The LookoutSouth Carolina is fifth state to pass illegal-immigration crackdown
On Tuesday, South Carolina became the fifth state this year to follow Arizona's lead and pass a law requiring local police officers to check the immigration status of people they stop or pull over. South Carolina lawmakers also mandated that businesses use the federal E-verify system to screen all potential employees, a law the local Chamber of Commerce lobbied against.
GOP South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, the daughter of Sikh immigrants who campaigned on battling illegal immigration, says she plans to sign the bills.
A whopping 53 omnibus immigration bills have been introduced in 30 states this year, many of them containing provisions similar to those in Arizona's SB 1070 enforcement law that sparked a national debate on immigration when Gov. Jan Brewer signed it last spring. A judge partially enjoined that law before it could go into effect last July, after the American Civil Liberties Union and the Department of Justice sued.
Fourteen of the proposed immigration bills have already failed, but dozens are still pending. According to Ann Morse at the National Conference of State Legislatures, none of the still-pending immigration bills has yet to pass one house of a state legislature--which means it could be a while before another state follows the lead of Arizona, Utah, Indiana, Georgia, Alabama and now South Carolina.
Indiana's law is slightly different from the legislation pending in other states--it allows police to arrest an immigrant if they suspect he or she may be subject to a deportation order and has committed a felony in the past. Utah paired its toughened enforcement with a measure to allow illegal immigrants to register with the state, pay a fine and get a state work permit. Georgia farmers complain that an unintended consequence of the state's new enforcement and E-verify laws is a labor shortage that's forcing them to leave crops to rot in their fields. Alabama's law will require school administrators to verify that their students are authorized to be in the country, which may be in violation of a Supreme Court precedent holding that no school may turn away or discourage a child from attending.
Arizona Gov. Brewer has spent at least $1.5 million in donated funds defending the law, which is likely to be the subject of a Supreme Court challenge. The Supreme Court recently upheld Arizona's E-verify law after a lengthy legal battle, but experts say SB 1070 will face a tougher legal struggle.
The ACLU has already filed challenges to the Arizona, Utah, Indiana and Georgia laws, and will also seek to block South Carolina and Alabama's bills once they are signed into law, according to The Associated Press.
(Nikki Haley: AP/Brett Flashnick)
