Is Alabama immigration law creating a humanitarian crisis?

[n2doc]

US teachers unions and Hispanic activists said Wednesday that an Arizona-style immigration law upheld by a federal judge last week is creating a "humanitarian crisis" as thousands of parents keep their children home, fearing that teachers will act as immigration agents.


Alabama's first Republican supermajority since Reconstruction approved this summer what many consider America's toughest immigration law. And last week, federal Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn surprised many Americans when she upheld key parts of the law – including a portion that says schools must check the immigration status of children when they enroll, as well as the status of their parents.

"This law revisits Alabama's painful racial past," Sam Brooke, a staff attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday. "When a law that demonizes people to the point of pushing children out of schools is cheered, it's a dark day for the state and the country."

...
Teachers unions and Hispanic advocacy groups, as well as the Obama administration, have filed an appeal, but the law began to take effect this week. Some 2,000 Hispanic students did not show up to school Monday, according to state education officials. That figure amounts to about 7 percent of the state's Hispanic student population.

more

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/1006/Is-Alabama-immigration-law-creating-a-humanitarian-crisis

[barbtries]

1. a poster from AL the other day

wrote that there are acres and acres of sweet potatoes now rotting in the fields as well. on NPR this morning they interviewed a kid whose two best friends and their families have already left the state. he's 16 and has to do the family shopping because his mother is afraid to go outside.

we really have become such a mean country.

[jwirr]

2. These laws are going to come back to bite us at the grocery stores. nt

[Shagbark Hickory]

3. What do you mean by that?

:shrug:

[barbtries]

5. shortage of sweet potatoes

means more expensive sweet potatoes.

[jwirr]

8. Okay?

[Shagbark Hickory]

10. It'll be OK when the demand for SPs is met and all parties involved get paid a fair living wage for

the work that is involved.

At some point, the farmers will have to decide if they're going to make changes to their compensation or throw in the towel. I highly doubt they're just going to close up and sell the farm.

[jwirr]

11. I agree with what you want them to do but I have seen farmers just

up and sell the farm because the prices go down. I do not have as much faith in farmers as you do.

However, that could turn our farming methods around and just maybe we will go back to smaller farms on the local levels. But there is a problem with that also - those small farms were labor intensive - unless the kids decide to come home from the cities there may be no labor available.

My father (when he was young) farmed along with his brother and father using horses and ended his days farming 40 acres with a small tractor and a minimum of other equipment. We had enough to eat and a lot to sell but I don't think we came close to providing enough for todays world. Nor did we or any of our neighbors live anywhere near to todays standards of living.

When you talk about wages for farming do you have experience with farming? I would love to see this happen but just cannot wrap my mind around how this is going to happen and at the same time keep the bottom half of the world from starving. Today many farmers borrow up wards to $100,000 just to put their crop in the ground. Small farmers are disappearing when faced with this kind of financing. One disaster and they are done.

[Shagbark Hickory]

15. An undercapitalized business is an undercapitalized business.

Under no circumstances do I find slavery acceptable.
Not to sound like a free market douchebag but supply and demand will even this one out. Just like it does with seafood. Just like it does with citrus.
Farmers don't have to go out of business. If they need to continue generating the same revenue then they'll have to charge more.
People can pay more for produce. There's room to negotiate with the current prices. I don't believe we should be feasting on cheap produce on the backs of desperate immigrants making less than a living wage.

Do you know how many sweet potatoes a worker is expected to harvest in an hour?

[Shagbark Hickory]

9. I noticed the brand of SP that I normally buy was substituted with a different brand

last week. The label (yes, they're the wrapped ones) says Mississippi though.
The price was the same.

[jwirr]

7. The sweet potatoes and other crops rooting in the fields will drive

up prices. I am a farmers daughter who was around in the 60s when farmers poured their milk on the ground to protests. This is different as to the cause but will have the same results.

[Shagbark Hickory]

4. Lemme guess. Rather than paying people a fair wage to harvest the potatoes...

they'll instead become a valuable insurance claim.

[barbtries]

6. i imagine that's the story.

they lost their "stoop" labor and what do you know? no one else will do it! grrrr

[pampango]

12. Alabama republican politicians honestly trying to help American workers and

inadvertently causing a "humanitarian crisis" for a minority group? And this law is opposed by Alabama Democrats, teachers unions, Hispanic activists and the Obama administration.

It would certainly be a first if an Alabama republican was honestly trying to help American workers AND inadvertently hurt a minority group. Something tells me this is not a good law.

[kctim]

13. They actually approved

America's toughest ILLEGAL immigration law.

[Jim Warren]

14. More like continuing one

that started somewhere else, in another country.