Be sure to click on that image to see the larger size. In case you can't, or it doesn't load, here's what it says:
Attention all water customers: To be compliant with new laws concerning immigration you must have an Alabama Driver's License or an Alabama picture ID card on file at this office before September 29, 2011 or you may lose water service. Thank you.
In other words, prove you belong here or get the hell out, because even if you pay your bill in U.S. dollars every month in person it won't matter. If you're not here legally, you don't deserve even the most basic necessities, like running water.
The reason this utility has posted their sign is because of this provision, which was upheld by the court (from nilc.org brochure):
A part that requires people to prove their immigration status when they enter into a “business transaction” with the state of Alabama and makes it a felony for an unauthorized immigrant to enter into a “business transaction” with the state of Alabama. Business transactions include applying for a license plate, applying for or renewing a driver’s license, and applying for a business license.
A part that invalidates all contracts between an unauthorized immigrant and another person, except for one night’s lodging, food purchases, and medical services. Contracts could include child support, rental, loan, and other agreements
Yes. Other agreements like electricity, gas and water. A roof over one's head. Those kinds of agreements.
People warned Alabamans that if they went ahead and passed their own version of anti-immigrant legislation, they would suffer similar economic consequences. But they did it anyway. Now, the state's anti-immigration laws -- which involve using schoolchildren as proxies for enforcement -- are easily the most draconian and vicious anti-immigrant laws in the country.
And guess what? They are now paying the price. Not only are the schools suddenly emptying of Latino children, more tellingly, the state's tomato farmers are in crisis because there's no one available to harvest the fruit. And the authors of the legislation are just telling them, "tough luck":
STEELE, Ala. -- A sponsor of Alabama's tough new immigration law told desperate tomato farmers Monday that he won't change the law, even though they told him that their crops are rotting in the field and they are at risk of losing their farms.
Republican state Sen. Scott Beason of Gardendale met with about 50 growers, workers, brokers and business people Monday at a tomato packing shed on Chandler Mountain in northeast Alabama. They complained that the new law, which went into effect Thursday, scared off many of their migrant workers at harvest time.
"The tomatoes are rotting on the vine, and there is very little we can do," said Chad Smith, who farms tomatoes with his uncle, father and brother.
"My position is to stay with the law as it is," Beason told the farmers.
Beason helped write and sponsor a law the Legislature enacted in June to crack down on illegal immigration. It copied portions of laws enacted in Arizona, Georgia and other states, including allowing police to detain people indefinitely if they don't have legal status. Beason and other proponents said the law would help free up jobs for Alabamians in a state suffering through 9.9 percent unemployment.
The farmers said the some of their workers may have been in the country illegally, but they were the only ones willing to do the work.
"This law will be in effect this entire growing season," Beason told the farmers. He said he would talk to his congressman about the need for a federal temporary worker program that would help the farmers next season.
"There won't be no next growing season," farmer Wayne Smith said.
"Does America know how much this is going to affect them? They'll find out when they go to the grocery store. Prices on produce will double," he said.
Good question. No doubt these good Republicans will find a way to blame it on President Obama.
This is where the rubber hits the road when it comes to conservative ideology, just as it does when Randian fantasy meets reality -- which is to say, it quickly comes apart. The right-wing nativists want to pretend that undocumented immigrants are taking away jobs that Americans want to be doing, but the reality is they are largely filling unskilled-labor positions that involve back-breaking work -- the kind of work Americans simply are incapable of performing nowadays, regardless of pay.
Another report on the crisis in Alabama delves this point:
CHANDLER MOUNTAIN, Ala.-- Chad Smith's family grows tomatoes on a mountaintop in rural northeast Alabama, and ships them from to Canada.
The summer's crop has been good. But Smith sees thousands of overripe tomatoes rotting alongside his vines, and sees only trouble.
"As of right now, we could lose probably fifty percent of what we have left for the year," Smith said.
That, said Smith, is because of a stiff shortage of field hands, traditionally Hispanic migrant workers. And Smith doesn't sugar-coat their status.
"Farmers across the whole country and every state (rely) on illegal immigration workers to do this kind of work," Smith said, "because that's the only people that's willing to do it."
