Court upholds immigration law
City school officials said Friday that they had not seen an exodus of Hispanic students like some areas of the state reported after a federal judge upheld most of the sections of Alabama’s far-reaching immigration law on Wednesday.
Some areas, particularly in Morgan and Marshall counties, reported that several Hispanic students withdrew from the schools there Thursday.
Russellville City Schools Superintendent Rex Mayfield said that none had withdrawn in the city as of early Friday.
Mayfield spoke to the entire student body at Russellville High School on Thursday and met with the Hispanic students at the middle school as well.
“There were a lot of students concerned about their friends and what the new law would mean,” he said.
“I just went over the law and what it means to students and school systems. I told them that if they are currently a student in the Russellville city schools, it changes nothing at all.”
Effective Thursday, schools are to check birth certificates only when a child is enrolling in an Alabama school for the first time. If officials determine the child isn’t in the U.S. lawfully or if a birth certificate is not presented, they then must ask the parent or guardian to provide other documentation or sign an affidavit about the citizenship or immigration status of the student. If that document doesn’t arrive within 30 days, the school records that child as “enrolled without birth certificate” in the state data system.
The law doesn’t require schools to report students’ names when counting up the number who don’t have legal documentation.
“It doesn’t affect the students currently in school and it will only mean that we are required to have a birth certificate for new students when they enroll,” Mayfield said.
Though some areas of the state reported high absentee and withdrawal numbers immediately after the law was upheld, city school officials are still uncertain what role the law had in attendance numbers this week.
System-wide, there were 94 absences on Wednesday, with 28 of those being listed as Hispanic. That number was only up slightly to 33 out of 115 absences on Thursday.
Both numbers rose Friday, with 61 of the 197 absences being reported as Hispanic.
School officials cautioned though, that absentee numbers could have been up sharply Friday due to Thursday night’s football game in Huntsville.
“The thing that really stands out is how concerned our entire student body, especially at the high school, is about the law and how their friends will be impacted,” Mayfield said.
Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn of Federal District Court in Birmingham, ruled in the state’s favor on the majority of the new immigration law Wednesday, which is now widely regarded as the stiffest in the country.
“Judge Blackburn upheld the majority of our law,” Gov. Robert Bentley said in a statement.
“With those parts that were upheld, we have the strongest immigration law in the country.”
The judge did issue a preliminary injunction against several sections of the law, agreeing with the federal government’s case that proposed state laws pre-empted federal law. She blocked a broad provision that outlawed the harboring or transporting of illegal immigrants and another that barred illegal immigrants from enrolling in or attending public universities.
The judge upheld a section that requires state and local law enforcement officials to try to verify a person’s immigration status during routine traffic stops or arrests, if “a reasonable suspicion” exists that the person is in the country illegally. And she ruled that a section that criminalized the “willful failure” of a person in the country illegally to carry federal immigration papers did not pre-empt federal law.
