Alabama lawmakers are facing pressure from agriculture and business groups to change the state's tough new immigration law that a judge allowed to take effect last week.
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| Kim Haynes - FARMER (AP Photo) |
But the authors of the immigration law considered one of the toughest and most controversial in the country said that, while they may be open to tweaks, no one should expect a wholesale rewrite.
"The two issues are the labor shortage and the burdensome red tape," said Jay Reed of Associated Builders & Contractors. Reed also co-chairs a group called Alabama Employers for Immigration Reform.
"There was a big misconception that there were long lines formed by Alabamians who wanted these labor-intensive jobs," Reed said.
A study issued in February by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, estimated that 95,000 unauthorized immigrants worked in Alabama in 2009 and 2010, making up about 4.2 percent of the labor force.
Johnny Adams of the Alabama Poultry and Egg Association said he hopes to talk to lawmakers about the unintended consequences of the law before they return to Montgomery for the 2012 legislative session.
"We are going to be talking with legislators throughout the state -- and when I say we, I'm talking about basically the business community -- about our concerns about the law, and when we get to (the legislative) session we will see where we stand," Adams said. "But we would certainly like to see some changes made."
The legislators who sponsored the law said they are opposed to any changes that would undermine its intent -- cracking down on immigrants who are in Alabama illegally.
"We will not weaken the law," said Rep. Micky Hammon, R-Decatur. "If we can give them some help in recruiting people for their industry, training people for their industry, we'll be happy to do that."
U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn on Wednesday cleared the way for much of Alabama's new immigration law to go into effect, while a lawsuit challenging the law is making its way through the courts. The U.S. Department of Justice, which challenged the law, is trying to get the judge to stay her ruling while it is appealed.
The Alabama law is considered one of the strictest in the country. Among its requirements, it directs that:
Police detain anyone they suspect of being in the country illegally while they verify citizenship status.
Schools check the citizenship status of students.
Employers enroll in the federal E-Verify program to check the status of employees.
State and local government officials determine the citizenship of anyone transacting business with the government, such as purchasing or renewing license tags.
Seeks exemption
Adams said one change he would like to see is to exempt smaller employers from the requirement to use E-Verify, because he said it is a burden on small businesses and farmers, particularly those who aren't computer savvy.
For farmer Keith Smith, who has 200 acres of ripening sweet potatoes in his Cullman fields and no one to pick them, the new law boils down to a matter of finding anyone to do the work.
Smith normally hires about 20 pickers -- mostly Hispanic immigrants -- for the October harvest. On Thursday he could find only five workers.
"They are all leaving up here. They are just scared," Smith said. "They are taking kids out of school."
Rep. Jeremy Oden, R-Vinemont, said other farmers are feeling the impact in his district.
"We want to look at something as far as agricultural workers are concerned," Oden said, but he added that he first needs to see what will happen to legal challenges of the law.
The construction industry also is expecting a huge hit from the immigration law.
Russell Davis, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Alabama, has said labor shortages could be "serious issues" once demand for houses picks up, because of Hispanics who are skilled workers and laborers leaving Alabama and because some homebuilders quit the business in the latest downturn.
Legal workers fearful
Reed also said contractors have told him they have workers who are legal immigrants but who have left because of fears sparked by the law. "Every commercial contractor I've come in touch with is concerned about the void in labor that we're going to experience due to the nature of the law," Reed said before the law went into effect.
But Sen. Scott Beason, who sponsored the legislation along with Hammon, said the labor shortages are likely because employers were hiring illegal workers.
"People over the last decade or so began to hire illegal workers, which because of competition forced the next guy to do it to survive in some market sectors," Beason said. "It's going to take a little time to straighten that out."
But Adams said workers that have failed to show up at poultry plants are legal workers already checked out through E-Verify. The workers may be worried about the law's impact on their families when police officers and schools start checking citizenship status, as required under the law.
"That worries them because they may have a spouse or a child that is not a citizen," Adams said.
Brian Hardin, assistant director of the Alabama Farmers Federation's governmental and agricultural programs, said the long-term problem for farmers is labor.
"We've got farmers who have already lost crops this summer and this fall," Hardin said. "It's hot work. It's difficult work and it's work that most people don't want to do for a long time.
Hardin acknowledges there likely will not be major changes to Alabama's immigration law coming from lawmakers in Montgomery.
"We are trying to work within that reality," Hardin said.
The answer for farmers, he said, might have to come from the federal government through a new guest worker program.
"It comes back to what can we do on the federal level, because I don't think there is a lot the state can do," he said.
Two bills in Congress propose new guest worker and seasonal worker programs, but farmworker advocates say they would remove labor protections, cut wages and encourage the industry to hire even more nonresidents.
Speaker of the state House of Representatives Mike Hubbard, R-Auburn, said lawmakers are hearing push-back from industry groups, but he said they were voicing those complaints before the bill was passed.
Hubbard said legal immigrants have "nothing to fear" from the law.
"If they (employers) are admitting they were hiring illegal aliens, they were breaking the law," Hubbard said.
Smith freely admits most of his workers had been in the country illegally. The immigrants with proper documentation can get better-paying jobs, he said, than picking sweet potatoes.
'All we can get'
Smith is not impressed with politicians who say he has been breaking the law by hiring illegal immigrants.
"That's what they all say. But they don't know what it's like out here," Smith said. "That is all we can get."
Smith said he has four to six weeks to get his crops in before they rot. He said he has found a few American workers for his fields, but he complained they can't keep up with his Hispanic crews.
"If you want to solve the immigration problem, quit eating," Smith said.
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