Alabama Immigration Law Stands, but Cops Still Wary

The police chief of a small town in the Appalachian foothills of Alabama didn't know what to do about checking the immigration status of a Hispanic man his department recently arrested on an old warrant. So he didn't do anything.

Alabama's strict new immigration law, which was largely upheld Wednesday by a federal judge, requires police to jail anyone who can't prove he or she is in the country legally.

Much of the law goes into effect immediately, but that doesn't mean there will be mass roundups of thousands of illegal immigrants anytime soon. Across Alabama, police charged with enforcing the nation's toughest law targeting illegal immigrants are trying to figure out how to enforce the law and pay for it.

The police chief, Chris West, and his three officers patrol Crossville, a rural town of 1,300 people that adjoins a Hispanic community of hundreds and maybe more. The nearest jail is 20 miles away. The law is complicated and they have little money for training.

"Right now we're waiting to find out what's in the law, and then we're going to start enforcing it," he said.

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The Illegal Immigration Word Cloud

When the immigration question came in Thursday night’s FOX News-Google Republican Candidate Debate, the concerns of the American people regarding the immigration issue was reflected in the “Word Cloud” they created based on the words used in the thousands of questions they received.

Explained anchor Bret Baier, “It shows the words that were used most often in all of the questions you asked about immigration. The bigger the word, the more often it was used. The biggest word in this cloud, as you see, is 'ILLEGAL.’”

ILLEGAL is something that the American people understand.

Chris Wallace asked Congresswoman Bachmann, "As you well know, a number of states are trying to crack down on illegal immigration. We got a bunch of questions on immigration like this one from Tim Emerson, this is a text question so you don't need to look up there. Tim Emerson of California. He wrote this, 'would you support each state enforcing the immigration laws since the federal government is not?'"

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Hope for Some Jamaicans Facing Deportation from US

A task force advising the Obama administration on a programme aimed at deporting "the worst of the worst" immigrant felons, has sharply criticised the United States immigration authorities for creating confusion about its purpose and sowing seeds of distrust.

The task force has also found that the programme has an "unintended negative impact" on public safety in local communities.

In a report on the initiative, dubbed 'Secure Communities', the task force said the programme has eroded public trust by leading to the detention of many Caribbean and other immigrants who had not committed serious crimes, after officials said its aim was to remove "the worst of the worst" immigrant criminals from the United States.

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NM Governor Says Grandparents Came to US Illegally

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez has acknowledged her paternal grandparents came to the U.S. illegally, amid national attention and protests over her ongoing efforts to bar illegal immigrants from getting driver's licenses.

"I know they arrived without documents, especially my father's father," the Republican said Wednesday in an interview in Spanish with KLUZ-TV, the Albuquerque Univision affiliate.

Martinez has long acknowledged her Mexican heritage. But when asked previously about reports that her grandfather was an illegal immigrant, her office has said Martinez was unsure of his status since he abandoned the family when her father was young.

Her comments Wednesday appeared to be the first time she has answered the question definitively. The Santa Fe New Mexican reported in July that the 1930 U.S. Census Bureau record lists Martinez's paternal grandparents' citizenship status as "AL" for "alien," a status that refers to "all foreign-born persons neither naturalized nor having first papers." However, Martinez was not directly quoted in the story addressing her grandparents' immigration status.

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Dream Act: California Embraces Anti-Arizona Role on Illegal Immigration

With the Obama administration and Congress stalled on immigration reform, California has joined the growing parade of states acting on their own to pressure Washington into action.

The Democrat-controlled state Senate on Wednesday night passed its version of the Dream Act – a bill that would allow illegal immigrants who attended state high schools for three or more years to apply for state-funded college financial aid. The federal version of the bill, which was most recently defeated in December, allows a path to citizenship for illegal-immigrant students and members of the military who were brought to the US as children.

The California Senate vote is a sign that the immigration debate at state level is being driven as much by those sympathetic to illegal immigration as those determined to curtail it, says Catherine Wilson, an immigration analyst at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

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