Thread: AL: Committee move may kill immigration bills

Committee move may kill immigration bills
Posted by Brian Lyman, Capitol Bureau April 24, 2008 10:04 AM
Categories: Breaking News

A Senate committee this morning delayed votes on two illegal immigration bills, a move the sponsor says has effectively killed them.

One bill would give the state the power to enforce a 1990 constitutional amendment declaring English the official language of Alabama. A second bill would have required the state's driver license test to be administered in English.

The driver's license test is currently administered in 14 languages, but driver's manuals are only printed in English. State Sen. Scott Beason, R-Gardendale, said the bills would "bring people together," but critics of the legislation said the bills transformed the amendment from making English the official language of the state to Alabama's only language. Similar moves in Alaska, Arizona and Oklahoma have been struck down by courts.

Representatives of state agencies also voiced concerns that the legislation had the potential to deny federal funding for public services, but Beason said language in the bills would have prevented that.

Debate among members of Senate Governmental Affairs Committee became tense. State Sen. Vivian Davis Figures, D-Mobile, told Beason the bill reminded her of former Gov. George Wallace's stand in a University of Alabama doorway in 1963 in support of racial segregation, while Beason accused her of a personal attack on him.

The committee voted to carry the bills over. Committee chairman Wendell Mitchell, D-Luverne, said the vote did not mean the bill was dead, but Beason said after the meeting there
http://blog.al.com/live/2008/04/committ ... mmigr.html

Both of those Alabama bills are of lower priority as compares with the success they had with much more important issues next door to them in Mississippi.