As the Racial Profiling bill becomes enacted, Latinos (Children, Parents, Workers) are leaving Alabama in droves. Farmers and Business Owners are lamenting. Crops are rotting on the vines. Meat Packing and Poultry plants are left with no workers. No one in line to take these jobs. Farms and businesses going out of business. The state is losing so much revenue in Sales Taxes. All one can say is "Thank You Racist Tea Parties! Thank you Racist Politicians! Thank you Hate Groups like F.A.I.R., Alipac and others! Thank you for destroying America due to your HATE!"
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Hispanic students have started vanishing from Alabama public schools in the wake of a court ruling that upheld the state's tough new law cracking down on illegal immigration. Education officials say scores of immigrant families have withdrawn their children from classes or kept them home this week, afraid that sending the kids to school would draw attention from authorities.
There are no precise statewide numbers. But several districts with large immigrant enrollments – from small towns to large urban districts – reported a sudden exodus of children of Hispanic parents, some of whom told officials they planned to leave the state to avoid trouble with the law, which requires schools to check students' immigration status. The anxiety has become so intense that the superintendent in one of the state's largest cities, Huntsville, went on a Spanish-language television show Thursday to try to calm widespread worries.
"In the case of this law, our students do not have anything to fear," Casey Wardynski said in halting Spanish. He urged families to send students to class and explained that the state is only trying to compile statistics. Police, he insisted, were not getting involved in schools.
Victor Palafox graduated from a high school in suburban Birmingham last year and has lived in the United States without documentation since age 6, when his parents brought him and his brother here from Mexico. "Younger students are watching their lives taken from their hands," said Palafox, whose family is staying put.
In Montgomery County, more than 200 Hispanic students were absent the morning after the judge's Wednesday ruling. Read the rest of the story HERE.
Thanks for writing about these stupid laws, I did too.
ReplyDeleteGreat minds think alike!
Thank you Too LeeSee. We all need to write about this. The right wing Tea Partiers are destroying our nation and our economy. They are so filled with Racist HATE they don't care!
ReplyDeleteFortunately,DOJ has appealed this decision. We should see and injunction the first of next week.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the fear factor is doing it's thing and the nativists are celebrating.
The Press says that Latinos won't vote for Obama - They even suggest that Blacks may desert the President - A simple explanation why this is just BS - And some of my experiences with cattle on ranches
ReplyDeleteThe Press is always tendentious and partisan. An Old Lawyer always told me "There are not impartial people"..
Journalists are very human and fallible, that is filled with defects. They want a special outcome to satisfy their prejudices and world views.
My intuition and estimation is that Latinos will pest President Obama with impossible demands ( because Mr Obama is not Omnipotent God ).
But on election day, all eligible Latinos as voters will be prodded to wake up, get up, drink their coffee and go speedily to the voting booth.
The only danger for President Obama with respect to Latinos is their beds, staying in bed if the weather is cold on election day.
They will be goaded to action, incited by fear of GOP.
This is like poking the cattle to go into a tank for bathing in a ranch.
I am not suggesting that Latinos are cattle, but I do hint that they are poked by Republicans.
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University of Alabama : Resisting Alabama Immigration Law : Alabama Universities, Professors, Associations, Religious Denominations - The distinction between arrest, criminalization and prosecution is described by law professors Gabriel Chin and Marc Miller in their review of HB56
ReplyDeleteLaw Professor Gabriel Chin of University of California at Davis ( former professor in Arizona ) has been actively in combat against these Draconian Immigration Laws : Arizona, Georgia, Alabama, etc....
According to Gabriel Chin : “Local police are authorized by federal statute to arrest deserters from active duty service in the United States military.
However, this does not imply that states and localities are invited to establish rules for military discipline of active duty troops and try them in their courts.”
University of Alabama
HB56-1, Protests-0
October 2, 2011
http://studentmedia.uab.edu/2011/10/hb56-1-protests-0/
Some excerpts :
This controversial law has been met with opposition at UAB, where many students rallied together before the law was to be enacted. This past Wednesday, SALSA (the Spanish and Latino Student Association) and the ACIJ (Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice) organized a peaceful march through the streets of Southside that started at the Hill University Center on campus.
As they walked up University Boulevard, through 5 Points and back to campus there was yelling and horns honking in approval. “Si se puede!” and “This is what democracy looks like, this is what democracy sounds like!” were a few of the many chants heard as the students and advocates marched.
Religious leaders have expressed their displeasure with this law, including Reverend Matt Lacey of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. He was at Wednesday’s rally where he spoke to the crowd.
“I am a Christian first, and an American second.” Lacey said, “We want to repeal this law. It is unjust, it is far too harsh, and it goes against what Jesus teaches us.”
Guillermo Villanueva, a Sophomore Business Science major at UAB, felt that HB56 was wrong because the law invites local authorities to racial profiling. “Legally you can harass someone for looking different,” he says.
He continued saying, “An illegal person doesn’t look any different from me.”
Samarah Mohammad, a Freshman Biology major whose parent’s and older brother immigrated from Palestine during the conflict in the Middle East said this about the bill, referring to herself and her younger siblings, “Not only is it effecting immigrants, it’s effecting people who are not immigrants.”
While the majority of the bill has been upheld in the District Court, some issues have not been approved by Federal Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn of Federal District Court in Birmingham yet. These parts of the bill include making it a crime for an illegal immigrant to solicit work, making it a crime to transport or harbor an illegal immigrant, and barring illegal immigrants from attending public colleges.
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