Thread: Democrats to protest immigration crackdowns

Democrats to protest immigration crackdowns

usatoday.com
By Deborah Barfield Berry
Gannett Washington Bureau
Updated 6h 32m ago

WASHINGTON -- In an attempt to invoke the memory and passion of the civil rights movement, a group of Democratic lawmakers will stand in an historic church in Birmingham Monday to help rally opposition to the state's new law that seeks to get tough on illegal immigrants.

The 10 Democrats, including Rep. Terri Sewell of Birmingham, will participate in an ad hoc hearing on the immigration law and later help launch a petition to repeal it at the historic 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham. The church was the site of the 1963 bombing that killed four little girls during the civil rights movement.

"The history of fighting for justice and fighting for basic rights is still alive in Alabama," said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., who is heading the trip. "Indeed, a lot of what we know about social movements, about social change and fighting for justice, we learned from the people of Alabama less than a generation ago."

Supporters of the law, considered one of the toughest in the country, welcome the federal lawmakers.

"We live in America. The First Amendment gives them the right to come and say what they want to say," said State Republican Rep. Kerry Rich, a co-sponsor of the measure. "Some of these people are comparing this to 1961 or the civil rights days. Here's the difference - in the 1960s . . . Alabama was wrong for what it was doing. "

Today, he said, the state is right to press for better enforcement of federal immigration laws.

"What we're upset about is they won't enforce the law," Rich said of federal officials. "That's where the breakdown comes."

The fight between state and federal lawmakers continues to escalate as more states, including Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, adopt their own immigration-related laws.

That tension is "probably going to get worse before it gets better," said Audrey Singer, immigration expert at the Brookings Institution. "This has become such a divisive issue that people off the top are willing to go to battle. . . . There's tension between what the feds can do and what the states can do."

"It's not pretty, but resolving this issue is becoming an increasingly important issue across the country," she said.

Last week, Republican senators from the South, including Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Jeff Sessions of Alabama and David Vitter of Louisiana, introduced legislation that would block the Justice Department from suing states like Alabama, Arizona and South Carolina over their new immigration laws.

DeMint called it "absurd" that the Obama administration is trying to stop states.

Vitter said states have stepped up to do what the federal government has neglected to do.

"Washington's only response is to oppose the state's enforcement efforts and take them to court," Vitter said. "We're working to stop these politically driven lawsuits by cutting off the ability for the Obama administration to use taxpayers' money to pay for them."

Sessions said the Justice Department "needs to stop going after states that are taking steps in harmony with federal laws to see that our immigration laws actually are enforced and to help end the lawlessness."

The Justice Department has filed lawsuits against Alabama, Arizona and South Carolina. The agency is also reviewing immigration laws recently passed in Georgia, Indiana and Utah.

DeMint's bill would prohibit the agency from using funds to file lawsuits against the states. He introduced a similar bill in 2010 when Arizona passed its immigration law. The measure, which had some Democratic support, failed.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada called the new laws "extreme" and said Republicans instead should work with Democrats to pass federal immigration reform that is "tough, fair and practical."

Gutierrez said had such a law been in place in the 1960's "you could not have fought the Jim Crow laws of the South."

Constitutional law expert Erwin Chemerinsky said Congress can't tell the president and the attorney general they can't challenge laws they believe are unconstitutional.

"Congress has control over spending, but it can't use it in a way that violates the separation of power," said Chemerinsky, dean of the School of Law at the University of California, Irvine.

State lawmakers, many of them Republicans, said they have been frustrated that Congress hasn't acted on immigration reform.

"What we want the federal government to do is enforce their own law," said Rich.

By the end of June, 40 states had enacted 257 immigration-related laws and resolutions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The Alabama law bars state and local agencies from doing business with undocumented immigrants, requires schools to collect information on the legal status of students and allows law enforcement officials during the course of their duties to detain people if they have a "reasonable suspicion" they are in the country illegally.

Rich noted that two federal courts have upheld major provisions of the law.

Earlier this week, Justice Department officials filed a brief with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta arguing immigration is regulated by the federal government and asking the court to block provisions of the Alabama law.

Gutierrez and other Democrats plan to file their own brief with the court Monday.

"We simply cannot have 50 separate immigration laws," said Gutierrez, who leads the immigration task force of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Sewell said she hopes the congressional trip to her district focuses attention on those in Alabama hurt by the new law and the need for federal immigration reform "not the current piecemeal approach that we're seeing across the country."

