I'm sorry, senor.

Every time I see a Hispanic person now, I want to say, "I'm sorry about Alabama's new immigration law.  I don't hate you.  I don't think that you're responsible for all of the crime in our state.  I don't think you came here to steal my job. I'm sorry that our legislature passed and our governor signed into law a bill that gives you every reason to think these things."

I love that I'm a Southerner and a native of Alabama.  I love sweet iced tea and fresh Gulf shrimp.  I love long, warm summers and short, mild winters.  I love words like "y'all" and phrases like "fixin' to".  But right now I'm ashamed to be from Alabama because of this new immigration law.

I hate what this law communicates to recent immigrants (documented or otherwise), specifically to Hispanics.  Nobody is calling to build a fence along our northern border with Canada so it's clear that this law is aimed primarily at those who have immigrated here from our southern border.  I'll be the first to admit that I know little about what it takes to immigrate to this country legally.  My own travel abroad is limited to a single business trip to France, a visit to friends in Ireland, a medical mission trip to Haiti, and three mission trips to central Mexico.  There was some paperwork involved each time but I don't know what is required to receive permission to enter the U.S. legally if you are not already a citizen of this country.  What I do know, however, is that most of the people that now call the U.S. home are descendants of immigrants, including me.  Few of us are descendants of the native Americans who occupied this land before the Europeans discovered it.  It's as though we are saying, "Now that I'm here, we can lock the gate."

At least in part, the pretense of this law is that undocumented immigrants have taken the jobs that native Alabamians want or had and by rounding them up and deporting them, we'll fix our high unemployment problem here.  That's not true and never was.  Most immigrants (documented or not) are employed in hard labor, lower paying, less desirable jobs.  It's because of them, at least in part, that all Americans can buy goods and services at prices less than we might if these jobs were paid at a fairer wage.  The claim that they don't pay taxes is simply not true.  They pay payroll taxes and sales taxes, at the very least. 

Undocumented immigrants are certainly not perfect.  Some of them commit crimes, as do every other segment of our population.  A cock fighting ring run and patronized by Hispanics  was recently busted up near the town where I live.  Early in our marriage, Julia and I rented a house in Auburn from a guy who raised fighting gamecocks and fought them for a living . . . and he was just as lily white as me.  Every negative factor attributed to undocumented immigrants also exists in the rest of us, as well. 

I understand that we need to secure our borders and that immigration control is necessary.  What I don't understand is this law that was clearly designed to intimidate and blame a specific segment of our population for the challenges that we are dealing with at the moment.  I hate that it makes even legally documented immigrants feel intimidated and unwelcome.  I hate that it's causing fear in the innocent children of undocumented parents.  I hate that we have resorted to blaming a specific ethnic group for the ills of society.  That's never been right and it's not right now.