Missouri’s bill, Alabama law a mirror image in two areas

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The proposed Missouri law on immigration and a controversial Alabama law share language on the two areas of the Missouri law regarding education and law-enforcement stops. The Alabama law, which is 71 pages, addresses many more areas. Missouri’s law is five pages.

The Missouri law, unlike the one in Alabama, does not address public benefits, employment, harboring and transporting clients among other matters.

The Missouri law and a law in Arizona both address law enforcement. The 17-page Arizona law also addresses a number of other areas.

The Supreme Court agreed Dec. 12 to consider the constitutionality of Arizona’s package of restrictions on immigrants and requirements for law enforcement officers to determine people’s immigration status.

Injunctions have blocked some of the most-criticized parts of the law, including mandatory requirements for police to check on immigration status and criminalizing various forms of assistance to undocumented immigrants.

That includes the response to a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice challenging the state’s right to step into immigration law, normally the purview of the federal government. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in April upheld the federal District Court’s prohibition on parts of the law from taking effect. That set up the state’s appeal to the Supreme Court.

In Alabama, also subject to court challenges, farmers complained that they lost millions of dollars worth of produce that rotted in the fields after many farmworkers moved out of state — including some who are in the United States legally but feared being profiled.

The arrests of a German Mercedes-Benz executive and a Japanese Honda employee, both in the U.S. legally — and whose companies have auto plants in Alabama — underscored the problems with a law that mandates arrests in a wide range of situations. Charges against both men were dropped but not before the arrests were publicized worldwide.

Repercussions included high rates of absenteeism in Alabama schools, even among U.S. citizen children, as parents sought to keep a lower profile, or pulled out their children and moved to another state. A provision that said municipal utility companies could require proof of legal residency led to some people being unable to get water or electricity service.

In addition to Alabama, Utah, Georgia, Indiana and South Carolina adopted wide-reaching laws, all of which have been challenged in court. The Justice Department is among those suing to stop the laws in Alabama, South Carolina and Utah.

Ken Schmitt, chair of the Missouri/Kansas Chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the language of Missouri’s Senate Bill 590, is problematic. “The last thing Missouri needs to do is waste time passing legislation which has already caused other states to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars in useless litigation,” Schmitt said.

Some information for this story was provided by Catholic News Service.