US asks court to halt Alabama’s immigration law

GREG BLUESTEIN

Asso­ci­ated Press

ATLANTA — The fed­eral gov­ern­ment asked an appeals court Fri­day to stop Alabama offi­cials from enforc­ing a strict immi­gra­tion law that has already dri­ven His­panic stu­dents from pub­lic schools and migrant work­ers from towns, warn­ing that it opens the door to dis­crim­i­na­tion against even legal residents.

The Depart­ment of Justice’s fil­ing to the 11th U.S. Cir­cuit Court of Appeals also said the law, con­sid­ered by many to be the most strin­gent immi­gra­tion mea­sure in the coun­try, could cause con­sid­er­able fall­out as immi­grants flee to other states or their native countries.

A coali­tion of advo­cacy groups also filed a sep­a­rate appeal Fri­day that claims the law has thrown Alabama into “chaos” and left some His­pan­ics too afraid to go to their jobs and reluc­tant to send their kids to school.

The court sig­naled in an order Fri­day that it wouldn’t decide whether to halt the law until it reviews more argu­ments from both sides next week. The state must file a brief by Tues­day, and the gov­ern­ment must respond by Wednes­day. After that, the court could decide whether to inter­vene by issu­ing a pre­lim­i­nary injunction.

In the mean­time, Alabama Gov. Robert Bent­ley said he intends to con­tinue enforc­ing the hotly dis­puted law, which allows author­i­ties to detain peo­ple sus­pected of being in the coun­try ille­gally and lets offi­cials check the immi­gra­tion sta­tus of stu­dents in pub­lic schools.

Those mea­sures took effect last week after a fed­eral judge upheld them, and they help make the Alabama law stricter than sim­i­lar laws enacted in Ari­zona, Utah, Indi­ana and Geor­gia. Fed­eral judges in those states have blocked all or parts of those measures.

Jus­tice Depart­ment attor­neys out­lined sev­eral prob­lems they have with the Alabama overhaul.

They worry the law is likely to expose legal res­i­dents “to new dif­fi­cul­ties in rou­tine deal­ings” and could force fed­eral author­i­ties to deal with low-risk immi­grants rather than the most dan­ger­ous crim­i­nals. And, they say, the attempt to drive ille­gal immi­grants “off the grid” could dis­rupt both diplo­matic rela­tion­ships and national policy.

“Other states and their cit­i­zens are poorly served by the Alabama pol­icy, which seeks to drive aliens from Alabama rather than achieve coop­er­a­tion with the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to resolve a national prob­lem,” the fil­ing said.

Immi­gra­tion has become a hot-button issue in Alabama over the past decade as the state’s His­panic pop­u­la­tion has grown by 145 per­cent to about 185,600. U.S. Cen­sus fig­ures show the group rep­re­sents about 4 per­cent of the state pop­u­la­tion, but some coun­ties in north Alabama have large Spanish-speaking com­mu­ni­ties and schools where most of the stu­dents are Hispanic.

State Repub­li­cans have long sought to clamp down on ille­gal immi­gra­tion and passed the law ear­lier this year after gain­ing con­trol of the Leg­is­la­ture for the first time since Recon­struc­tion. Bent­ley soon signed the mea­sure, say­ing it was cru­cial to pro­tect the jobs of legal res­i­dents amid the tough economy.

Alabama House Speaker Mike Hub­bard said the state was forced to act because the fed­eral gov­ern­ment ignored its respon­si­bil­ity to enforce immi­gra­tion law.

“In Alabama we believe in obe­di­ence to law because it pro­motes fair­ness and pro­tects the rights of every­body,” said Hub­bard, a Repub­li­can. “That’s why instead of just talk­ing about it, we took action to ensure nobody is allowed to cheat the sys­tem and ignore our laws.”

The mea­sure has had an imme­di­ate impact.

Edu­ca­tion offi­cials say scores of immi­grant fam­i­lies have with­drawn their chil­dren from classes or kept them home from school. Some towns and urban areas have also reported a sud­den exo­dus of His­pan­ics, some of whom told offi­cials they planned to leave the state to avoid trou­ble with the law.

To cope with the labor short­age, Alabama agri­cul­ture com­mis­sioner John McMil­lan sug­gested Fri­day that farm­ers should con­sider hir­ing the 2,300 or so inmates in the state’s work-release program.

U.S. Dis­trict Judge Sharon Black­burn last month blocked some of the strictest por­tions of the crack­down, includ­ing a part that for­bids dri­vers from stop­ping along a road to hire tem­po­rary work­ers, a ban on busi­nesses from receiv­ing tax deduc­tions for wages paid to ille­gal work­ers and a pro­vi­sion that makes it a crime for an ille­gal immi­grant to solicit work.

But the judge let other por­tions of the law stand, assert­ing that sev­eral groups failed to show they met the legal stan­dards to block the law. That coali­tion, which filed a sep­a­rate law­suit, filed its appeal late Friday.

The 11th Circuit’s order, which came hours after the appeals were filed, also agreed to expe­dite a hear­ing on the case. It said it would hold oral argu­ments on the dis­pute no ear­lier than Nov. 29.

Alli­son Neal of the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union of Alabama, which was part of the coali­tion that sued, said she hopes the “11th Cir­cuit will act quickly on this because of the real harm we are see­ing here in Alabama.”

Legal experts say they expect the Supreme Court to even­tu­ally weigh in on the issue, but are still uncer­tain which state will win the race to the court.

“Whether the Alabama one is heard or not, I can’t pre­dict. But until there’s greater clar­ity from Con­gress or the court, there’s going to be more appeals,” said Doug Towns, an Atlanta lawyer who spe­cial­izes in immi­gra­tion employ­ment law. “Oppo­nents say this cre­ates a patch­work approach to immi­gra­tion pol­icy, and ulti­mately that needs to be con­sid­ered by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The Jus­tice Department’s chal­lenge called the Alabama law a “sweep­ing new state regime” and urged the appeals court to for­bid states from cre­at­ing a patch­work of inde­pen­dent immi­gra­tion poli­cies. It also said the law could strain diplo­matic rela­tions with Latin Amer­i­can coun­tries, who have warned the law could impact mil­lions of work­ers, tourists and stu­dents in the U.S.

The law, it said, turns ille­gal immi­grants into a “unique class who can­not law­fully obtain hous­ing, enforce a con­tract, or send their chil­dren to school with­out fear that enroll­ment will be used as a tool to seek to detain and remove them and their fam­ily members.”

Posted by AP News on Oct 8 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.