“There haven't been mass arrests. There aren't a bunch of court proceedings. People are simply removing themselves. It's a self-deportation at no cost to the taxpayer. I'd say that's a win.” —Kris Korbach (Rieser-Murphy and Demarco 2012, 1066)

Several anti-immigration bills have been passed in the United States, but the most notoriously egregious is Alabama's HB 56 (Bauer 2012, 5; Maxwell 2012; Galloway 2013, 1093). The harsh immigration laws of Alabama, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona have one thing in common: they were all drafted by the same man, Kris Kobach. He champions the idea of “self-deportation,” that is, making life so unbearable for illegal immigrants that they simply deport themselves (Rieser-Murphy and Demarco 2012, 1063). Under this ideological influence, the Beason-Hammon Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act (HB 56) was passed on September 28, 2011 (HRW 2011, 1). Although Congress determined that immigrating to the U.S. illegally was a violation, HB 56 shaped it as a crime (Darrow 2011, 197-198). Irrespective of both international human rights law and federal law requiring human rights to be upheld regardless of an individual's status, authors Beason and Hammon included provisions directly aimed at undermining, in fact eradicating, the basic human rights of immigrants (HRW 2011).

Among the harsh provisions of the bill is the mandate to police officers to stop and detain anyone due to “reasonable suspicion” that they may be in the country illegally. It follows that mere assumptions about skin color, ethnicity, language and education levels may all serve as justifications for police stops and arrests (HRW 2011, 2).

The bill also made it necessary for people to prove citizenship in order to obtain basic healthcare, with the exception of emergencies and treatments for transferable diseases. One company denied a woman her prescription medicine despite her being a permanent resident in the United States (HRW 2011, 4).

Another provision requires primary and secondary schools to validate their students' citizenship status (Colvin 2014, 21), despite the Plyler v. Doe Supreme Court case of 1982 which grants free primary and secondary education to children regardless of their citizenship status (Maxwell 2012, no p.).

Domestic violence victims compose nearly one half of all immigrant women in the U.S (Rieser-Murphy and Demarco 2012, 1060). Past trauma, language barriers, and little to no resources leave women incredibly vulnerable to further assault, but HB 56 forged a “culture of impunity” for offenders as the women were not able to consult government officials or social work agencies for help (Rieser-Murphy and Demarco 2012, 1061). Section 30 of the bill, a provision that classifies harboring and transporting illegals as a crime, further impeded their access to help from their very own friends and neighbors (Rieser-Murphy and Demarco 2012, 1061).

By April 2012, the bill was so contentious that HB 658 replaced it, dropping the mandates for punishment for helping unauthorized immigrants as well as the mandate for schools to validate their students' statuses (Hishaw 2013, 47). Also, it is no longer illegal to enter into contracts with an unauthorized immigrant (Brown 2013, 63). Unfortunately, the harsh spirit of the law remains.

The Southern Poverty Law Center conducted numerous interviews that reveal just how effective Korbach's influence was in uprooting their livelihoods (Bauer 2012). Even though she is a U.S. citizen, Carmen Gonzalez found a note in her car stating, “Go back to Mexico" (Bauer 2012, 9). A woman named Hortensia shared her story of being denied payment and having a gun pointed at her after completing a landscaping job. HB 56 assured her boss that he was the one with power and she was not. With no status, there could be no court case, and Hortensia is left unpaid (Bauer 2012, 13-14). These are just two of the thousands of stories of discrimination from unauthorized immigrants and U.S. citizens. Korbach definitely achieved his goal of inciting enough fear to cause people to self-deport.

