Tag: alabama immigration

In Alabama today, the state goes to court to defend its new immigration law, which is set to go into effect Sept. 1. The United States has sued to block the law from being implemented, saying essentially that immigration is a federal issue. The Alabama law has not only raised the ire of the feds, it has also caused numerous mainstream--even conservative--churches to join as plaintiffs in the suit.

In Alabama, it's not enough that the United States has filed suit to stop the nation's strictest immigration law from going into effect, 16 other nations have also sued the state.

The Birmingham News noted in an editorial Sunday that the Alabama state constitution, written in 1901, says the state should encourage immigration. This may come as news to state legislators who recently passed immigration restriction laws viewed as the strictest in the country.

What happens when a state bypasses the federal government and enacts its own immigration laws? It's well known by now that Arizona lost substantial convention business and has racked up huge legal bills defending the state's laws. Those facts have not stopped other states from following suit. Alabama, where the new laws are slated to take effect in September is seeing immigrants selling their possessions and getting ready to move.

Alabama’s new immigration law has been called the most far-reaching of the state-level efforts at cracking down on undocumented immigrants. But of all the Alabama interest groups that the law affects, none has greater influence on the Republican Party-controlled Legislature than business groups, who are some of the biggest contributors to GOP state lawmakers’ election campaigns.

Attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Immigration Law Center announced Friday at the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala., they have filed a lawsuit challenging the new Alabama immigration law.

Never mind how Alabama legislator Bobby Beason, who sponsored that state's new get-tough immigration law actually feels about minorities in his state, you would think he would have the common sense to be careful what he says, but no. Beason has been caught on tape referring to black people as "aborigines."

Flash back to the 1950s when Alabama may have been the most dangerous place in the country to be a person of color, at least one who thought he or she should be afforded basic human rights.