From Bad to Worse, Alabama’s H.B. 658

Civil and Human Rights News 05.23,12

By Avril Lighty

Show me your papers…

Racial profiling…

Mass exodus…

Children kept home from school…

Agricultural production crippled…

Just when you didn’t think it was possible for life to get any harderfor immigrants and Latinos in Alabama. Last week, after Gov. Robert Bentley signaled that he had serious concerns with H.B. 658 and wanted the legislature to correct it’s mistakes during a special legislative session.  He reversed his decision by pandering to the worst elements of the legislature and made the worst anti-immigrant law in America even worse by signing the bill into law.

Here’s how it makes things worse:

  • H.B. 658 was passed as a “reform” bill, but it fails to address the humanitarian, legal, and moral crisis in Alabama caused by HB56.
  • H.B. 658 allows school officials to ask schoolchildren to verify their immigration status and their parents’ status.
  • H.B. 658 continues to void contracts like leases and work agreements with undocumented immigrants.
  • H.B. 658 requires officers to check the immigration status of anyone arrested whom they suspect may be in the country illegally, and prolongs the limit of how long they can hold someone in jail from 24 hours to 48 hours.
  • H.B. 658 requires the Alabama Department of Homeland Security to post on its website the names and counties of every “unlawfully present person” who appears in court for any violation of state law.  This new “scarlet letter” provision could fuel vigilante violence against immigrants and their families.

Southern Poverty Law Center Legal Director Mary Bauer had this to say about the passage of H.B. 658:

“Today is an incredibly dark day for Alabama. Despite the fact that our state has suffered incredibly over the past year as a result of H.B. 56, the Alabama legislature and Governor Bentley have chosen to double down by passing and signing into law an even more extreme measure. While other states have abandoned similar measures and even recalled the sponsors of such measures, Alabama has once again made a name for itself as the worst of the worst.”

For more information, check out this fact sheet: http://www.acij.net/sites/default/files/HB658%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

And check out this video that illustrates just how horrible Bentley’s decision to sign these bills into law are: