In the void left by US federal inaction over the past decade on immigration reform, a number of state and local governments have stepped forward to craft their own laws relating to immigrants, sometimes with disastrous effects. To take one example documented by Human Rights Watch, the State of Alabama’s 2010 immigrant law denyingunauthorized immigrants the right to housing and other basic rights had severe effects on immigrant and ethnic minority populations in the state.
The meatpacking town of Fremont, Nebraska has become the latest locality to improvise a restrictive approach to immigrants’ rights, voting last week to re-approve an ordinance that prohibits harboring, hiring or renting to unauthorized immigrants in the city. (The law was originally passed in 2010 but was held up pending a court challenge, which has failed for the time being.)
Under international law, governments at any level may not enforce laws against non-citizens in a way that denies any person their fundamental human rights, except for certain political rights, most notably voting. Like Alabama, Fremont, Nebraska is moving toward just such an abusive system. Under the Fremont law, local police are to pass along to federal authorities the immigration status information provided to them by renters, virtually assuring that no unauthorized immigrant can afford to risk living in the town.
The law gives effective license to landlords and others to discriminate against unauthorized immigrants and minority US citizens or residents. Fremont’s Hispanic or Latino population increased by 188 percent between 2000 and 2010, to over 3,000. Many are drawn to the town by jobs in the nearby Fremont Beef and Hormel meatpacking plants. In Alabama, Human Rights Watch documented how the state’s immigrant law created a climate of fear in which immigrants and US citizens reported discrimination in business transactions, in interactions with police, and on the schoolyard. A frightened immigrant population at the mercy of an industry known for hiring immigrant labor can also be a toxic mix for the protection of workers’ rights, as Human Rights Watch has shown in the past, not least through investigations in Nebraska.
The good news is that harsh immigrant laws like the one in Fremont are increasingly outnumbered by inclusive local measures, from California to New Jersey, aimed at expanding immigrants’ access to drivers’ licenses, higher education, workers’ rights and community policing. These local measures can go a long way toward insuring that immigrants are treated with fairness, dignity and respect.
