Mexicans protest against Alabama’s new anti-illegal immigration law
Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Outrage continued Friday in Mexico a day after Alabama’s governor signed the toughest law in the United States against illegal immigration.
The law would impose criminal penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants, give local police broad powers to arrest anyone they suspect of entering the United States without a visa and compel public schools to check the immigration status of students.
Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement expressing “deep concern” over Alabama law HB 56. The statement said the law could violate the civil rights of Mexicans.
“Besides criminalizing the phenomenon of migration,” the law’s provisions “open the door for the improper application of the migration law by local police,” the Mexican Foreign Affairs Ministry statement says.
Other provisions of HB 56 make it illegal to knowingly rent housing to illegal immigrants and prohibit businesses from claiming tax deductions on wages they pay employees who lack work permits.
“This is a jobs-creation bill for Americans,” said Alabama Rep. Micky Hammon, a Republican who was sponsored the bill.
Supporters of the anti-immigrant laws won a major victory last week when the Supreme Court ruled that a 2007 Arizona law that imposes penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants is constitutional.
However, the Mexican Foreign Affairs Ministry said HB 56 “does not recognize the important contributions of immigrants to Alabama society and this country, nor is it consistent with the vision of shared responsibility, mutual respect and trust under which the governments of Mexico and the United States have agreed to conduct their bilateral relations.”
An estimated 11 million illegal immigrants live in the United States, according to the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonprofit advocacy organization. About 120,000 of them live in Alabama.
Mexican government officials said they would try to keep their citizens informed about the law and offer them legal assistance, regardless of their immigration status.
The Mexican government’s hint of legal action is part of a growing activism among Latin American countries against states that crack down on illegal immigration.
On Tuesday, 14 Latin American countries joined in an amicus, or friend-of-the-court, brief to oppose a Utah law against illegal immigration. They filed the brief in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City.
Like the Alabama law and others in Arizona and Georgia, the Utah law empowers local police to arrest illegal immigrants and withholds public services from them.
The Utah law was enacted March 15 but a federal court issued a stay May 10 to block enforcement of it until there is a final ruling on its constitutionality.
The amicus brief from the Latin American countries argued the law was unconstitutional because it could lead to racial profiling of Hispanics.
The brief was filed on behalf of the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay.
Opposition to the state anti-immigrant laws also is rising among liberal activists in the United States.
Sixteen states have failed to approve anti-immigrant laws.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group, said the Alabama law was unconstitutional and lured the state “into a costly trap.”
In addition to high legal costs to defend the law, the state would lose “millions more in lost tax revenue from Alabama businesses that will bear the brunt of boycotts of Alabama goods and services and lost sales to documented and undocumented immigrants who flee the state rather than deal with racial profiling and the state’s anti-immigrant climate.”
The Obama administration has joined critics of the anti-immigrant laws by saying they overstep state authority. Immigration enforcement is strictly a federal government authority, according to Justice Department court documents filed to oppose Arizona’s law.
The United Farm Workers labor union is warning that prices of fruits and vegetables are likely to rise if low-wage workers who typically are illegal immigrants are not available for the harvests.
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