US Challenges Alabama Immigration Law

US President Barack Obama's administration on Monday filed a legal challenge to a tough new immigration law in the southern state of Alabama that it said would cause "irreparable harm." The Justice Department said the law would deter illegal immigrants from enrolling their children in school and distract police from more serious crimes by requiring them to inspect the legal papers of everyone they stop.
"A state cannot set its own immigration policy, much less pass laws that conflict with federal enforcement of the immigration laws," it said in a statement.

The Alabama law would "affect virtually every aspect of an unauthorized immigrant’s daily life, from employment to housing to transportation to entering into and enforcing contracts to going to school," it said. "It will place significant burdens on federal agencies, diverting their resources away from dangerous criminal aliens and other high-priority targets," it added in a statement. This is the second time the federal government has stepped in to block a controversial state immigration law after it won a July 2010 court injunction against a similar controversial measure in Arizona.

The Alabama law was far more harsh, as it would have required police to pursue illegal immigrants who had committed no other crime as well as making it a crime for immigrants to work or seek employment.

Read More: US challenges Alabama immigration law