Like Georgia, this year Alabama enacted a tough new immigration law designed to squeeze out people working and living illegally in the US. By the time Smith's crop started ripening in July, he says most of his usual workers had disappeared.
Chad Smith says he's tried local workers.
"It ain't about the money, it's about the work physically. If a person can't do the work, they can't do it no matter how much you pay them," Smith said.
"As of next year, if nothing changes, there won't be a tomato grown here."
I took part in a small-group discussion at Netroots Nation this morning with Rep. Luis Gutierrez organized by the fine folks at America's Voice, and afterward I managed to squeeze in a brief interview kind of summing up the discussion.
GUTIERREZ: That's what he doesn't understand, I think, is that people just won't show up. And you know what? There's nothing more, I believe, that the Republicans want, than to see us just kind of sit on our hands. 'Cause guess what -- they're voting. They're not staying home. You can say in the polls they're 10 points behind, but they're still going to show up the next day. Our folks? We need to be fed.
C&L: Well, if you're being taken for granted ...
GUTIERREZ: And we have been. And unfortunately, we have an administration who made us a promise about bringing about comprehensive immigration reform. Now, are there challenges this president -- are there challenges the president of the United States could have been defeated on? Yeah. But you see, what they want is someone who goes down fighting.
I would say that the congressman is talking about a lot of progressives from across a wide spectrum.
After years of dogged organizing by local DREAM Act networks and CASA de Maryland-- and thousands of actions from Change.org members -- Maryland has finally passed an historic in-state tuition bill that was nine years in the making.
Still, the last few hours of the MD DREAM Act battle were as unpredictable and as they were tense. On Friday, the Maryland House joined the Senate in voting to approve the "Maryland DREAM Act" by a margin of 74-66. The measure was poised to clear a procedural vote in the Maryland Senate on Monday afternoon, when the proceedings took an unexpected U-turn. Maryland State Senators did not approve the amendments directly, but rather sent the bill back to a conference committee and on to face yet another vote in both chambers -- before the midnight deadline!
Amidst growing uncertainty, DREAM Act advocates at CASA de Maryland quickly called on the Change.org community to send messages to their Maryland representatives -- and hundreds of individuals took action immediately. Sparing no drama, the MD Senate approved the measure just a few short hours before the midnight deadline, 27 to 19, and the final House vote was a closer 74-65, according to initial tallies. As the last of the votes came in and the verdict became clear, the undocumented youth and community leaders who had gathered to watch the vote burst into cheers of joy. They hurried over to thank the delegates.
Delegate Patrick L. McDonough, a Baltimore County Republican who is helping lead the drive, estimated Tuesday that organizers are “very close” to reaching the May 31 goal and expect to exceed the requirement in the next two weeks.
“I think they’re celebrating too soon,” he said of the bill’s supporters. “They shouldn’t be popping the champagne corks just yet.”
But the opponents' claims simply don't hold water. In order to argue against enacting this measure -- which really is a basic matter of common sense, decency and fair play -- they have to basically lie and make stuff up, as Ben Ferguson did on Fox News the other morning in attacking it, with Simon Rosenberg adroitly defending it.
The measure is a tough, fair and sensible way to help make college affordable for students who grew up in Maryland but, often through no fault of their own, lack legal status in this country. Beyond helping them, it would help Maryland by providing credentials to talented young people who would be prepared to contribute to the state’s economy.
But the legislation, signed into law this week by Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley, is under attack by anti-illegal-immigrant activists. Brandishing slogans about respect for the law and the misuse of public funds, the activists want to make life so impossible for undocumented immigrants that they will somehow be forced to go “home.” Never mind that Maryland is the only home that many of these students, thoroughly American in speech, habits, culture and allegiance, know or remember.
The activists have launched a petition drive to block the law from taking effect this year by collecting about 58,000 valid signatures to put it on the ballot in 2012.
President Obama headed down to El Paso, Texas to give a speech on comprehensive immigration reform. I'm certain he has absolutely no expectation of having this Congress pass anything close to what he has in mind, but it signals the issue as a 2012 campaign issue to counter Republicans' constant fearmongering and promise to make Shari'a law an issue in their 2012 campaigns.