"What I hope comes from this is to urge some of my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to do something on the federal level," she said.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/sto ... Stories%29

Sewell said she hopes the congressional trip to her district focuses attention on those in Alabama hurt by the new law

Can we get someone - anyone - to focus attention on the hurt to American citizens due to the federal government's failure to enforce immigration laws that are on the books. This administration is completely lawless.

"We live in America. The First Amendment gives them the right to come and say what they want to say," said State Republican Rep. Kerry Rich, a co-sponsor of the measure. "Some of these people are comparing this to 1961 or the civil rights days. Here's the difference - in the 1960s . . . Alabama was wrong for what it was doing. "

Today, he said, the state is right to press for better enforcement of federal immigration laws.

"What we're upset about is they won't enforce the law," Rich said of federal officials. "That's where the breakdown comes."

Right answer.

US reps to visit AL to talk about immigration law

cbs42.com
Associated Press.
Published: 6:00 am

A delegation of Democratic members of Congress is set to visit Alabama to hold a hearing on the state's tough new law targeting illegal immigration.

The group of 11 lawmakers plans to hold an ad hoc committee hearing Monday afternoon at Birmingham City Hall.

Mayor William Bell, Jefferson County Sheriff Mike Hale and Birmingham school superintendent Craig Witherspoon are among the officials set to address the congressional delegation. Immigrant rights advocates and illegal immigrants are also set to speak.

U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois also plans to speak at the launch Monday evening of the "One Family, One Alabama" campaign to repeal the law.

Alabama's law requires police to detain anyone who can't prove they are in the country legally and prohibits illegal immigrants from receiving government services.



http://www.cbs42.com/content/localnews/ ... x?rss=1659

I hope they take him on a tour of one of the chicken plants or the jails and give the rap sheets to read. Just sayin...

Congressional hearing on Alabama's immigration law under way at Birmingham City Hall

The Birmingham News
By Kent Faulk
Published: Monday, November 21, 2011, 4:21 PM
Updated: Monday, November 21, 2011, 5:55 PM

slideshow and video @ link

Ten members of the U.S. House of Representatives who are opposed to Alabama's new immigration law are at Birmingham City Hall listening to witnesses talk about how the law has affected their agencies and personal lives.

Birmingham Mayor William Bell, who was the first witness, said the state law "smacks" of apartheid and Jim Crow laws. It also places financial burdens on cities and could force police officers to cross the line into racial profiling, he said.

The U.S. doesn't need immigration laws in 50 states, but rather one federal immigration law. "We need to speak with one voice and we need to speak as Americans," he said.

In a press conference before the hearing, congress members, including Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., said they support national comprehensive immigration reform. But they said they need support from other members of congress.

Among the other congressmen is Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., whose home state passed a strict immigration law. He said Alabama's state law is going to hurt the economy and the social fabric of the state. "People are discovering that the rhetoric of hate is not making the country any better. It's making it worse," he said.

Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez, D-Ill, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Immigration Task Force, is leading the field hearing.

The congressmen and congresswomen tonight are to attend an event at 16th Street Baptist Church for the launch of the "One Family, One Alabama" national campaign aimed at repealing the Alabama immigration law.

Shortly before the hearing began, five people from two California groups demonstrated against the immigration law outside City Hall.

"It's an insult ... we should all be ashamed," said Sandra Sunshine, who said she was with the Southern California Immigration Coalition.

The group carried a homemade cardboard sign objecting to the law. "It's really a racist thing. It's hurting the U.S. economically and social, as well," said another of the group, Pablo Orozco-Castro, a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2011/11/con ... alaba.html

Good comments @ source.

Hundreds rally against Alabama's tough new immigration law in cradle of civil rights movement

The Birmingham News
By Eric Velasco
Published: Monday, November 21, 2011, 7:24 PM

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama --- The sanctuary at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was filled to capacity tonight and hundreds more people overflowed outside to protest Alabama's tough new law targeting illegal immigrants.

The rally, part of the One Family One Alabama national movement to overturn the law, started at 7 p.m. with nearly two dozen speakers scheduled. Speeches were translated into Spanish or English -- depending on the speaker -- for the multi-lingual audience.

Parts of Sixteenth Street North have been closed to traffic and rally organizers set up a large screen and speakers to broadcast the speeches outside the church.

