Shame on Alabama

"Why the rush to symbolize intolerance by enacting the country’s most restrictionist and comprehensively anti-immigrant statute?  Such laws are mean-spirited and punitive. The schoolchildren are already not showing up for classes. In enacting bans on college enrollments and counting measures on schoolchildren allowed by law to attend schools since Plyler v. Doe in 1982, Alabamians reveal themselves not as strict constructionists or conservatives, but as ideologues who will use unnecessary legislation and the power of government to intervene in families to punish innocent children. Public shame on them."

Prof. Michael A. Olivas*, New York Times, Oct. 4, 2011. 

* Professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center, member of the Editorial Board of Bender's Immigration Bulletin, and the author of "No Undocumented Child Left Behind."