Yesterday, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Joey Kennedy took a whack at Senator Jeff Sessions for trying to stall immigration reform in their home state* newspaper, with a column entitled “Do Nothing? Now that’s something Sen. Jeff Sessions can do.” As Kennedy writes: I guess it makes sense that U.S. Sen.... Continue »
The Beloved Community Church in Avondale, Alabama has given Pulitzer Prize-winning Birmingham News columnist Joey Kennedy (who is often covered on this blog) its annual Incarnation Award, for his stance against Alabama’s anti-immigrant law HB 56. As the church said in its statement announcing the award: This year we... Continue »
Two weeks ago, Detention Watch Network launched their new “Expose and Close” campaign, identifying ten of the worst immigrant detention centers in the nation and calling for them to be closed.  Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Joey Kennedy at the Birmingham News visited one of these detention centers in Gadsden,... Continue »
More than a year after Alabama began implementing state anti-immigrant law HB 56—which was supposed to be a jobs bill–Alabama now has the worst economy in the American Southeast.  The state has endured a year of civil rights groups and supporters comparing the state’s present to its famously ugly... Continue »
Last night in Alabama, undocumented former Washington Post reporter Jose Antonio Vargas spoke at an Immigration Town Hall entitled “Do I Look ‘Illegal’?” and discussed Alabama’s HB 56 anti-immigrant state law as well as anti-immigrant sentiments like it around the nation.  One of HB 56’s sponsors, state Sen. Scott... Continue »
As bad as our Legislature is, I never thought I'd have to say that even Mississippi's Legislature is smarter than ours. But it is, at least where immigration policy is concerned. Continue »
This group's consensus is that, mainly because of Alabama's harsh immigration law and Republican presidential candidates' embrace of it and similar laws, the Republicans are in real trouble come election time. Republicans can't win without a good chunk of the Latino/Hispanic vote, and that's just the way it is. Continue »
There's that movie, A Few Good Men, with Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise, where Nicholson's character while on the witness stand in a military court shouts at Cruise's character, who has just asked Nicholson to tell him the truth: "You can't handle the truth." Continue »
State Sen. Scott Beason lives in a strange world. I'm not talking about Gardendale, where the Republican lives. I mean the world of Beason's mind. In Beason's world, a part-time lawmaker with few marketable skills deserves a $53,000-per-year salary, far more than the average Alabama citizen makes. Continue »
It's encouraging that the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice is hitting the ground running in 2012 where opposition to Alabama's horrible immigration law is concerned. AJIC will hold a series of workshops Saturday at the Prince of Peace Catholic Church, 4600 Preserve Parkway, in Hoover. Continue »