101 Reasons to repeal Beason-Hammon, #HB56, the Alabama Anti-immigration law.

State Senator Billy Beasley plans to pre-file a bill to repeal and rescind the Alabama Anti-immigration bill.

It was rammed down the throats of the Legislature,” Beasley said. “I think we need to revisit the law.

Here are 101 reasons to do so:

1. HB56 dictates to whom the message and ministry of the Church may be directed.
2. Beason-Hammon is a jobs and economic-growth killer, according to economists.
3. Already overcrowded county and city jails will be inundated with new immigration “crimes.”
4. Undocumented children are treated as a subclass and are ineligible to play sports or participate in the band.
5. Modern day Good Samaritans will be outlawed.
6. It requires every business  in this state to enroll in E-Verify and continually verify the employment eligibility of every employee.
7. HB56 mandates all people of Alabama join a list of approved workers (a right to work list) to stay employed; not on the list, you cannot be hired.
8. According to current error rates (4.1%), if E-verify was mandatory in 2010, 190,000 Alabamians would have had to fix their records before they could start a new job or continue at their current one.
9. 10,000 legally-authorized Alabamians will ultimately lose their jobs because of E-verify error rates.
10. Alabama Department of Homeland Defense will become a HR department to enroll employees of the 80,000 small firms, or 91 percent of all Alaba­ma businesses, into the federal E-verify program. Every time one of these 80,000 employers hires someone new after registration, the “service” will have three days to properly update the federal E-verify account.
11. Small problem: the Legislature forgot to fund this new program for small businesses in the budget; no money was designated for these additional services. That will leave the depart­ment to fall back on its mea­ger budget to set up the service.
12. Law enforcement will be required to arrest, incarcerate, house, and feed the estimated 120,000 illegal immigrants
13. The State of Alabama via the Department of Human Resources will become the permanent custodian of the dependent children of those arrested for being illegal immigrants.
14. Stockpiling people in jail costs a bundle for counties and cities without additional funding.
15. HB56 creates an unfunded mandate, forcing local agencies to assume what has been a federal job.
16. First year start-up costs for businesses of E-verify will be: 10 employees = $1254, 50 employees = $316,  100 employees = $5,515, and 500 employees = $24,422.
17. The annual costs after year-one for all small businesses will be $435 on average, not including legal fees to comply with government regulations and defend against lawsuits.
18. The motives behind the law are a cancer that gnaws away at the very vital center of our society. It is like eroding acid that eats away the best and the objective center of our collective life.
19. Many foreign adopted-children would be “illegal”.
20. The law specifically allows not only for “fishing expeditions,” but suspicionless audits and spitefully-initiated investigations of Alabama businesses.
21. HB56 “will make it impossible to love and be hospitable to our neighbors as we ought to do.”
22. The enforcement of the law hurts the police’s  ability to investigate crimes, particularly in the Hispanic community.
23. Farmers will be forced to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, melons and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields.
24.  The Legislators failed to provide funding for training or additional resources to assist local law enforcement officials in checking whether an immigrant is in the U.S. legally.
25. It’s going to be virtually unenforceable according to law enforcement.
26. The statute is an entry into the foreign policy of the United States by a single state.
27. Beason-Hammon actually declares open-season on illegal immigrants for criminals. You can rob, you can molest their children, you can abuse them because the law intimidates crime victims and witnesses.
28. The law violates the Bible: You shall not oppress a foreigner. You know the heart of a foreigner, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt.  (Exodus 22:21)
29. The statute imposes dozens of new responsibilities on county government and local law enforcement in Alabama.
30. Farm production and many farm-dependent jobs will simply leave the state
31. HB56 will cause a dramatic impact on the ability of local law enforcement to focus on the existing criminal activities in their local communities.
32. Churches find themselves in that untenable position of facing the possibility that a youth director could be jailed because he allowed an immigrant child without proper papers to ride in the church van.
33. No bond is available to those arrested in contravention of the State of Alabama Constitution.
34. The law creates new causes of action for spiteful employees.
35. It allows searches of our properties without any reasonable suspicion.
36. Beason-Hammon diverts investigatory units of law enforcement and the AG office away from ferreting out traditional crime into bureaucratic business inspectors.
37. Capital investment will tend to avoid Alabama relative to other Southern states.
38. The law wastes many millions of dollars in “lost productivity and attorney fees” for companies and businesses.
39. Creates a framework for direct regulatory power over American citizens which will flow to the federal and state government for housing, financial services, and other essentials to try to get at illegal immigrants.
40. Small business owners will need to familiarize themselves with the user manual, a 82 page tome on implemenation of E-verify.
41. If ICE doesn’t pick up immigrants arrested under the new Alabama law,  local police could find themselves picking up immigrants, holding them for 30-day sentences, and re-arresting them as soon as their sentence is over.
42. The statute is “the nation’s most merciless anti-immigration legislation.”
43. Police will be empowered to stop people because of their haircut.
44. E-Verify cleared 54% of “illegal aliens ” to work in 2009.
45. It ignores the impact on those “illegal immigrants” which were brought here as children.
