Fear of Anti-Immigration Law Leaves Empty Classrooms, Idle Farms
More from Alabama, where a delegation of African American labor and civil rights leaders is investigating the state’s recently passed anti-immigrant law. Follow the delegation here.
A grade school child is there one day and gone the next. Dependable laborers don’t show up to pick crops on a farm.
“It’s incredible,” said local AFT President Vi Parramore.
I have teachers tell me that kids are disappearing overnight. Not unenrolling and leaving. Just all of a sudden gone, just gone! Crops are rotting in the fields!
Parramore shared what she knew at a roundtable at the Beloved Community United Church of Christ in Birmingham, Ala. The roundtable was part of a tour by national African American labor and civil rights leaders to help shed a light on one of the harshest immigration laws in the country and how it invokes inhumanity reminiscent of the Jim Crow South. The delegation has investigated firsthand the impact of Alabama’s H.B. 56 on the lives of Latino working families.
Early in the day, the group toured a trailer park. Later, they met with small business owners. Alabama’s punitive anti-immigration law has cast a chill over the state’s Latino population. According to news reports, the new law says that police must report to federal authorities anyone they detain if they have a “reasonable suspicion” the person may be in the country illegally.
New Coalition Set to Push Immigration Reform Now
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| AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker joins members of trade, faith and labor organizations to launch the Reform Immigration for America campaign. |
More than 200 organizations today launched a national coalition to push for comprehensive immigration reform. The election of a new president and Congress with strong immigrant support, coupled with solid public backing for reform, have created a new political landscape for immigration legislation, the group’s leaders said at a news conference in Washington, D.C.
Reform Immigration for America includes the AFL-CIO, Change to Win, the National Council of La Raza, the NAACP and the Asian American Justice Center. The campaign was launched to coincide with a three-day meeting of more than 700 progressive advocates and allies this week and an upcoming White House meeting on immigration June 15.
