“No Juan Crow!”: Documenting the Immigration Debate in Alabama Today

Abstract

On June 1, 2011, the Alabama state legislature passed the Beason-Hammon Alabama Taxpayers and Citizens Protection Act, or HB 56. Newly elected Republican governor Robert J. Bentley signed the on June 9. HB 56 is the keystone piece in the Handshake with the agenda promoted by the new Republican majority in the Alabama statehouse. (1) The gained quick notoriety for outdoing Arizona, Georgia, and all other states in the restrictions and penalties levied on unauthorized immigrants, as well as on the citizens, community members, employers, and health and law enforcement agencies that assist, employ, or regulate them. HB 56 required public schools to verify the citizenship status of enrolling students, mandated police officers to check the immigration status of someone stopped for even a minor offense, if reasonable suspicion existed about such status, and prohibited citizens from knowingly assisting someone who was in the state and country without proper documentation. Moreover, the imposed severe financial penalties on employers who failed to verify the immigration status of workers. (2) The Department of Justice, community, civil, and religious groups, as well as the Alabama ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center, sued to prevent the bill's implementation on September 1. After temporarily enjoining it, federal district judge Sharon Blackburn ruled on September 28 to uphold several provisions of the while blocking others. Currently, employers must still participate in the e-verify system, public schools must check newly enrolling students' citizenship status, and law enforcement officers may, under certain conditions, check someone's papers. (3) Proponents of HB 56 often justify their support by pointing to the lack of adequate federal enforcement of immigration laws. The Republican sponsors, however, also describe it as a bill that will protect taxpayers and boost employment for native-born citizens. This stance puts them at odds with the industrial, retail, and agricultural employers in the state who rely on low-wage immigrant labor, both legal and undocumented. (4) Amid an increasingly divisive national political climate, the current economic recession created the context for the current phase of the immigration debate in Alabama and the South. More than a decade of successful industrial recruitment premised on enormous public subsidies and tax waivers had diversified Alabama's economy by the twenty-first century. International automotive manufacturers, including Hyundai, Kia, and Mercedes-Benz, arrived, along with expanding lower-waged industries in poultry processing, produce farming, and construction. Beginning in the 1990s, Latino workers poured into the state to take newly created jobs in the low-wage, labor intensive sector of the state's economy, work for which they were often recruited. In September 2008, even as the rest of the country struggled with the recession, the unemployment rate in Alabama stood at 5.4 percent, a near all-time low. One year later, however, as the recession finally settled into Alabama, that rate had more than doubled to 10.7 percent. Worse still, massive tornadoes struck the state in 2011, killing almost three hundred, decimating numerous communities, and damaging the poultry industry. In an economy transitioning from labor-scarcity to labor-surplus, unauthorized immigration attracts attention from opportunistic politicians and worried non-Hispanic residents, the latter concerned not only with the state's economic forecast but, at least for some, with the impact of the ethnic diversity that such immigrants represent. (5) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Alabama's Republican officials see no controversy in HB 56, but many other Alabamans are far more ambivalent. In March 2011, numerous community groups and individual citizens testified against the bill. The Birmingham City Council unanimously passed a resolution expressing its opposition to the and calling for its repeal, and a similar resolution is pending before the Auburn City Council. …