On steps this administration has taken to secure the borders, in spite of the Republican whining that they're insecure:
They wanted a fence. Well, that fence is now basically complete.
And we’ve gone further. We tripled the number of intelligence analysts working the border. I’ve deployed unmanned aerial vehicles to patrol the skies from Texas to California. We’ve forged a partnership with Mexico to fight the transnational criminal organizations that have affected both of our countries. And for the first time we are screening 100 percent of southbound rail shipments – to seize guns and money going south even as we go after drugs coming north.
So, we have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement. But even though we’ve answered these concerns, I suspect there will be those who will try to move the goal posts one more time. They’ll say we need to triple the border patrol. Or quadruple the border patrol. They’ll say we need a higher fence to support reform.
Maybe they’ll say we need a moat. Or alligators in the moat.
They’ll never be satisfied. And I understand that. That’s politics.
Reminding that in the past, Republicans were for immigration reform before they were against it:
There are Democrats and Republicans, including former-Republican Senator Mel Martinez and former-Bush administration Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff; leaders like Mayor Michael Bloomberg; evangelical ministers like Leith Anderson and Bill Hybels; police chiefs from across the nation; educators and advocates; labor unions and chambers of commerce; small business owners and Fortune 500 CEOs. One CEO had this to say about reform. “American ingenuity is a product of the openness and diversity of this society… Immigrants have made America great as the world leader in business, science, higher education and innovation.” That’s Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, and an immigrant himself. I don’t know if you’re familiar with his views, but let’s just say he doesn’t have an Obama bumper sticker on his car.
Moving on to the framework for comprehensive immigration reform (Full document, PDF):
Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-CA) is one of those low-profile do-nothing Representatives in the House that manages to get re-elected over and over again because he represents a district which is changing, but still has its fair share of bigots and tea party types. I know. I live there, and he represents me.
An adopted son of Simi Valley, Gallegly panders to the Tea Party while pulling in major money from builders, insurers, and defense contractors in California.
He is also extreme -- highly extreme -- on the topic of immigration, despite the fact that his district has a growing Latino population and relies on that population to keep the economy moving.
He is also now the gatekeeper for any immigration legislation we might see coming from the House of Representatives. As chair of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, he is taking a hard-line approach to immigration reform.
Yes, Gallegly wants to force a mass exodus of undocumented immigrants from the United States -- said as much at his first hearing:
"Good morning," Gallegly begins. "I have long said that the way to solve the problem of illegal immigration is fairly simple.
"First, we must enforce our laws and secure the border. Second, we must remove the magnets that encourage illegal immigration. And finally, we must remove the benefits that make it easier for them to stay."
In other words, if it’s not easy for “them” to stay, they leave.
In a July 2009 op-ed for The Hill, Gallegly argued for the passage of his animal-crush bill, noting that such snuff films are somehow connected to illegal immigration and crime: "[G]ang activity, illegal gambling, drug trafficking, illegal immigration and acts of human violence all go hand in hand with animal cruelty." (The piece had been posted on Gallegly's official congressional website, but it has since been taken down.)
In the op-ed, Gallegly echoed the conservative criticism that illegal immigrants bring with them a bigger world of crime, and he points out that an Arizona crime syndicate that "preyed on illegal immigrants, subjecting them to kidnappings, home invasions, and armed robberies" is also being accused of "raising roosters for illegal cockfighting matches." While linking illegal immigration and animal-crush videos, Gallegly also maintained that animal abusers tend to become serial killers. The Son of Sam, the Boston Strangler, and the Unabomber all had a history of torturing animals, he writes, and Jeffrey Dahmer "progressed from cutting up animals to cutting up humans and eating them." Gallegly was lumping together illegal immigration, animal murders, and the worst serial killers of modern times.
Gallegly has long been a leader of the movement to end birthright citizenship, and his idea of immigration reform is mass deportation. Despite the fact that 40% of his district is Latino, Gallegly really only represents Simi Valley, a bedroom community comprised of mostly white people fleeing the San Fernando Valley in search of a place with more people "like them".
If you're reading this and think that Republicans care about the economy, think again. When it comes to immigration, they're quite willing to blast open the economy and drive states into bankruptcy -- California in particular -- by deporting people who contribute billions to the economy on a state and national level.
