Mexico: Alabama Immigration Law May Violate Trade Agreement

Fox News Latino, 9/21/2012

Mexico government officials are looking into whether Alabama’s anti-illegal immigration law – considered the toughest such state-level measure in the nation – violates the North American Free Trade Agreement.

An official with Mexico’s labor department confirms the review in a letter released Thursday by the group that filed the complaint, the Service Employees International Union. The Mexican government says it has asked the United States to begin talks about the matter that are allowed under NAFTA.

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Justices to Rule on Role of the States in Immigration

The New York Times,4/22/12

When Georgia passed a law last year authorizing the local police to question and detain illegal immigrants, Darvin Eason felt the impact immediately on his farms here in south Georgia.

At the peak of the harvest, many of the Mexican workers he had relied on to pick his blackberries were scared away from the state. Ripe berries fell to the ground uncollected, and Mr. Eason lost $20,000 — even though the sections of the law that struck fear in the immigrants had been suspended by federal courts.

So Mr. Eason is one of many people across the country who will be watching closely when the Supreme Court hears arguments on Wednesday on the bitterly disputed immigration enforcement law that was passed two years ago in Arizona, inspiring the Georgia statute and similar ones in Alabama, Indiana, South Carolina and Utah.

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Have The Crackdowns On Immigration Gone Too Far?

NPR, 11/25/11

The architect of Arizona’s controversial immigration law has been voted out of office. That law and similar statutes are undergoing difficult court challenges. And the strictest law, in Alabama, has ignited a withering backlash expected to force major changes.

Have the crackdowns on illegal immigration finally gone too far?

“If you asked me this question about a year ago, I would tell you we were on the cusp of seeing more anti-immigration legislation,” says immigration analyst Muzaffar Chishti of the Migration Policy Institute. “Now, what’s happening is very interesting. I think there is evidence of overreach and some sobering reassessments of ‘Is this the right thing to do?’ “

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