Thread: AL: Senate passes immigration bill on Cinco de Mayo

Senate passes immigration bill on Cinco de Mayo

By Dana Beyerle
Times Montgomery Bureau



Published: Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 9:06 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 9:45 p.m.




MONTGOMERY — Democratic state Sen. Bobby Singleton on Thursday was just two minutes into a planned hour-long filibuster on an immigration bill that his party opposes when Republicans used their superior numbers to cut off debate and force a vote.



For the past three days Republicans have been reluctant to present cloture petitions that rules allow use of to cut off debate if a sufficient number of senators agree.

Republicans didn't cloture Sen. Gerald Dial, R-Lineville, when earlier this week he filibustered extending the Forever Wild land purchase constitutional amendment.

After the Senate approved the illegal immigration bill it restarted the Forever Wild amendment and began debating it at nearly 9 p.m. The Senate passed substituted Forever Wild constitutional amendment 34-0.

On the immigration bill, Republicans clotured Singleton, one of dozens of petitions GOP legislators have pulled out to force their programs through the House and Senate.

The bill borrowed from Arizona is driven by a conservative belief in Alabama that President Barack Obama is not enforcing federal immigration laws.

Singleton, not one to waste the 30 minutes granted cloture petition opponents, borrowed an earlier quote from Sen. Phil Williams, R-Rainbow City, to describe the immigration bill - “if you put lipstick on a pig it's still a pig.â€

Alabama Senate passes revised immigrant bill

Published: Thursday, May 05, 2011, 9:17 PM Updated: Thursday, May 05, 2011, 10:22 PM

By David White -- The Birmingham News


MONTGOMERY, Alabama -- A person without valid federal alien registration or other proof of legal presence in America would, just for being in Alabama, be guilty of a crime punishable by a $100 fine and 30 days in jail, under a bill passed Thursday night by the state Senate.

The crime would be ''willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document." The Senate voted 23-11 for the proposed law.

The bill, meant to discourage illegal immigrants from coming to Alabama or staying here, is an almost completely rewritten version of House Bill 56, which in its original form passed about a month ago in the House of Representatives.

Sen. Scott Beason, R-Gardendale, said the Senate's approval of the bill would put the House and Senate in position to appoint three House members and three senators to a conference committee that could try to write a compromise version both sides could support.

The House and Senate meet again May 24, after taking a few weeks off for statewide hearings on redrawing Alabama's districts for Congress and the state Board of Education.

The Senate-passed bill would make it a crime for a person who is an unauthorized alien to ''knowingly apply for work, solicit work in a public or private place or perform work as an employee or independent contractor" in Alabama. That crime would be punishable by a fine of not more than $500.

''This is a jobs bill for Alabamians," said Beason, who pushed for its passage. ''If the illegals who are in the workforce leave, this puts Alabamians back to work."

Beason said he didn't want to see thousands of illegal immigrants flood into the state to take jobs repairing tornado damage. ''I want Alabamians to rebuild Alabamians," he said.

Sen. Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, said it's up to the federal government to enforce immigration law, not the state of Alabama. He predicted the bill, if passed into law, would be struck down as unconstitutional in federal court.

''This is just a copycat law of Arizona," Singleton said. Arizona last year passed a tough immigration law that the federal government is challenging in court.

Under the Senate's revision of House Bill 56, a law officer stopping a person on a possible violation of another law would be required to make ''a reasonable attempt" to determine the citizenship and immigration status of the person ''where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien and is unlawfully present in the United States."

Law officers would have to contact federal officials to check if the person was in the United States legally. Someone found to not be in Alabama legally could be convicted of willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document.

The law enforcement agency that jailed a person for violating the revised House Bill 56 would, upon the person's release from jail, have to transfer the person to the state Department of Homeland Security, which would transfer the person to federal immigration authorities.

Singleton predicted the bill, if it ever takes effect, would lead to profiling of Hispanics. ''It discriminates against one ethnic group in this state," he said.

The bill also would make it a crime, punishable by as much as a year in jail, for a person to conceal, harbor or shield an illegal immigrant anywhere in Alabama if they knew or reasonably should have known the person was in the United States illegally.

http://blog.al.com

Illegals should not start packing up to come to flood into Alabama for the reconstruction/construction jobs like they did in Louisianna after Katrina.

It sounds as though the Alabama Legislature and the Governor is determined that these jobs will go to legal residents that are sorely in need of employment themselves.

Rest assured that money earned by residents will not be wired out of the country but will be spent to improve the domestic economy instead.