Marcos Reyes
Silicon Valley De-Bug
Commentary
January 11, 2012

For many immigrants Alabama has seized to be called home, in an exodus compared only to those of a famine or a depression, the cause is due to Alabama’s anti immigration law HB 56. It is regarded as the nation's strictest anti-illegal immigration law, tougher than Arizona SB 1070.

The law has obstructed all sectors of its society, from foreign executives to schools and businesses, as immigrants move out of the state, the crops of its fields lay rotten, tomatoes not yet ripe, houses and apartments abandoned.

The farmers that are left complain that the American worker cannot handle the work or the weather, he is unfit for the field and more than often abandons the job that the politics that created the law favored so much. Now Alabama’s economy is hurting and the law’s makers are considering its revision. The law that benefits largely Homeland Security and other sectors of its government do not realize that its faulty grounds and unrealistic demands has planted the seed to its own demise, Alabama is home to several foreign companies, and its labor force is largely made up of immigrants. The lack of labor has raised the price of their harvest, the law targets unlawful immigrants and those that harbor them, but in a reminiscent agenda largely compared to totalitarian governments where the individual is also a culprit in adding the government in persecution.

The law is not that different from the rest of the country that has been used by Homeland security to gain a broader scope of searching out immigrants, from police stopping immigrants and verifying legal identification, or employers refusing to hire them on a weak and faulty morale, as Alabama edges its way into economic distress, the corporations that provide services to the state will have to reconsider its stand in an ailing economy.

The large population of Latin Americans in Alabama have caused a great distress indeed, for Alabama in refusing to recognize their labor have edged its own to suffer for its unyielding despotism, for the jobs that Alabama so much sought for its lawful citizens have now been left unattended and rotting in empty fields where once a large community flourished Alabama’s livelihood.

Samuel Addy, Economist at the University of Alabama estimates $40 million in losses if undocumented workers are pushed away from the state.

The state has proven it is the victor, but its victory leaves a dry taste even to its own people, for its is a bitter achievement in gaining its demand, the law is the law and regardless its makers will have it implemented, for the Economic loss is caused by immigrants but it is not when they decide to live in the state but when they leave it.

Most people do not understand the wages paid in these jobs, the workers do get paid minimum wages, but the law has spoken and as Scott Beason claimed it is a “Jobs Bill,” but the workers have declined to work, so the moralistic agenda of the state has given out the fields to its people, it is just such a shame that they are unwilling to harvest its work.

For many Latin American’s that have called Alabama its own, now must make the decision of leaving it, and as they do they leave behind the place they once considered home, where their children grew up and now must make a journey to some other land. The State in the past dealt with a segregated culture that was part if its laws, but now it will not deal with black citizens fighting boycotting their industries, but with an absence of its workers, of a populace that will leave the state to its ruin.

Sweet Home Alabama | Silicon Valley De-Bug