Laying Down the (Immigration) Law: Alabama vs. Arizona

Jack Kurtz/ZUMApress.com

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Now that the Justice Department has battled the state of Alabama in court to block implementation of HB 56, the immigration bill that mirrors Arizona’s controversial SB 1070 (PDF), it seems like as good a time as any to look at how the two measures, well, measure up. Which Republican-proposed legislation out-hypes, out-muscles, and out-bans the other?

 

Restrictions: Passed in April 2010, SB 1070 was the first in a series of tough state laws that sought to deal with illegal immigration in the absence of federal immigration reform. The bill’s key components included making it a crime not to carry one’s immigration documents and giving police wide-reaching power to detain anyone suspected of being in the country illegally—both of which were blocked by federal Judge Susan Bolton just months after the legislation’s passage. (SB 1070 also made it a state crime to be in the United States illegally.)

HB 56 was signed into law by Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley on June 9. Like SB 1070, it requires police to try to determine a suspect’s immigration status during the course of a lawful “stop, detention, or arrest”—given a “reasonable suspicion” that the person is an immigrant. But that’s just the beginning: The legislation also bans undocumented immigrants from receiving state or local public benefits; keeps them from enrolling in public colleges; bars them from applying for or soliticing work; outlaws harboring and transporting undocumented immigrants; forbids renting them property or “knowingly” employing them within Alabama; calls for a citizenship check during voter registration; requires all state businesses to use the federal E-Verify system when hiring; and, if that wasn’t enough, asks officials at public K-12 schools to determine the immigration status of their students.

Edge: SB 1070 set the precedent, but HB 56 far surpassed it. 1-0, Alabama.
 

Number of People Affected: According to a February report from the Pew Hispanic Center (PDF), in 2010 there were an estimated 400,000 undocumented immigrants living in Arizona, which shares a 370-mile border with Mexico and is a key crossing site for would-be migrants. (That’s about 6 percent of the state’s population.) Alabama, on the other hand, was home to an estimated 120,000 undocumented immigrants—nearly 100,000 more than in 2000 but still just 2.5 percent of all state residents.

But these laws don’t just affect the undocumented—racial profiling is a real risk. Whereas 67 percent of Alabamians identified themselves as non-Hispanic whites in the 2010 census, 57.8 percent of Arizonans did so. Nearly 30 percent of Arizona census respondents self-identified as Hispanic or Latino.

Edge: The South has become a popular destination for Latin American immigrants in recent years, but this one ain’t close. We’re even at 1.
 

Legislative Sponsors: Where to begin with Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce? The first Arizona legislator to be recalled has a bit of a track record: In 2006, he called for the renewal of a ’50s-era deportation program known as Operation Wetback; last year, he tried to roll back birthright citizenship.

His Alabama counterpart, state Sen. Scott Beason, also has a way with words. Not only has he taken heat for saying that politicians should “empty the clip” on immigration issues, but the Birmingham NAACP has called for Beason’s resignation after some choice comments about African Americans (he called them “aborigines”) were played in a bingo corruption trial.

Edge: There’s crazy, and then there’s Russell Pearce. 2-1, Arizona.
 

Final Verdict: While HB 56 might have a longer list of restrictions—and while this isn’t the first United States v. Alabama—Arizona is Arizona. The intangibles—from “Los Suns” jerseys and border fence pledge drives to Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Tent City jail and southern Arizona’s secession plan—matter. Arizona is the real immigration wedge state.

 

UPDATE, 1:04 p.m. PST: Federal Judge Sharon L. Blackburn has decided that she needs more time to rule on HB 56 and has pushed back implementation of the bill until September 29. The legislation was originally set to go into effect on September 1. Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley had this to say in a statement: “I look forward to the Judge ruling on the merits. We have long needed a tough law against illegal immigration in this state, and we now have one. I will continue to fight at every turn to defend this law against any and all challenges.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate