WASHINGTON (IPS) — On Dec. 1, 1955, at the height of racial
segregation in the United States, a little-known middle-aged seamstress named
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery
City bus in the southern state of Alabama.

Governor Rober Bentley signs House Bill 56 in Alabama. The bill is similar or perhaps worse than the infamous “Arizona Law” according to many observers.

Her small act of civil disobedience sparked the
now-legendary Montgomery bus boycott, which has become an iconic moment in the
civil rights movement that marked the beginning of the end of the racist Jim
Crow laws in 1968.

Now activists say the signing of a draconian piece of anti-
immigration legislature on Thursday has turned the once-historic site in the
struggle for civil liberties and racial justice into the most dangerous place
in the country for immigrants and people of color.

House Bill 56, which was sponsored by Representative Micky
Hammon and signed by Republican Governor Robert Bentley on Thursday morning in
Alabama, has been moving through the pipeline for over two months now — having
passed the Alabama House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee back in
March — and was voted on by the full House of Representatives several weeks
ago.

If nothing hinders its progress, the bill will go into
effect on Sep. 1.

Modeled on essential elements of Arizona’s controversial
Senate Bill 1070 – which essentially legalized racial profiling and which
President Barack Obama warned in April would “undermine basic notions of
fairness… in our communities” – HB 56 goes a step further than its
predecessor by allowing sweeping measures of identification, arrest and
deportation.

The bill mandates that law enforcement officials detain or
investigate anyone they deem to be “reasonably suspicious,”  a move critics say endangers the rights
not only of immigrants but also of U.S. citizens of color.

It makes clear that “illegal aliens” are exempt
from public benefits and criminalizes anyone who hires, “harbors” or
even offers transport to undocumented workers – a clause that includes people
giving car rides to their sick neighbors.

Under the law, employers are required to utilize the
E-Verify system of identification, which many business owners have criticized
for being faulty and expensive.

HB 56 also targets the education rights of immigrant youth
by forcing primary and secondary schools to probe the immigration status of
students and their parents and report them to the authorities, thereby
tightening the noose around even U.S.-born immigrants seeking a brighter
future.

“Today, Alabama effectively turned state workers,
officers, and school teachers into de facto immigration agents,” Marielena
Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center (NILC),
said Thursday.

“Immigrants and people of color will be subjected to…
unconstitutional scrutiny when they take their children to school or interact
with law enforcement officers,” she said. “Friends and family members
of undocumented immigrants will face criminal charges simply for driving them
to the grocery store.”

“By passing HB 56, Alabama’s legislators have deemed an
entire class of people not worthy of their most fundamental rights,” she
added. “This law… makes immigrants the latest group of people to suffer a
legalization of discriminatory behavior against them, and threatens to turn
back the clock on our hard-won civil rights.”

Legal battle looms

A powerful group of advocates, including the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) of Alabama, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and
the NLIC, have coalesced to take HB 56 by the horns.

“We are planning to bring litigation to challenge this
bill, which we believe to be blatantly unconstitutional,” Mary Bauer, the
legal director of the SPLC, told IPS.

“HB 56 not only contains some of the very same
provisions from SB 1070 that have already been declared unconstitutional by a
federal court, but goes way beyond to really extreme measures – by
criminalizing churches that provide shelter to immigrants and making it illegal
for landlords to rent their property to anyone who looks “Latino,”
the bill paves the way for terrible racial profiling and discrimination,”
she added.

Karen Tumlin, managing attorney at NILC, told IPS, “The
provision that allows local law enforcers to indentify immigration status… is
absolutely unconstitutional because it allows local enforcement officials to
fill a role that they are neither trained nor allowed to fill, a role that is
specifically designated to the federal government. It will also almost undoubtedly
lead to arbitrary arrests and unwarranted searches.”

“This breeds fear in communities of color, whether they
are immigrants or citizens,” Tumlin added. “It makes people afraid to
go about their lives, it stigmatises accents, it profiles skin color.”

Of great concern for legal advocates has been the fact that
prosecutors in Alabama are now expected to turn victims of crime over to U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the conclusion of criminal
proceedings.

“Just imagine a woman going to a government prosecutor
because she has been raped, knowing that what’s awaiting her at the end of a
legal process is ICE, and perhaps even removal,” Bauer told IPS.
“Even before the law comes into effect, this is a possibility that is so
chilling it will likely deter victims from coming forward to report crimes at
all.”

“We hope to file the lawsuit well in advance of
September 1 and that the court will prevent it from ever going into
effect,” she added. “It is our hope and expectation that this will
never be the law in Alabama.”

According to the most recent figures in the 2010 Census,
Alabama’s Hispanic population has nearly doubled since 2000 to 186,000 — or 2.9
percent — of the state’s 4.8 million-strong population.

However, though proponents of the bill have harped on
increased immigration into Alabama needing to be “controlled,” others
believe that the increases are negligible.

“According to our research about 30 percent of the
immigrants in Alabama are citizens, so we’re really talking about a very small
number compared with most other states,” Bauer told IPS.

“The notion that Alabama is being overrun by illegal
immigration is false – what this bill really is is the worst form of political
posturing. It is unlikely to ever go into effect and it’s going to eat up a lot
of taxpayer money to defend in court.”

Despite this, the battle continues.

“Though we deeply regret that our taxes dollars will be
spent defending this unconstitutional law, we are confident that justice will
prevail through the courts,” Isabel Rubio, the executive director of the
Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama (HICA), said in a press release
Thursday.

“In the meantime, HICA will continue to connect the
Hispanic community to economic and civil opportunities and to advocate for immigration
reform at the Federal level,” she added.