State Rep. Merika Coleman, D-Birmingham, started the calls for the law to be repealed or revised. She noted the level of opposition to the law.

"We are the majority," she said, comparing the law's opponents with its proponents. "They are the extremists."
Sixteenth Street Baptist Church became a touchstone in the civil rights movement of the 1960s when four girls were killed there in a racist bombing.

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2011/11/hun ... abama.html

Alabama lawmakers defend immigration law as congressional Democrats challenge it

Cronkite News Service
By URIEL J. GARCIA
POSTED: Monday, Nov. 21, 2011

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Because Birmingham was the birthplace of the civil rights movement for African-Americans, it is only fitting that a similar movement for immigrants starts here, House Democrats said Monday.

Birmingham has "a historic significance ... that changed the very character of this country," said Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz.

He is in Alabama this week with nine other congressional Democrats to help start a campaign to repeal the state's immigration law, known as HB 56. Because the law is modeled after Arizona's SB 1070, Arizona has a lot to teach Alabama, Grijalva said.

But Alabama state lawmakers said advice is not what they need from Capitol Hill lawmakers.

"If they would go back to Washington and pass immigration reform we wouldn't have to do their job for them," state Rep. Jim Patterson said Friday. Patterson, a Meridianville Republican, was a co-sponsor of HB 56.

His argument is similar to those made in Arizona for SB 1070 - and it's not the only similarity between the states and their respective immigration laws.

Both laws were written by Kris Kobach, now the Kansas secretary of state. Both would let local police check a suspect's immigration status. Both have been challenged in court by the U.S. Justice Department as an infringement on federal authority and both have had some provisions blocked by courts.

But while there are similarities, Alabama's law goes further than Arizona's in some cases, said Grijalva, citing reports that "children are being asked their (immigration) status in the school."

Kobach has said that that provision was only meant to gather data on the immigration status of schoolchildren so the state could analyze the cost of educating undocumented children in public schools.

The provision that let public school officials ask students for their immigration status was put on hold by the courts, along with other provisions. Unlike in Arizona, however, courts considering the Alabama case said local law enforcement officials here could ask about a suspect's immigration status.

The Democratic lawmakers scheduled a day of meetings on the law, including an ad hoc hearing at the Birmingham City Council where they heard from local law enforcers and school officials as well as Alabama residents affected by the law. They ended the day at the 16th Street Baptist Church, where a 1963 bombing that killed four girls and wounded 20 other people on their way to Sunday services became a key event in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

While the visiting Democrats argued that the Alabama law has overreached, its supporters said it has lived up to its purpose.

State Rep. Terri Collins, a Decatur Republican and co-sponsor of HB 56, said the law has driven so many undocumented immigrants out of the state that American citizens can fill up the jobs the immigrants are leaving behind.

"I know people who have been able to get jobs that couldn't before," Collins said Friday. "And that was the intention of the law."

Republican and Democratic lawmakers do agree that Alabama agriculture has been affected by the loss of immigrant workers. But they disagree on the solution.

Grijalva said that the federal government needs to act on immigration reform that leads to a pathway to citizenship, but Patterson disagrees. He said that undocumented immigrants who want to work in the United States need to go back to their home countries and apply for temporary work visas to enter legally if they want to work here.

"If President Obama and the Democrats were trying to help the people who are here illegally, they would get their butts down here and get them green cards so they can work," Patterson said.

State Republicans have said they are willing to "tweak" the law in the next legislative session to clear up some misunderstandings among Alabama residents.

But Grijalva said Alabama can still learn a lot from Arizona when it comes to enforcing state immigration laws.

"Coming from Arizona and the experiences we had with (SB) 1070 lead me to try to explain to people that there is consequences that do go along with this," he said.

Collins said she has already seen the results.

"Overall it has had good implications for the state," Collins said.

Read more: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/11 ... z1eP6iIMGi

But Grijalva said Alabama can still learn a lot from Arizona when it comes to enforcing state immigration laws

In my opinion, Grijalva is nothing but a an ethnic pimp that is in office because of voter fraud. He was elected by the citizens of Mexico not the U.S. and he can hike himself right back where he came from.

Sen. Reid: Alabama’s Immigration Law Would 'Without Any Question' Create 'Racial Profiling'


By Eric Scheiner

November 22, 2011


(CNSNews.com)- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) claims that Alabama’s anti-illegal immigration law would “without any questionâ€