Saturday, December 10, 2011

Alabama GOP Rethinks Immigration Law

Phillip Rawls of the Associated Press is reporting that Alabama Republicans, who pushed through the nation's toughest law against illegal immigrants, are having second thoughts amid a backlash from big business. The backlash is being fueled by the embarrassing traffic stops of two foreign employees tied to the state's prized Honda and Mercedes plants.

Luther Strange, the Republican attorney general, is calling for some of the strictest parts of the law to be repealed, namely the sections that make it a crime for an illegal immigrant to fail to carry registration documents and that require public schools to collect information on the immigration status of students. Both sections have been put on hold temporarily by a federal court.

Rawls writes:

Gov. Robert Bentley, who signed the law, said he's contacting foreign executives to tell them they and their companies are still welcome in Alabama.

"We are not anti-foreign companies. We are very pro-foreign companies," he said.

Is that funk band Cameo we hear playing in the background? Strange, pun intended, and Bentley are talking out of the sides of their necks. Let's revisit this quagmire: When hardworking American citizens argue against the strict law, the Alabama GOP moves forward with enacting it. When foreign companies with foreign interests argue against the controversial law, the Alabama GOP rethinks the law and decides to repeal some of the more heinous parts of it.

We're not rocket scientists, but that logic doesn't quite add up. What does add up? The Alabama GOP disposing of laws that they claimed were necessary in order to continue doing business with foreigners, who they don't really want in this country unless there is money to be had. On another note, just where were these foreign executives when the GOP was pushing this xenophobic law through at lightning speed?

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