Hullabaloo

Friday, October 07, 2011

 
Suffer the little children

by digby

Ugh:

As ThinkProgress has been reporting, the decision of a federal judge last week to allow Alabama’s harshest-in-the-nation immigration law to go into effect has had heartbreaking consequences. Hispanic families have been fleeing Alabama in droves and thousands of children have been too terrorized to show up for school. The law allows police to racially profile and pull over anyone they suspect might be in the country illegally, and blatantly violates children’s constitutional right to an education by forcing schools to check students’ immigration status before they can be enrolled.

But Republican lawmakers who supported the measure have been remarkably short on compassion for immigrant families that have been torn apart and other residents who have been deeply affected by their exodus. During an interview on conservative radio host Laura Ingraham’s show, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) said Hispanic children being too afraid to go to school is merely the just consequence of immigrants’ unlawful decision to live in the state:

INGRAHAM: Do you think it’s bad all these Hispanic kids have disappeared from the schools? Do you think that’s a bad thing?

SESSIONS: All I would just say to you is that it’s a sad thing that we’ve allowed a situation to occur for decades that large numbers of people are in the country illegal and it’s going to have unpleasant, unfortunate consequences.

Yes, "unpleasant".

Sessions said he “couldn’t agree more” with Ingraham when she called this a “sob story” that simply proves that “enforcement of the law works!” It’s a good thing, Ingraham suggested, that immigrants are responding by leaving Alabama. “This is a rational response,” Sessions remarked, arguing that “one of the sad consequences of illegal immigration is families can be hurt in the process” — indicating that families brought the government’s harsh crackdown on themselves by seeking a better life here.

Of course you can count on Sessions to take up the cause of those who would oppress little children in order to make a point. He's a guy who was so blatantly racist that he couldn't be confirmed as a Federal judge and then went on to be elected by the (white) people of Alabama to the US Senate that rejected him. He's an unreconstructed confederate of the worst kind.

This is a real human rights tragedy happening before out eyes, right here in the US. Check this out:

There are people calling this a form of ethnic cleansing and I can't figure out a reason why it isn't. Sure, not every Hispanic in the state is undocumented, but you could certainly forgive them for feeling that measures this punitive mean they aren't welcome. If the state is willing to deny someone water because they don't have proper ID, they really, really don't want you around.

And don't tell me this isn't ideological. Get a load of this:

Dave Neiwert writes:

It's not like they weren't warned. There was already the example of Arizona, whose wrecked economy lies in ruins in the wake of SB1070 and the wave of anti-immigrant sentiment that came with its passage.

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".

This is a sick and ugly story. It is 2011 not 1911 and this conservative majority of white supremacists --- I don't think you can look at their history and call that hyperbolic --- are doing it again. I guess it's just in their DNA.

Update: The Justice Department is seeking to block the law in federal court.

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digby 10/07/2011 04:30:00 PM |