Alabama’s Revised Anti-Immigrant Law May Come Up for Vote This Week

Immigrant rights advocates say the revised bill is even harsher than the original.

By Julianne Hing May 08, 2012

Alabama’s attempt to revise its breathtakingly harsh anti-immigrant law, HB 56, could come up for a vote this week in the Senate, Sen. Scott Beason’s office confirmed. The movement comes just weeks after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments over Arizona’s SB 1070, which HB 56 was largely based on. In the face of national outrage and the host of lawsuits HB 56 ignited, Alabama senators have been hammering out what the revisions would look like, but immigrant rights advocates say that the revisions do not address the basic civil rights concerns with the law, and instead worsen the anti-immigrant provisions of HB 56. Sen. Beason and Rep. Micky Hammon have been working on a compromise that would merge the two lawmakers’ attempts at revising HB 56, which went several steps further than Arizona’s SB 1070 at criminalizing life for undocumented immigrants in the state. The issue now is how much the state should tinker with the key "reasonable suspicion" provisions which compel law enforcement officers to ask anyone about their immigration status if they believe a person may be undocumented.