Alabama
Surrenders
By
THE EDITORIAL BOARD October 30, 2013
State
officials in Alabama have agreed to throw out major provisions of that state’s
unjust immigration law. The agreement, which
was announced Tuesday and awaits a federal judge’s approval, resolves
lawsuits brought by civil-rights groups, churches and the Justice Department
against the statute, H.B. 56, the most extreme attempt by any state to harass
and expel immigrants.
Under
the proposed settlement, the state acknowledges, among other things, that
requiring public schools to determine students’ immigration status violates
equal protection and that criminalizing efforts by day laborers to look for
work violates the First Amendment. It further states that making it a crime for
immigrants to fail to carry their papers, making it illegal for anyone to
“conceal, harbor or shield” unauthorized immigrants, and invalidating any
contracts that these immigrants sign are all unlawful intrusions into federal
authority over immigration.
The
settlement also includes an important check on racial profiling: an
acknowledgment that state and local police cannot detain anyone merely on
suspicion of being in the country illegally.
The
agreement is a huge setback for the hard-line strategy that emerged most
notoriously in Arizona and took root in Alabama and elsewhere — the idea that
states and communities can force immigrants to “self-deport” by making their
lives unbearable.
Alabama’s
Legislature and governor were warned, vehemently and repeatedly, that H.B. 56
was a lunatic law that would impose unfair burdens on citizens, stifle the
economy and harm public safety by enlisting local police in a pointless hunt
for day laborers. Farmers, clergy members and business groups raised an alarm,
which the Republicans who control the state government ignored.
Whether
those behind H.B. 56 will openly acknowledge the failure of their strategy is uncertain.
But regret is setting in elsewhere. Stephen Sandstrom, a former legislator in
Utah who sponsored that state’s hard-core immigration law, now disowns it. And
other states, recognizing the benefits of immigrant inclusion and assimilation,
are moving in the opposite direction. California recently enacted laws granting
in-state tuition and driver’s licenses to unauthorized immigrants, and limiting
its participation in federal deportation efforts.
If
only Congress would see the light. House Republicans are still barreling down a
dead-end road, with bills like the SAFE Act, which empowers state and local
police to enforce immigration laws. It’s the same self-destructive strategy
that Alabama, of all places, is abandoning.
