AL reconsiders immigration law after rich white man arrested

[Silver Jedi]

From Bloomberg:

Alabama Considers Revision of Immigration Law Ensnaring Mercedes Executive
By Elizabeth Dwoskin - Nov 23, 2011

On Nov. 16, a European businessman paying a visit to his company’s manufacturing plant near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was pulled over for driving a rental car without a tag.

The police officer asked the man for his license, but the only paperwork he had with him was a German I.D. card. Anywhere else in the nation, the cop might have issued the man a citation. Not in Alabama, where a strict new law requires police to look into the immigration status of people detained for routine traffic violations. Because the man couldn’t prove he had the right to be in the U.S., he was arrested and hauled off to the police station.

The businessman turned out to be an executive with Mercedes-Benz, one of Alabama’s prized manufacturers, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Nov. 28 issue. The Mercedes plant employs 3,400 people, and the company’s much-heralded decision in 1993 to build cars in the state encouraged Hyundai, Honda, and Toyota to follow.

Mercedes has downplayed the incident, calling it “unfortunate” and refusing further comment. Yet word of the arrest spread quickly through the state, amplifying a growing sentiment among many politicians, business owners and citizens that the immigration law, intended to drive off undocumented workers and free up jobs for the unemployed, is too strict and damages Alabama’s reputation as a place to do business.

‘Really Embarrassed’
“I was really embarrassed and overwhelmed,” says state Senator Gerald Dial. “Mercedes has done more to change the image of Alabama than just about anything else. We don’t want to upset those people.”

Dial, who voted for the law in June along with every other Republican legislator but one, started having second thoughts soon after the statute went into effect in late September. Fearful of being deported, immigrants fled the state by the thousands, resulting in labor shortages.

The law has also caused confusion for U.S. business owners and workers, who worry that they’ll inadvertently run afoul of a provision making it a felony for illegal immigrants to engage in any kind of “business transaction” with the state.

“It’s being read so broadly that it’s creating an unnecessary burden that nobody ever intended,” says state Senator Bryan Taylor, a freshman Republican.

In the past week, at least six Alabama Republicans have come forward to say the legislature should rewrite portions of HB56, as the immigration statute is known.

Deluged With Questions
“I’ve learned in life that if you make a mistake, you should be man enough to admit it,” says Dial. Alabama’s Republican governor, Robert Bentley, perhaps the law’s most vocal supporter, told business leaders in early November that it is “very complicated” and should be simplified.

Bentley declined to be interviewed.

State officials have been deluged with questions from business owners demanding to know whether the ban on transactions with illegal aliens means they must check for proof of citizenship every time a sale is made or deal is struck (it doesn’t). Employers complain they don’t have enough workers to pick crops and fill positions at food-processing plants, since many legal immigrants left the state along with people without papers. Some politicians say civil-rights groups are exaggerating the law’s reach to sow fear. Taylor, who lived in Honduras and speaks fluent Spanish, recently met with a group of Hispanic immigrants at a church to assure them that they are wanted in the state.

No Repeal
It’s not yet clear what a new and improved version of the law might look like. None of the politicians who expressed doubts about HB56 wants it repealed. All want to preserve its central provisions: penalties for hiring illegal immigrants and the mandate for police to question the legal status of traffic violators. The politicians say their aim is to calm concerns about the law without watering it down.

Alabama officials hope changing the law will also allow them to change the subject. The state has worked hard to convince foreign companies that Alabama is a welcoming place to outsiders.

“Thirty years after the events surrounding civil rights in Alabama we successfully recruited Mercedes-Benz, and the biggest hurdle we had to overcome,” said former Governor Jim Folsom Jr., a Democrat, “was the perception of racism here.”

‘Old Wounds’
That’s still a touchy subject in Alabama, and recent stories about immigrants abandoning the state and cops cracking down on foreigners bring unflattering comparisons to the past.

“One of my concerns is that this bill opened up some old wounds that it didn’t need to open,” says Dial. “All this stuff from the ‘50s and ‘60s -- Alabama is not like that anymore. The unfortunate thing about this whole bill is that it’s painted us what we’re not.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Elizabeth Dwoskin in Washington at edwoskin@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kristen Hinman at khinman@bloomberg.net

®2011 BLOOMBERG L.P. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No one in 'bama wants to repeal the law, mind you, just find a way of changing so that only poor brown people are caught.

[DudeGuyMan]

You can practically hear their brains popping as they strain to think of a way to say "WE MEANT MEXICANS" that'll fly in 2011.

[TheFeniX]

Fearful of being deported, immigrants fled the state by the thousands, resulting in labor shortages.

B-b-b-but, we don't need the illegals because they're just taking jobs from real Americans! My conservative buddy and I argued about this non-stop. I stopped arguing the "right vs wrong" of racist legislation and just stuck with how stupid it was to attack the supply side of the situation, rather than going after companies that actually hire illegals. He still contends that all fault lies with the illegals because they force businesses to hire them at their lower wages, not that companies just exploit the cheap labor.

Even if you think this legislation is in the best interest of the nation, illegals still need to be slowly phased out by offering companies incentives to hire only legal citizens or spank them fierce for each illegal they have on payroll. Just dumping a large portion of their workforce into other states isn't going to get anything done without a large amount of economic damage. You also avoid being construed as a racist for going this route, not that Alabama really has an issue with that considering their very small Hispanic minority (when compared to states like Texas).

But really, it goes back to no one wanting to punish the moral business owners for letting the illegals take advantage of them.....

“All this stuff from the ‘50s and ‘60s -- Alabama is not like that anymore. The unfortunate thing about this whole bill is that it’s painted us what we’re not.”

Haha. Oh wow. This man's heart may be in the right place, but he doesn't understand his constituency. The situation probably won't start even moving the direction he wants until the baby-boomers start dying off.

[Broomstick]

Go ahead, Alabama, fuck yourselves over. Maybe Mercedes will move their plant to my state and employ my neighbors.