Immigration

Crisis in Alabama: "We need your help"

October 12, 2011 by Left in Alabama

FLORENCE, Alabama – Pedro and his wife, both of whom are undocumented immigrants, decided to put all their belongings in the car and leave with their son for Arizona. Even with its SB 1070 immigration law, they expect Arizona to treat them better than Alabama under its law HB 56.

In a housing complex full of small homes in the city of Florence, two hours from Birmingham, relatives and friends said goodbye to Pedro and his family as they packed and checked the brakes of their car in preparation for the long ride.

Pedro, a construction worker from the state of Guerrero,  Mexico, lived in Alabama for seven years. “If it weren't for the law, I'd stay here, but I have a brother there (in Arizona) who says that everything's okay now and there are plenty of jobs,” he said.

Life in Alabama is impossible, he told me, and he wasn't confident that the attempts to block the law through the courts would succeed. And even if it did, the immigrant community faces too hostile an environment here to stay, he added.

“You can't drive anywhere; you can't go out because all it takes is seeing a policeman to scare you”, Pedro said.

Etowah County Detention Center, another black eye coming to Alabama

October 9, 2011 by Left in Alabama

Just a heads up - another black eye is headed Alabama's way.  It seems that Alabama's only ICE detention center is excess prison space ICE rent's from Etowah County, Alabama.  From an article titled:
Immigrant Detainees Languish in Notorious Etowah County Detention Center.

Here's how it starts:

The Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsden, Alabama, houses immigration detainees along with county inmates. The facility, which on any given day houses over 300 immigrants, is notorious for poor conditions. It is hours away from any immigration court or international airport , despite only housing people who have final orders of removal from the United States. Many of the detainees have been held here for months, if not years.

Is Your Driver's License on File with your Water Company?

October 8, 2011 by Left in Alabama

Because here in post Beason-Hammon Alabama, it's apparently no documents, no water.

Is this rule only for brown people in Alabama, or does everyone in the state now have to trundle down to the utility department, kill time in yet another Beason line and present a current, valid driver's license to maintain the privilege of buying water from them?  The former is obviously unconstitutional and discriminatory, the latter is one more insane boondoggle courtesy of Scott Beason and Micky Hammon. 

How Long Are the Beason Lines In Alabama? They're Adding Port-A-Potties

October 6, 2011 by Left in Alabama

Scott Beason and his incompetent friends in the Legislature have succeeded in boosting at least one business sector in Alabama ... Port-A Potty rentals.  Yep, thanks to Beason, Hammon and company, tag lines are so long officials have had to bring in portable toilets.

Tags lines have been so long in Birmingham that officials are adding portable toilets. 

Let's just call them Beason Boxes.

Scott Beason Too Good To Get His Hands Dirty With Farm Work

October 4, 2011 by Left in Alabama

Farm work is hard work, literally back-breaking labor.  Ivory-tower Republicans like state Sen. Scott Beason (R, Gardendale) who say there are plenty of natural born Alabamians clamoring for the physically grueling, low paying jobs in poultry plants and agricultural fields have no idea how hard that work is. 

And in Beason's case, he has absolutely no interest in finding out what the back-breaking job of picking tomatoes feels like, refusing point-blank to pick even a single bucket for a farmer whose crop is rotting in the field.

After talking with famers at the tomato shed, Beason visited the Smith family's farm. Leroy Smith, Chad Smith's father, challenged the senator to pick a bucket full of tomatoes and experience the labor-intensive work.

Beason declined but promised to see what could be done to help farmers while still trying to keep illegal immigrants out of Alabama.

Smith threw down the bucket he offered Beason and said, "There, I figured it would be like that."