46. To borrow from Republican Rep. Connie Mack, as the wise saying goes, he who sacrifices freedom for security ends up with neither. The immigration law reminds us of how fear and distrust can lead to bad laws and even more government overreach into the private sector and our private lives. . . But trampling on the rights of some Americans to protect the majority conflicts with the values our nation was founded upon. . . Conservatives’ most important responsibility is to remember to protect freedom, liberty and the rights of every citizen. The Alabama immigration law doesn’t do that.
47. Costs of produce, vegetables, and fruits will rise.
48. Legislalation like HB56 is opposed by the Alabama County Commission Association, the Cato Institute, the American Family Association, the National Association of Evangelicals, US Chamber of Commerce and the Southern Baptist Convention.
49. HB 56 will cause irreparable harm to Alabama’s reputation.
50. The statute bars refugees fleeing political persecution from Alabama’s public universities.
51. The text of the bill makes it illegal to provide housing or transportation to someone so that they can attend a proceeding at which the federal government has specifically demanded they be present.
52. The Legislature attempted to rewrite the Immigration and Nationality Act so that many classes of persons allowed by Congress and the federal government to apply for various sorts of lawful immigration status will be as a practical matter unable to reside in Alabama while doing so.
53. Beason-Hammon includes no undue hardship provisions.
54. Every business is required to enroll in E-verify; there is no small business exception like the North Carolina version.
55. It reeks of  nativism and such is not a Christian option. By using immigrants as objects of organized anger and singled out for prejudice, it violates principles of universal dignity.
56. The law makes it a crime for landlords to rent to an illegal immigrant, and thereby implicitly encourages landlords not to rent to Hispanic-looking individuals.
57. Teachers are placed in as severe “moral conflict.”
58. The fines imposed on illegal immigrants cannot be collected.
59. HB56 has heightened the tension among internationals in Alabama.
60. The statute does not exclude children so it mandates the arrest and prosecution of undocumented children.
61. The performance of the law’s mandates has a chilling effect on the enrollment in public school of undocumented children or even citizen children of undocumented parents and therefore is unconstitutional.
62. The enforcement of the law will do “irreparable harm” to the 338,000 members of three denominations in Alabama.
63. Teachers do not need to be worried about additional red-tape and date collection.
64. A system meant to identify illegal immigrants will morph into a Big Brother-style high-tech ID database of all Americans.
65. Beason-Hammon is preempted by federal authority; setting immigration policy and enforcing immigration laws is a national responsibility that cannot be addressed through a patchwork of state immigration laws.
66. Illegal immigrants whose children are U.S. citizens have every reason to be afraid. In order to give their children an education, they must risk deportation.
67. There are no rules for privacy protection that protect the individual and the society from abuse and misuse from the information gleaned by E-verify.
68. Unscrupulous employers can get around E-verify.
69. The law “contradicts the essential tenets of the Christian faith.”
70. It will suppress economic activity.
71. Beason-Hammon creates “a gold mine for lawyers” because of the high costs of setting up a compliance system, and of fending off federal government audits.
72. The law possibly violates the Alabama Constitution which declares: “Immigration shall be encouraged.”
73. Employers will be less likely to hire applicants which “look” undocumented or Latino to avoid the hassle of a TNC.
74. The effect of the law does not discourage racial profiling as advertised.
75. According to economists, the law wasn’t supported by facts and wasn’t based on real economic theories and research.
76. Local law enforcement hasn’t had the training that would  be required in order to be efficient in the enforcement of this law
77. By reducing the supply of low-skilled immigrants, the law “draws Americans into less productive, lower-paying jobs than they would have occupied otherwise.”
78. US citizens will be treated legally as a sub-class of persons because of parentage.
79. Supporters of the law do not know its terms because it was so poorly written.
80. The conference bill which ultimately emerged out of conference was not subjected to much debate or time for even studying the bill.
81. Honorably discharged Veterans may be arrested under HB56.
82. HB56 actually enables practical racial profiling.
83. Beason-Hammon will lead to lawsuits for racial profiling and illegal arrests.
84. Already it has drawn the  ire and disdain of the world.
85. Foreign workers — legal or not — are leaving the state already.
86. There is no sufficient local market for farm labor at the current wage levels.
87. This bill sends us back 50 years
88. The law was passed knowing it was unconstitutional.
89. Millions of tax-dollars will be spent defending the law’s facial constitutional challenges.
90. Beason-Hammon unjustly handles the consequences of 30 years failure of immigration policies at the federal level.
91. The law’s fails to include “corruptly” as a mens rea, but instead includes the mens rea of “knowlingly” defined so very broadly that it practically makes the new criminal provisions strict liability offenses.
92. Budgets are already tight in Alabama; this will only stretch them out even further.
93. Millions more will be spent defending the “as-applied” constitutional challenges.
94. 88% of children of undocumented immigrants are US citizens.
95. Law enforcement can be sued if a person feels they are not being aggressive enough in the enforcement of the act.
96. Police will be authorized to pull you over because of the type of vehicle you have.
97. Farms will shut down
98. Every federal judge that has reviewed less extreme versions of Beason-Hammon has deemed it unconstitutional and struck them down, pendente lite.
99. Families will be ripped apart.
100. There is no economic benefit, only setbacks. The state will be poorer because of this bill.
101. We do not want to live in a nation where American citizens are asked “Where are your papers?”

UPDATE: I have added #102, #103, and #104