With a bill like HB 56, one would imagine that Alabama was brimming with illegal immigration and fiscally incapable of handling the burden. Yet, illegal immigrants only make up 2.5% of Alabama's population (Bauer 2012, 5) and they constitute only 4.2% of Alabama's workforce (Rieser-Murphy and Demarco 2012, 1064). PEW research claims an even smaller number—Alabama's unauthorized immigrants are 2% of the total population (Colvin 2014, 21-22), which is small in comparison to Nevada and California, whose populations are composed of 6-7% unauthorized immigrants. California, Texas, New York, and Florida have the largest populations of illegal immigrants, yet none of them saw reason to pursue such harsh bills (Rieser-Murphy and Demarco, 1064). Thus, HB 56 proves that fear rhetoric not only works, but it works well. It mobilized the entire state under the notion that immigrants are responsible for “causing economic hardship and lawlessness in Alabama" (Galloway 2013, 1094). That was the primary motivation for the bill, which means that there were not enough people digging past the fear deeply enough to question all of the factors contributing to a bad economy and lawlessness. The authors' fears were taken as truth, and because of that, one very small, yet economically significant community was targeted. A University of Alabama study concluded that the bill may cost a total of eleven billion dollars over time, with immense detriment to the agriculture sector (Rieser-Murphy and Demarco 2012, 1066). The Alabama Department of Agriculture had to turn to prison labor in 2011 in order to compensate for the labor shortage (Hishaw 2013, 46).

As Hyndman and Mountz (2007) suggest, immigrants have become not so much humans as they are platforms on which all of our collective fears about safety are projected. These fears have produced a paralyzed politics (Bauman 2002, 84) in which events such as 9/11 are convenient to politicians who can add the threat of terror to the list of reasons (including fears that immigrants mooch off of our welfare and job opportunities) why we must reduce our offers of asylum and/or refuge to immigrants. With political fear rhetoric as our weapon of choice, we may win wars on terrorists, but we will never win a war on terrorism (Bauman, 2002). Alabama's HB 56 proves that fear rhetoric is so powerful and so effective that the politicians themselves became the ones utilizing terror to promote their agenda. The immigrant community of Alabama was intentionally targeted and clearly threatened and marginalized by the “sovereign” authority meant to acknowledge and uphold their basic human rights.

We may build walls until our backs break and we may write restrictive policies until our hands fall off, but the part of us that cannot be politicized is our common humanity. The war on terror will forever be unwinnable so long as we ignore the terrorism we project on our own neighbors and our own workers. This will never be a war worth fighting if we have to succumb to fear for a shallow and corrupted victory.

See below for more information regarding this issue.

Bauer, M. (2012) Alabama's Shame: HB 56 and the War on Immigrants, Montgomery: Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Bauman, Z. (2002) 'Reconnaissance Wars of the Planetary Frontierland', Theory, Culture, and Society, 19(4), pp. 81-90.

Brown, D. (2013) 'Manufacturing fear, creating the threat: The state of American immigration policy', Journal of Latino/Latin American Studies, 5(1), pp. 57-67.

Colvin, M. (2014) 'The Devolution of Immigration Enforcement Policy and Child Welfare Practice', Journal of Policy Practice, 13(1), pp. 16-29.

Darrow, J. (2011) 'Alabama Follows Arizona's Lead in Enacting Local Immigration Control Measures', Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, 26(1), pp. 195-200.

Galloway, B. (2013) 'The beginning of the end: United States v. Alabama and the doctrine of self-deportation', Mercer Law Review, 64(4), pp. 1093-1109.

Hishaw, J. (2013) 'Mississippi Is Burning Georgia's Peaches Because Alabama Is No Longer a Sweet Home: a Legislative Analysis of Southern Discomfort regarding Illegal Immigration', South Dakota Law Review, 58(1), pp. 30-64.

Human Rights Watch (HWR) (2011) No Way to Live: Alabama's Immigrant Law, USA: HRW.

Maxwell, L. (2012) Ala. Immigration Law Casts Pall Over Community's Schools, Available at: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/06/07/34imm...

Rieser-Murphy, E. and Demarco, K. (2012) 'The Unintended Consequences of Alabama's Immigration Law on Domestic Violence Victims', University of Miami Law Review, 66(4), pp. 1059-1088.