill 658, that has already passed the House, or some other bill originating in the Senate.
It may be that only the courts can rescue Alabama from itself. Some parts of the current law are temporarily on hold awaiting the outcome of a federal lawsuit, including the requirement that schools collect students’ immigration data and sections criminalizing “business transactions” by the undocumented and nullifying contracts they enter. But other sections are still in force, including the one directing police to check the papers of those they stop.
House Bill 658 preserves the malign intent of the earlier law and makes some of its provisions worse. It expands the “papers, please” requirement to target passengers in a stopped car as well as the driver. It doubles, to 48 hours, the time someone can be jailed while awaiting an immigration check. It increases jail time and fines for newly created — and surely unconstitutional — state immigration crimes. It does nothing meaningful to shield from prosecution those who “harbor” or “transport” immigrants for religious or humanitarian reasons. As for the expense of litigation, the harm to public safety as crime victims avoid the police, and the misery inflicted on the working poor — all of those ill-effects seem quite intact.
The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments on the constitutionality of Arizona’s immigration law, whose noxious spirit and letter Alabama has copied. A ruling in that case is expected in June, and could unleash more Arizona-style damage in other states. Meanwhile, the two Republican architects of Alabama’s immigration law, Micky Hammon in the House and Scott Beason in the Senate, are pressing on. And The Associated Press reported this month that Alabama farmers are planting less and shifting to mechanized crops as the reality of an immigrant labor shortage — the high price of xenophobia — sinks in.
The lawmakers’ challenge was to fix last year’s terrible immigration law, House Bill 56, which turned state and local police officers into papers-checking immigration agents and imposed a grab bag of criminal punishments and deterrents on undocumented immigrants and on businesses and charitable organizations that help or hire them. The only real solution is the full repeal of the law, but bills to do that have died.
Republican leaders have said they want to make the law more “efficient,” but have vowed not to weaken it. So the question as time runs out is whether the Legislature will approve any “tweaks” through a new measure, House Bill 658, that has already passed the House, or some other bill originating in the Senate.
It may be that only the courts can rescue Alabama from itself. Some parts of the current law are temporarily on hold awaiting the outcome of a federal lawsuit, including the requirement that schools collect students’ immigration data and sections criminalizing “business transactions” by the undocumented and nullifying contracts they enter. But other sections are still in force, including the one directing police to check the papers of those they stop.
House Bill 658 preserves the malign intent of the earlier law and makes some of its provisions worse. It expands the “papers, please” requirement to target passengers in a stopped car as well as the driver. It doubles, to 48 hours, the time someone can be jailed while awaiting an immigration check. It increases jail time and fines for newly created — and surely unconstitutional — state immigration crimes. It does nothing meaningful to shield from prosecution those who “harbor” or “transport” immigrants for religious or humanitarian reasons. As for the expense of litigation, the harm to public safety as crime victims avoid the police, and the misery inflicted on the working poor — all of those ill-effects seem quite intact.
The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments on the constitutionality of Arizona’s immigration law, whose noxious spirit and letter Alabama has copied. A ruling in that case is expected in June, and could unleash more Arizona-style damage in other states. Meanwhile, the two Republican architects of Alabama’s immigration law, Micky Hammon in the House and Scott Beason in the Senate, are pressing on. And The Associated Press reported this month that Alabama farmers are planting less and shifting to mechanized crops as the reality of an immigrant labor shortage — the high price of xenophobia — sinks in.
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