"Most Democratic voters are closer to the Republicans in their attitudes toward illegal immigration

[pampango]

than to their own party's leaders and activists."

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/06/11/alabama_immigration_law/index.html

Alabama's harsh new immigration law explained

Alabama's Republican governor signs the harshest immigration law in the country

Despite the relative lack of national media attention, the Alabama law includes more harsh measures than even Arizona's notorious SB 1070, which immediately faced legal challenges after passing last year. Like the Arizona law, Alabama's measure requires local police to check the immigration status of people who they believe may be in the country illegally.

But it goes much further, establishing new requirements for checking the immigration status of students and potential tenants. It is scheduled to go into effect in September -- but not before a promised legal challenge by civil rights groups.

What are the harshest provisions in this new law?

It is everything that was included in Arizona's SB 1070 -- including everything that was enjoined by the courts when they evaluated that bill. The twist is a provision in the Alabama law that requires schools to determine and verify immigration status of any student who is enrolling and any parent of students who are enrolling. The bill's backers are saying that this is constitutional because they are not turning people away from schools. The schools are not supposed to turn people away, but they are required to collect this data and to report it to the Legislature. This is clearly in violation of existing Supreme Court precedent, because it will in fact have a chilling effect on immigrant children enrolling in school.

There's also a prohibition on renting in the law. It is a crime for a landlord to rent an apartment if they knew or should have known that the tenant is undocumented. Also under the law, if a person enters into a contract with someone who they know to be an undocumented immigrant, that contract is unenforceable in the state courts.