Alabama's Ethnic Cleansing

Almost 50 years after the federal government forced former Alabama Gov. George Wallace to swallow his bigotry and allow African-Americans to attend state universities, a new Alabama governor is turning back the clock to a time when human and civil rights were routinely violated.

And again, the federal government is having to intervene — this time stop Alabama Republican Gov. Robert Bentley from enforcing a new state law that is designed to make life miserable for undocumented immigrants.

Alabama's HB 56 law is already known as "Arizona on Steroids" because it is even more draconian than the infamous law that made Arizona the champion of discrimination. HB 56 is now, according to Bentley's own boast, "the strongest immigration law in the country."

In a country where states are not supposed to be enforcing immigration laws, this becomes an invitation for the Justice Department to go back to Alabama, like it did in 1963 under President John F. Kennedy. Instead of African-Americans, this time the feds' objective is to protect not only undocumented immigrants, but naturalized U.S. citizens and legal residents whose civil rights are likely to be violated under this law. Among its many shameful attributes, this law invites racial profiling of Latinos.

Apparently, given its long history of bigotry and discrimination, Alabama didn't appreciate being upstaged by Arizona. And so they copied the cruelest measures tried in Arizona and other states - including some that already have been rejected by the courts - and compiled them all into the mother of all immigrant-bashing legislation.

The new law was so cruel and unconstitutional that on Sept. 28 a federal judge threw out several sections. But the parts that the judge allowed to stand — for example, forcing school children declare their immigration status — still are so repulsive that the Justice Department had no choice but to seek an injunction pending appeal of HB 56.

In its Oct. 7 request of an injunction, the Justice Department noted that while U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Blackburn was correct in ruling that some provisions of the state law overstepped into federal jurisdiction, "The district court erred, however, when it failed to apply this same analysis to the other provisions ... which equally intrude into the federal government's exclusive control over the federal immigration laws."

As it stands now, the law requires schools to verify whether students are in the country illegally — turning educators into immigration agents and scaring undocumented parents from sending their kids to school. It bars state courts from enforcing contracts involving undocumented immigrants. It makes it a felony for an undocumented immigrant to do business with the state.

Although the courts have blocked a similar racial profiling provision in the Arizona law, and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has vowed to appeal it in the Supreme Court, it was allowed to take effect in Alabama.

The law has been in effect for a short time, and yet HB 56 already has begun to achieve its desired effect: ethnic cleansing!

It has started to drive Latino children out of the public schools, undocumented immigrants out of Alabama and the state's farmers out of business.

"The statute has the purpose, and has already begun to have the effect, of driving aliens from the state of Alabama, thus imposing burdens on other states," the Justice Department wrote in its filing with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. It also noted that the law "is highly likely to expose persons lawfully in the United States, including school children, to new difficulties in routine dealings."

Alabama farmers are complaining that their crops are rotting in the fields because undocumented farm workers are leaving the state, and they can't find enough Americans to work the fields. They say they are at risk of losing their farms! But Bentley, Republican State Sen. Scott Beason and other Alabama hardliners apparently hate immigrants so much that they have lost compassion even for their own farmers and for Alabama's agricultural industry.

Fortunately, the law also is having the effect of uniting Americans who are tired of seeing immigrants being used as scapegoats by opportunists seeking to score political points with right-wing extremists.

"All of America is watching Alabama with a sense of shame," charges an online petition (at http://americasvoiceonline.org/page/content/alabama/), directed at Bentley and other state government officials. "The manufactured hysteria you have created targeting the immigrant community in your state is driven by political self-interest, rather than the public interest."

The petition, posted by the pro-immigrant organization America's Voice, notes that HB 56 "has brought nationwide attention to the state of Alabama as a bastion of intolerance, and the home of backward-thinking, reactionary politics." It notes that, "Alabama has a long and painful history in the area of civil rights" and tells Alabama state officials that, "Your actions have caught your past up with your present."

You would think that we would have made a lot of progress since the time when Gov. Wallace stood outside the University of Alabama and tried to defy President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy when they insisted that black students had to be allowed in Alabama state universities. And for African-Americans, we have made great progress! Now we have a black president and a black attorney general.

Yet they still are fighting to defend human and civil rights in Alabama.

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2011 CREATORS.COM