What Alabama’s Anti-Immigrant HB56 Has Wrought

[xchrom]

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12824/what_alabamas_anti-immigrant_hb56_has_wrought/

Three days after completing landscaping work and clearing out a filthy trailer that included a bed bug-ridden mattress and moldy, wet furniture, Hortensia, an immigrant worker in Alabama, went to the man who hired her to get paid. He refused, pointed a gun at her and her relative and told her she couldn’t do anything about it because she didn’t have “papers.”

This is just one of the stories in a report released this week by the Southern Poverty Law Center “Alabama’s Shame: HB56 and the War on Immigrants.” The report came from calls to a hotline set up by SPLC and other groups last year. By late January 2012, more than 5,100 calls had poured in.

Last June, Gov. Robert Bentley signed Alabama’s anti-immigrant law, the Beason-Hammon Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act, better known as HB56. The law attacks key aspects of immigrants' lives and affects the lives of people working hard to overcome poverty. Critics says it unleashes vigilantism, racial profiling and bigotry.

Since June, thousands of undocumented workers have left the state, according to a new University of Alabama study.

It's unknown exactly how many, but using 2010 data as a basis, early estimates project between 40,000 to 80,000 undocumented workers earning $15,000 to $30,000 a year have left the state as a result of HB 56. That's according to a report from the university’s Center for Business and Economic Research, “A Cost-Benefit Analysis of the New Alabama Immigration Law” authored by Samuel Addy.

[Hoyt]

1. The story of the immigrant worker is something to get sick about. Thanks SPLC for your efforts.

Don't know if there is much that can be done in states like Alabama and Georgia that have these laws because there are too many people who think like Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News bigots.

[marmar]

2. k/r

nt

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. another consequence of the law is

Foreign nationals have been stopped by our local dunderhead police who demanded their citizenship papers.
One incident was a German who was attached to the very highly publicized ThyssenKrupp
steel plant in our area.
He was arrested after the stop for not having the papers ...BIG PR stink ensued.

Now I read that several dozen Chinese businessmen are due in our town for a long planned business development conference of several days.
This should be interesting.

[xchrom]

4. i remember the thyssen-krupp incident -- let us know if anything happens w/ the chinese visitors. nt