On Monday evening, at the historic Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham,
three thousand Alabamians, civil rights and labor leaders, business owners, community
leaders and members of Congress rallied as retired federal Judge U. W. Clemon called
us to action to repeal the state's anti-immigrant HB 56 law.
'We have no choice but to put back on our marching shoes!' Clemon demanded. Judge
Clemon and other civil rights leaders expressed universal anger over HB 56 re-opening
the painful wounds of Alabama's past.
The voices of the people at the unity rally were strong and the commitment to march
forward was palpable. The fear that has terrorized some communities in the state is
turning into determination to right a wrong created by the racial profiling law.
The need to repeal this racist law is great, and made more obvious last week when
a German executive with Mercedes-Benz -- Alabama's largest international trading
partner -- was arrested and charged with violating the new immigration law.
Let's stop and think about what this arrest means. In their zeal to target undocumented
immigrants in the state who make valuable contributions to the state's economy,
Alabama legislators wrote a law that ensnared a manager of the state's most
prestigious employer because he had only his German identification card when stopped
for a traffic violation.
Mercedes-Benz was the cornerstone of the state's economic revival when it established
its first U.S. factory near Tuscaloosa in 1993. Honda and Hyundai followed, as did their
suppliers. Mercedes has planned to invest more than $4 billion and increase its 2,800-
member workforce by 50 percent by 2014.
In the wake of the arrest, officials in other states are scrambling to court Mercedes-Benz
with promises to be more welcoming.
As Rep. Charles Gonzalez, D-Tx., who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said
in Alabama, the German executive's arrest threatens foreign investment in a state that
targets for detention people who do not speak, act or look non-suspicious. 'Of course,
laws such as HB 56 will also result in arrests of American citizens. Let us hope Henry
Kissinger doesn't visit Alabama anytime soon,' Gonzalez told AP.
Of course the effects of this horrible law are not limited to large, foreign-owned
businesses. Local small business owners who serve Latino and immigrant communities
spoke yesterday of the devastating loss of revenues they have suffered, and families
spoke of the fear of being ripped apart.
Rep. Al Green, another Texas Democrat who was part of the 11-member congressional
hearing in Alabama on Monday, spoke for all of us opposed to this bill when he
concluded that the law 'deserves to be placed on the trash heap of history.'
Some politicians in Alabama are already admitting that this law has had unintended
consequences and are considering amending the law-at the beckon demand of their
corporate donors. But, let us be clear, justice can only prevail if this bad law is repealed.
The politics of fear and hate may help some politicians get the votes of anti-immigrants,
but they will ultimately lose when jobs and workers flee the state, and voters demand
common sense immigration reforms.
As I have said before, fear is not a jobs program. Let's get our marching shoes on!
