New law on illegal immigration Alabama is really the most severe? -Christian Science Monitor

Governor of the Alabama Robert Bentley (R) signed a law on immigration Thursday, between other illegal immigrants of the bars of things of public colleges and universities, requires companies to verify the legal status of their employees and punishes owners who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

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Both sides of the debate say that this is the toughest illegal immigration law in the country. But in an age when lawmakers tough on immigration and the rights activists of the immigrant who oppose systematically to claim a right is "severe" in the land, how HB 56 Alabama stack?

"There was a certain competitiveness in the States to sound more strict," said Muzaffar Chishti, Director of the office of Migration Policy Institute at New York University School of Law. "It is difficult to say the day is".

Depending on the issue, other States have laws on immigration more difficult than Alabama, explains Mr. Chishti, such as the right of 2008 of the Mississippi which is work in the State illegally a crime.

But the covers of 72 pages right Alabama more ground that same SB 1070 Arizona, the Act on the radical immigration adopted last year. That scope makes it "one of the strictest in the country," said Chishti. It borrows ideas from Fremont, Nebraska, an act which penalises the owners who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, and an act of South Carolina, preventing illegal immigrants from attending public universities.

Right of Alabama copies many of provisions of 1070 SB, including a measure requiring officers to consider the status of the immigration of people they suspect of being in the country illegally, although this part of the law of Arizona faces challenges in Federal Court.

As a provision of SB 1070, the Supreme Court confirmed last month, the Alabama law requires employers to run through E-Verify, Federal citizenship employee names and registry immigration. A company is facing a short suspension of his licence if found to have committed an illegal immigrant. If a company is found to be have hired an illegal immigrant a second time, it would lose his license permanently.

In some cases, the Act of Alabama goes further than SB 1070. It prevents businesses to take deductions of tax on wages it pays of illegal immigrants and requires elementary and secondary retain data on the State of the immigration of his students. Owners may also be penalized rental knowingly illegal immigrants.

The provision prohibiting the illegal immigrants to attend universities and public colleges also goes further than the Arizona law, which prevents illegal immigrants enjoy tuition fees in the State.

But in this case, the provision strict survey is not as difficult as it sounds. The only way to enforce the prohibition is voluntary. The Act provides simply that postsecondary administrators "may request audit" of a student of immigration status. It does not require that they do and provides no penalties for schools that are not in compliance.

From a point of view policy, with a tough-survey provision may be also useful to legislators such as that which is in fact difficult.

"This whole notion of everyone trying to be difficult is difficult to evaluate something, but the need to make this policy statement may be more important than the express provisions of the Act," said Chishti.

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