Here's what he wants to do after shipping people out of the state, whether they're here legally or not (he's also targeting H1B visas, by the way). First ship them out, then make E-Verify mandatory.
Gallegly is fearmongering and playing to the xenophobes who fear anyone who looks, speaks, acts or thinks differently from them. Make no mistake -- he's as bad as the Steve Kings and LaMar Smiths out there...but he flies under the radar on purpose, while intentionally trying to stir division between Latinos and blacks, native Americans, and others.
Watch out for him...I'll be keeping an eye out, too.
I guess this is how Republicans do the Latino-outreach thing: Demonize Latino children, threaten to take away their birthright citizenship, and blatantly lie about the numbers of "anchor babies" being born by mothers coming here specifically to have citizen children.
VITTER: It's a very real problem. About 200,000 women come into this country annually from other countries legally, with a tourist visa, something like that, to give birth in this country so that child can automatically become a U.S. citizen. 200,000 a year!
I'm guessing that Vitter's source for this number is either somewhere up his own nether regions, or those of hate groups such as FAIR and CIS that pump out fake statistics like this for eager Latino-bashers like Vitter and his three Senate colleagues to regurgitate into policy.
Of the 4.2 million live births in the United States in 2006, the most recent data gathered by the National Center for Health Statistics, only 7,670 were children born to mothers who said they do not live here.
Some of those mothers could be "baby tourists," experts say, but many could be foreign college students, diplomatic staff, or vacationers. The government does not track the reasons non-resident mothers are in the United States at the time of the birth or their citizenship.
Indeed, as the story notes, the "anchor baby" problem is a statistical pimple:
"There's no evidence that birth tourism is a widespread problem," said Michele Waslin, a senior policy analyst with the Immigration Policy Center. "There are ways to dealing with that issue without such sweeping changes. This is like using a sledgehammer, not a scalpel."
[T]his is a sick joke. Surveys of undocumented workers have made indelibly clear that they don't come here to have "anchor babies," or to get our free health care, or any of the other fantasies harbored by nativists: they come here for jobs.
Moreover, there's no serious benefit to be had from having your child be born a citizen -- because under American law, you can be deported anyway, and in fact thousands of parents of American birthright-citizen children are deported every year: 100,000 of them over 10 years, to be precise.
The Senate move was a victory for the Arizona business lobby, which on many issues is more moderate than state lawmakers. And it was a rebuke for the State Senate president, Russell Pearce, a Republican and the driving force behind tough immigration measures, including the law passed last April requiring police to question the status of anyone they stop if they have a “reasonable suspicion” that the person might be an illegal immigrant.
Opponents of the five bills said that the state’s image had been hit hard, and that it did not make sense to pass new measures while the state had already put itself so far out in front of other states and the federal government on the issue — at a cost to tourism and other industries.
They said that previous immigration bills were still being reviewed by the courts, and that it was not smart to pass new legislation that plainly conflicted with the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
“I don’t believe that anyone, including myself, foresaw the national and international reaction” to April’s bill, said Glenn Hamer, chief executive of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who said estimates of lost tourism business ranged from $15 million to $150 million. “Now we have that experience under our belts. We know these measures can cause economic damage; it’s just a matter of degree.”
The tourism and image-related business losses were only the tip of the iceberg, though, when it comes to the damage inflicted on the state by SB1070 and its related anti-immigration measures. As we've explained previously, simply deporting and/or driving out all the state's undocumented immigrants would have disastrous economic consequences on a broad basis for the state -- some of which are already being felt.
The economic analysis in this report shows the S.B. 1070 approach would have devastating economic consequences if its goals were accomplished. When undocumented workers are taken out of the economy, the jobs they support through their labor, consumption, and tax payments disappear as well. Particularly during a time of profound economic uncertainty, the type of economic dislocation envisioned by S.B. 1070-type policies runs directly counter to the interests of our nation as we continue to struggle to distance ourselves from the ravages of the Great Recession.
Conversely, our analysis shows that legalizing undocumented immigrants in Arizona would yield a significant positive economic impact. Based on the historical results of the last legalization program under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, our analysis shows a similar program would increase wages not only for immigrants but also for their native-born co-workers. This would generate more tax revenue and more consumer and business spending, supporting additional jobs throughout the economy.
