Going After the Easy Target
Freshman Representative Micky Hammon (R-Decatur) is all fired up to go after the illegal immigrants in Alabama. He’s introduced five bills that will allow even more harassment of Hispanics here in Alabama, and he’s buddied up to Jeff Sessions in an attempt to get federal money to train local police to enforce immigration law.
The bills would allow authorities to impound vehicles and seize personal property of immigrants who are verified to be here illegally - similar to policies for drug dealers. Other bills would deny non-emergency services to illegal immigrants and make it a felony for an illegal immigrant to attempt to vote.
Strangely enough, none of the punishments he proposes are aimed at the employers who hire illegals and benefit from paying them low wages. Oh, no, we can’t do that. After all, they have money, and they can make life difficult for legislators who target them. I guess real immigration reform is just too hard. As my friend Helen Rivas says:
“Denial of services is not going to deter them [immigrants] from coming,” she said. “We need solutions that work, such as national immigration reform to allow additional work visas.”
But, Helen, that’s way too reasonable. No one wants that. It’s so much more fun to bash those who can’t bash back.
March 24th, 2006 at 5:29 pm
Thank you!
Actually there are two employer-sanction bills in the hopper in Montgomery, but I suspect that they will not go anywhere [One already stalled, HB44]. We don’t have to bash, but we sure can contact our representatives in Montgomery and let them know that we don’t want bad legislation that further punishes already exploited people and won’t really do much to solve the immigration problem. Walls and massive deportations will not do the job and will cost a lot of money.
Comprehensive reform at the federal level is the only thing that will address the multiple aspects of immigration: Border security will become more manageable if there are enough visas to cover the jobs that actually need someone (not just someone exploitable to work at a lower wage than Americans will); paperwork will be speeded up (it’s over 10 years at present); children brought here at a young age who have played by all the rules will have a real opportunity (DREAM Act); people who are living here will be able to earn status–not jump in line ahead of others, but by paying a fine, learning English and jumping through other hoops. In ‘85 and ‘95 we ‘beefed up’ border security. It made things worse. Why are they pushing more of the same? Lets get real, let’s look at practical solutions that work.