Photo by naslrogues/Flickr (Creative Commons)
A year ago, when Multi-American was counting down the top five immigration stories of 2010, topping the list with Arizona’s game-changing SB 1070 was a no-brainer. Not necessarily because news of the 2010 anti-illegal immigration law dominated immigration coverage last year, but because of the lasting impact the law was bound to have on other states. I wrote then:
What continues to make SB 1070 such an important story are its ramifications beyond Arizona, which will be playing out in the years to come. Even with some of its provisions still hung up in appeals court by the pending federal challenge, SB 1070 has emboldened conservative state legislators around the country to draft their own versions of the law, some just as strict or more so than the original.
A year later, SB 1070-inspired immigration enforcement bills have made their way through statehouses around the country. Similarly strict laws have taken effect in states like Alabama, Georgia, Utah, Indiana and South Carolina.
Like the Arizona measure that inspired them, headed to the U.S. Supreme Court on a state appeal, all of these face their own court challenges. Federal judges have blocked several of these laws’ most stringent provisions, including a controversial provision in Alabama that would require public schools to check the immigration status of students, which when the law first took effect prompted a rash of school absences.
Agricultural states like Georgia and Alabama, meanwhile, have experienced severe labor shortages as immigrant farm workers have fled their fields for more welcoming climes.
The new laws enacted are but one small aspect of what’s been happening in the states. The National Conference of State Legislatures reported recently that in 2011, there were 1,607 bills and resolutions relating to immigrants and refugees introduced in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, significantly up from a little more than 1,400 in 2010. Bolstered by the relative success of SB 1070, even as parts of the law remain hung up in court, immigration restriction-minded legislators in many states banded together, working with the same legal teams to help them draft immigration crackdown bills.
Interestingly, in spite of the bill-filing fury, 11 percent fewer of these state immigration bills became law this year than in 2010. Among those that didn’t get anywhere were a series of bills intended to end birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born babies of undocumented immigrants, written with the aid of the same legal counsel behind SB 1070 and introduced in states like Arizona, Indiana and Iowa. Also voted down was an Arizona “omnibus” bill that would have denied public services to undocumented immigrants, similarly to California’s ill-fated Proposition 187 in 1994, and an Arizona bill requiring that hospitals check for patients’ immigration status.
Where does it go from here? The Supreme Court decision on SB 1070 could well hold the answer.
