alabama immigration law essay

alabama immigration law essay

The Impact of Alabama’s Immigration Law

1. Introduction

The teachers saw an effect of the law almost instantly. In June 2011, the high school teacher had 10 students stop showing up to class. She didn’t know whether they moved away or if the parents were too scared to send their children to school. The law wasn’t officially in schools, but she noticed that the Hispanic children adjusted to the law faster than their parents. At this time, many Hispanic parents were switching cars with other people to avoid driving and having their car taken away because they can’t have driver’s licenses anymore. They were also having to carpool because if you are pulled over, everyone in the car would be checked for immigration papers, and the penalty for driving an illegal immigrant is also harsh. This caused kids to have to quit sports and extracurricular activities, with many of them not showing up to school because it was their parents’ day to carpool.

I found that it is really difficult to write this paper because of the lack of resources online. Therefore, I decided to contact people who are currently working with immigrants in Alabama. I contacted a kindergarten teacher, a middle school teacher, and a high school teacher. I also contacted a social worker for a law office that currently has 20 cases from immigrants needing his help with the new immigration law.

The impact of Alabama’s immigration law Introduction It is a great pleasure for me to share my views and experiences of the impact of Alabama’s immigration law, HB 56, on immigrant families and children. This controversial law was signed in June 2011.

2. Overview of Alabama’s Immigration Law

The State of Alabama has been instrumental in enactment and regulations of immigrant and non-immigrants. Titles 31 and 40 of the Code of Alabama are two such examples. Title 31 deals with regulation of the registration, control, and identification of aliens and takes into account current US code on such laws. Title 40 deals with the creation of the Alabama Non-drivers identification card and/or a driver’s license. This being a primary form of state identification, the law includes a section requiring the verification of the legal presence of an applicant in the US. Such immigration issue has often been a hot topic in Alabama and has trickled down into state legislation in previous occasions. This time Alabama’s new immigration law goes a step further by creating an immigration enforcement section. This section of the law calls for the recruitment and training of state and local officers to implement and enforce immigration laws. This would be done by allowing the stop and questioning of any person of suspected status and the ability to make an arrest without warrant when probable cause exists.

This section of the report focuses on the passage and enactment of Alabama’s immigration law. Public Law HB-56 was signed by Governor Robert Bentley on June 9, 2011 and followed in similar fashion to Arizona’s SB 1070. The law was driven by negative sentiments towards the current state of illegal immigration and the laws put in place for regulation enforcement. According to the law, the purpose of the act is defined in three parts. First, to deter illegal aliens from coming to the state of Alabama. Second, to make it difficult for illegal aliens to live and work in Alabama. Finally, to facilitate the attrition of illegal aliens by creating laws which are unpopular and restrictive to encourage illegal aliens to deport themselves.

3. Effects on the Economy

A research based on the simulation of Alabama immigration policy in 2011-2012 showed that the law in the policy will decrease 70,000 immigrants and the GDP will decrease by about 2.3%, resulting in a loss of income of $10.8 billion and a government cost of about $93 million.

Self-deportation will reduce the number of labor force, leading to a decrease in productivity and economic growth. This situation will occur because illegal immigrant labor has become a complementary good for low-skilled U.S. workers and a substitute for U.S.-born workers with more skills. The unauthorized immigrants themselves are willing to work for low pay, which will compete with other employers. As a result, the rigidity in the work given by U.S. citizens will decrease because they will compete with lower wages. This will become a burden for the country itself, as the policy will restrict immigrants from any kind of work, therefore decreasing the income per capita of immigrants and citizens themselves.

The immigration law in Alabama that took place recently is a repressive immigration policy with the concept of self-deportation, where the policy aims to improve the effectiveness of enforcing immigration law, so that unauthorized immigrants will leave the country voluntarily. This method is done by giving strict rules to immigrants and their employers in the state. In general, the policy includes the prohibition of illegal immigrants from getting a job, giving sanctions to citizens who commit a crime if accompanied by an illegal immigrant, and even prohibiting education up to college. This policy law allows the arrest of someone who does not have the required identification and examines their immigration status if there is a reasonable suspicion. By doing this method, it certainly affects the pattern of behavior for immigrants to conform or indeed leave the state. But this will be very costly for the country itself.

Effect of immigration policy in Alabama was also expected to create economic effects on the state and the nation. Immigration is assumed to be closely linked with economic impacts. According to Borjas (2008), immigration affects allocated resources, patterns of production, employment, level and growth rate of productivity, and thus income per capita. This means that immigration will affect economic growth, therefore affecting the citizens’ welfare. In the case of Alabama, the immigration population before the policy was 120,000. This means the wages generated by immigration will return to their respective communities, creating an economic multiplying effect.

4. Social and Humanitarian Consequences

The law’s consequences on various public health access measures are negative. Firstly, the denial of business permits for companies intentionally or unintentionally hiring an illegal immigrant forces legal resident workers to bear the brunt of the punishment. Secondly, the law requiring public schools to ascertain the legal residency status of students hinders healthcare access as a large public health measure in Alabama is to provide children’s healthcare through public schools. Essentially, as parents begin to fear detainment or deportation when encountering situations requiring them to divulge their legal residency status, they will be less likely to enroll their children in school where their immigration status may be inquired about. This not only hinders the children’s education and future prospects but it also denies them quality healthcare. Furthermore, the law requiring all persons to prove their legal residency status before receiving state benefits prevents illegal immigrants and in some cases, legal residents, from accessing services. The denial of access is due to the fear of detainment or deportation upon being found out. This measure exacerbates disease prevalence and reluctance to seek preventative care because it limits health access to only emergency medical services. Emergency care and public health programs are already burdened by illegal immigrants seeking medical care because most are not in a financial position to afford private healthcare. As a result, financial and resource stress will be translated into decreased quality of care and increased waiting times for emergency services for both the immigrants and legal residents.

5. Conclusion

Alabama’s attempt to drive out immigrants, both unauthorized and authorized, is short-sighted. We have seen the top-down approach of enforcement without offering a true solution to the immigration issue. The law tries to create a hostile environment for immigrants and drive them out of the state no matter the cost. Civil rights and economic reasons aside, the bad business law that is Alabama’s immigration will likely have large economic costs and yield few benefits. If Alabama or the federal government truly want to alleviate the problem of illegal immigration, they must change their policy approach. As we have seen with the failure of the last comprehensive immigration reform, immigration policy does not just revolve around enforcement. There are many sectors of immigration policy that need to be addressed, and it takes more than one law to fix the system. Alabama must join the other 50 states and leave immigration policy to the federal government.

Foreign-born workers who had lived in Alabama before and after the implementation of HB 56 were not affected. These people were already in the country, and they were not going anywhere. The major issue is that the Mexican immigrants who were affected by this law have the option of obtaining a visa and moving to another state where they feel more welcome. If Alabama’s economy is to rebound, then the state will need an immigrant population to replace the workers who left and fill future job openings. The same provisions that are designed to make the state less hospitable to undocumented immigrants also deter legal immigrants and U.S. citizens from families of mixed status from settling in Alabama. This may trigger a significant demographic shift and have long-lasting effects. Due to fear of the anti-immigrant climate and widespread family separation, many immigrants and their U.S. citizen family members may pull up roots and leave Alabama in the near future.