Let me make it clear I believe Arizona and Alabama can pass and enforce almost any anti-immigration law that their citizens want. And I said so in Nine States & The Liberty ViewsLetter Backs Arizona on Immigration I think Arizona’s SB 1070 law could have provided Arizona and most other States an important lesson in Cause and Effect, leading to more workable Immigration Laws as I stated in Immigration Cause & Effect May be Rearing its Head. That lesson was short-circuited by the State Supreme Court that nullified its most egregious sections. However, no State law should empower authorities to abuse violators of that law. And it should not create a culture of corruption, that turns its head when citizens of a certain color or language are swept up in zeal to rid the State of illegals.

States Have a Right to be Wrong But, Not Criminal

In a recent article entitled, U.S. Finds Pervasive Bias against Latinos by Arizona Sheriff, lovingly called Sheriff Joe, the poster boy of anti-immigration get a deserving slap on the wrist. In a strongly worded critique of the country’s best-known sheriff, the Justice Department on Thursday accused Sheriff Joe Arpaio of engaging in “unconstitutional policing” by unfairly targeting Latinos for detention and arrest and retaliating against those who complain. That is how bigotry works. You use your power and authority to arrest and detain the TARGET, then you harass anyone who complains.

After an investigation that lasted more than three years, the civil rights division of the Justice Department said in a 22-page report that the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office Read More

By David Edwards
Monday, December 12, 2011

Over the weekend, struggling Republican presidential candidate Gary Johnson reminded MSNBC viewers that GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich had once to called to punish some drug offenders with death.

“Newt Gingrich, in 1997, proposed the death penalty for marijuana — for possession of marijuana above a certain quantity of marijuana,” Johnson explained. “And yet, he is among 100 million Americans who’ve smoked marijuana.”

The US and especially Alabama is about to get a real-life lesson on “Cause and Effect”. That is if the courts stay out of Alabama’s H.B. 56, passed on June 9, 2011. Alabama can now boast of having the nation’s harshest anti-immigrant law. The law makes it a crime to be without status.  The Court intervened in Arizona, removing the real teeth from SB 1070 and averting the real economic disaster. Alabama might not be as lucky, the dominos are already falling.

It is real easy to say, as the Center for American Progress has that, “$40 million—A conservative estimate of how much Alabama’s economy would contract if only 10,000 (8%) of the  undocumented immigrants stopped working in the state.”  It is a lot harder to say, how does Chad Smith of Smith Farms, replace the $300,000 lost because of labor shortages in the wake of H.B. 56. Harder still what happens to the supervisory staff (likely citizens) that lose their jobs? What happens the piano teacher that loses 25% of her students because of lost profits and lost jobs. Will she be able to make her mortgage payment? How wide and how deep does the loss of $300,000 profit go? Let me say. it touches everyone.