Alabama's Got the Nation's Toughest New Immigration Law

[Trigger warning for racism and anti-immigrant sentiments.]

And by "nation's toughest new immigration law," I naturally mean the most anti-migrant racist piece-of-shit legislation in the country:

Republican Governor Robert Bentley on Thursday signed into law [a bill requiring police to] detain someone they suspect of being in the country illegally if the person cannot produce proper documentation when stopped for any reason.

It also will be a crime to knowingly transport or harbor someone who is in the country illegally. The law imposes penalties on businesses that knowingly employ someone without legal resident status. A company's business license could be suspended or revoked.

The law requires Alabama businesses to use a database called E-Verify to confirm the immigration status of new employees.

"We have a real problem with illegal immigration in this country," Bentley said after signing the law. "I campaigned for the toughest immigration laws and I'm proud of the Legislature for working tirelessly to create the strongest immigration bill in the country."

Alabama is the latest state to follow the lead of a controversial measure passed in Arizona last year. ... Alabama's law is unique in requiring public schools to determine, by review of birth certificates or sworn affidavits, the legal residency status of students.

Although progressive Alabama social justice groups protested the legislation and petitioned the governor to veto it, their efforts failed, and conservative Alabamans are singing the praises of the new legislation.

Gene Armstrong, mayor of Allgood, Alabama, a small community where the Hispanic population has grown to almost 50 percent, is not worried [that what happened in Georgia, "where farmers have complained that tough new curbs on immigration are creating a shortage of seasonal workers before they even go into effect," will happen in Alabama].

"We managed in the past without illegal immigrants to pick the tomatoes here, and I haven't heard anyone say that if we sent them all home nobody would be left to do that work," Armstrong said.

"When you have 9 percent unemployment, I think that some people who might not have wanted those jobs previously might reconsider."

Of course.