When I intialially read Alabama was considering its own immigration law. My head tilted a bit and it was time for mental Geography review? Is Alabama a border state? It has borders. It borders Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee. The Mexican border is a eight hundred mile scenic drive through Louisiana and Texas. I heard someone on a national talk show say, if the Goverment would do its job and build a strong fence, they wouldn’t need a law in Alabama, one has to assume he meant fence Mississpippi.
There are nearly 5 million people in the Great State of Alabama. 185,000 are identified as Latinos about 4 percent.
Some of the citizens and politcians believes jobs held by illegals immigrants was responsible for some the unemployment in the state.
Like the Arizona law, many sections of HB56 was excessive. making it a crime for a citizen to transport in his or her car. Renting a room or an apartment to an illegal is a crime.
Many Latino’s left the state before HB56 became law. The impact on business and communities dependent on Latino labor was immediate. Supporters of the law welcomed the departures saying the departures would free up jobs for those unemployed.
The problems is those jobs vacated by the Latino workers are not being filled by the states Unemployed.
Jerry Spencer, founder of the Grow Alabama which delivers locally grown produce in the state believe the absence of workers in the field would lead to a significant loss to the harvest in the next few weeks. “The big concern is the decisions that the farmers are going to have to make about whether they continue to farm next year”. 
There is no flood of U.S. citizens trying to get any of those jobs, despite Alabama’s 10 percent unemployment, well above the national average. Some farmers say they fear the labor shortage will put them out of business permanently.
Alabama contributes less than 2 percent of America’s agricultural output, but already supermarkets in Eastern and Midwestern states have upped the price of tomato and potato products, eggs and broiler chickens because production may falter in the labor shortage.
Many years ago I saw a film “A Day without A Mexican. In the film, one day all the Latino’s in California disappeared. There was chaos. The film had a very limited release and wasn’t seen in Arizona, Alabama, Georgia and Indiana.
Alabama 4% ? Really? Just saying for Tuesday,October 25,2011
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