Is Alabama Immigration Law Creating a ‘Humanitarian Crisis’?

US teachers unions and Hispanic activists said Wednesday that an Arizona-style immigration law upheld by a federal judge last week is creating a “humanitarian crisis” as thousands of parents keep their children home, fearing that teachers will act as immigration agents.

{snip} And last week, federal Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn surprised many Americans when she upheld key parts of the law–including a portion that says schools must check the immigration status of children when they enroll, as well as the status of their parents.

“This law revisits Alabama’s painful racial past,” Sam Brooke, a staff attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday. “When a law that demonizes people to the point of pushing children out of schools is cheered, it’s a dark day for the state and the country.”

{snip}

Teachers unions and Hispanic advocacy groups, as well as the Obama administration, have filed an appeal, but the law began to take effect this week. Some 2,000 Hispanic students did not show up to school Monday, according to state education officials. That figure amounts to about 7 percent of the state’s Hispanic student population.

Yet education officials have vowed that even children without birth certificates attempting to enroll will be allowed to attend school. Information about a child’s immigration status “will not be used to individually identify your child,” but rather will be used only to report “statistical data,” interim state superintendent Larry Craven said in a statement Wednesday.

The statistics will be gathered by the state Department of Education to track the cost of educating illegal immigrants.

{snip}

The big question is whether the students absent this week will return once, and if, fears about being reported to immigration authorities fade.

{snip}