Public debate over the wisdom of laws such as S.B. 1070 is heated but generally lacking in substance. The proponents of S.B. 1070 and related legislation now under debate in other cities and states claim to be acting in the best economic interests of native-born Americans, but as this report demonstrates, their claim is wholly unsubstantiated.
You could just about hear the heart attacks happening at Fox News -- home of Republican nativists' favorite rallying cry: 'We have to secure the border before we can have immigration reform!' -- the other morning last week when documentary filmmaker Roy Germano -- whose last movie, The Other Side of Immigration, is a must-see for anyone serious about the subject -- came on to discuss a little clip he made recently.
The clip, which he put up on YouTube, shows two American girls easily climbing over the border fence that Minutemen, authorities and right-wing talk-show blowhards all seem to believe will keep out illegal immigrants.
Obviously someone booked it at Fox because they thought it would demonstrate what a lousy job the Obama administration is doing on border security. But the clip itself actually made clear that the whole concept of using a fence to control immigration is a joke.
As Germano put it: "I thought it revealed that the fence is quite absurd, it's not doing the job it's supposed to do, it's a waste of money, and it also has a lot of unintended consequences."
And then he offered his thoughts on how to really make the borders secure -- and as he explained, the only way we're going to be able to do that is by having a rational system of immigration, instead of the outdated, xenophobic system we currently have in place. This, of course, is when the heart attacks started happening:
GERMANO: If we are really serious about our border security, I think it's in our interest to be monitoring and regulating the immigration flow that is inevitable. There is a multi-million-dollar -- hundreds of million-dollar -- industry out there of human smugglers that will try to smuggle people in. They will build tunnels under the fence, they will get people over the fence.
So we should be investing in an immigration system that actually gives people the opportunity to enter the country legally. The typical Mexican has almost no way of entering the U.S. legally. So we should be expanding the number of visas we offer so that employers can hire the workers they need to meet the labor demand in our country.
SCOTT: All right, y-you have just lit up our chat room, I'm sure, because there are lots of unemployed people in this country who would like to have jobs, and they say, 'Why are we letting people in where there's so much unemployment in America?'
GERMANO: But there are certain sectors of the economy where it's the old, you know, 'immigrants do jobs that Americans don't want to do.' I go to western New York state a lot and I visit family farms who have had ads in papers for 20 years and have never had a native-born speaker respond to that ad. And they depend on immigrant labor. But our H2A visa program, which is the farm worker visa program, only has less than 70,000 visas for 800,000 to 1.2 million jobs that need to be filled on our family farm.
We've discussed this point quite a bit too. The only problem is that Americans are not only in denial about the numbers of unskilled-labor jobs their economy produces, but the willingness and ability of native-born Americans to actually fill them.
Late yesterday evening, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced that the House will take up the American DREAM Act today -- Wednesday, December 8th. Here is a statement from Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“The news that the House of Representatives will hold a vote on the DREAM Act on Wednesday is historic. The DREAM Act is supported by educators, the military, small business, organized labor, and religious leaders from across the spectrum. This is the most significant pro-immigrant legislation this chamber will have taken up in a decade. The young people who would benefit from the DREAM Act are patriotic high-achievers who just want a chance to become full citizens of the only country they call home.
“We applaud House Democratic leaders for scheduling a vote on this common sense, bipartisan, and fiscally responsible measure, and call on every Democrat and every Republican in the House to do the right thing. Pass this legislation so that young people who came to this country as babies and grew up as Americans can stabilize their lives and achieve their dreams. Pass this legislation so that our country can continue to benefit from their hard work and talent as they enroll in our universities and enlist in the Armed Forces.
“Tomorrow will be the moment of truth: do you stand with these youth, their hard work, and their dreams, or do you stand for a darker America that would shun them and reject their vital contributions to this country?”
Advocates have been calling their members of Congress all week, but they are being encouraged to make one final round of calls tomorrow: House: 866-967-6018; Senate: 866-996-5161.
For more on the politics and policy, watch Frank on MSNBC this afternoon (above), and check out our DREAM Act resources below the jump.
